Microsoft

I feel fairly confident that Windows 7 will turn out to better than its predecessor.

I feel fairly confident that it will not turn hairy users bald, nor cause sane users to enter institutions of mental restructuring.

However, I have been watching these two pieces of film from Japan with some small prick of concern.

In each we see a television personality attempting to enjoy the touch screen facility and, well, finding the screen as frigid as a beer in a Reykjavik bar.

I don't speak Japanese quite well enough beyond "watashiwa kekong shtemasen" (no, I am not married) to know what is being said.

However, the fine Japanese news source, Japan Probe, was itself somewhat discombobulated by these two seemingly unrelated incidents of Windows 7 opacity.

I should say that both these clips appear to come from Fuji TV, so I hope that they didn't manage to obtain a rather duff copy of the operating system.

But there is something disconcerting about seeing the rather serious gentleman in the beige jacket and imposingly expensive watch fail to expand his view of the world. His face is so unbearably fixed, as if it too has been frozen in sympathy with what is happening on the screen.

It also affects one's blood pressure to see the chap in the waistcoat on the breakfast show "Tokudane", continually tap a file, then the Windows logo, then any and every part of the screen in a vain attempt to make for a little exciting television.

Indeed, one of his fellow televisual employees scuttles up and crouches down in front of the screen and tries to help him out. Yet still his screen finger skills bear as much fruit as, well, some fingers that attempted to make sense of Vista.

I am sure these were isolated incidents caused by inferior configuration or some kind of digital unfamiliarity.

However, I will be eagerly scouring the Web for sales figures from Japan.