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Screenshot from Microsoft's promotional video: And now take a deep breath
Photo: YouTube / Microsoft
What a coincidence.
Or is it not?
A video that Microsoft uploaded to YouTube on Thursday has eleven minutes of playing time to the second.
In these eleven minutes nothing can be heard other than a compilation of the startup sounds from Windows 95, XP, and 7.
Anyone who has ever used one of these operating systems could now ask: How do you get eleven minutes filled with it?
The digitally orchestrated start tone of Windows 7, for example, doesn't just "ping", but after a few seconds it is over.
Microsoft relies on a trick: the start tones have been slowed down by 4000 percent for the video.
So what you hear there is a kind of acoustic extreme slow motion.
The company calls the result a "slo-fi remix", which is difficult to put into words and - at least at work - at least as difficult to bear, which sometimes sounds like something like lo-fi chillout electro, sometimes like drunken bagpipes ( not "bagpipe players"!) sounds.
"Start relaxing with Windows startup sounds," says the beginning of the video in a text that is gently laid over the video, in which swirling variants of famous Windows background images can be seen: clouds against a summer sky , the rolling hills of California's Napa Valley, abstract blue-turquoise color compositions.
Microsoft explains the meaning behind all of this in a footnote to the film.
The meditative video should help to relax if you are too excited about the Microsoft event on June 24th, they say: The whole thing is exposed as a publicity stunt.
more on the subject
Presentation on June 24th: Microsoft announces new generation of WindowsBy Matthias Kremp
On June 24th, Microsoft wants to unveil “the next generation of Windows”, the successor to Windows 10, which was introduced in 2015 and which, according to Microsoft, runs on more than a billion devices around the world.
Much more than that it will visually differ from the current Windows is not yet known about this major update.
All the greater is the excitement with which innovations Microsoft will expand and modernize the most widely used PC operating system in the world.
A big mystery is what the successor to Windows 10 might be called.
But this is exactly what the playing time of the startup sound video should be an indication of.
Exactly eleven minutes, that's certainly no coincidence.
mak
