...is the article I was planning to write here. Instead, I hit the same problem as ever - Vista means nothing to me. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I can't remember the last operating system I've felt so completely and utterly cold about. Not in a particularly negative way, because negativity implies a level of caring that really doesn't exist. Just... apathy. Apathy and occasional annoyance.
The improved features? No real sign. I don't feel any safer with it running than I do with my Windows XP machine. DirectX 10 remains an irrelevance, and looks set to continue being one for a good while yet. As for the Ultimate Extras... well... remember when they were going to happen? The only real difference I've found is its tendency to do hard-resets without so much as a by-your-leave when downloading patches. Oh, and the ability to alter the volume on different programs individually remains as useful an option as any I've found in the system. I like that option.
But that's about it. Has it changed the way I work? No. Helped me organise anything? Again, not really. The Start menu's a bit better, I suppose. But if I had to pick one feature in a full copy of Windows Vista, the only one that stands out right now, right this second, is that you could buy a whole table of cakes for the cost of an upgrade. And everyone likes cake, don't they?
I wouldn't go as far to say that Vista is an all new Windows ME. I don't think it's particularly bad. It does its job, it's... it's okay. But that's it. It's the operating system equivalent of biting your toenails; effective enough, but not something worth getting worked up over. There's no reason to buy it, and throughout 2007, I've yet to see a compelling reason to upgrade unless you get it free with a new computer. Certainly, Acer never bothered sending me the upgrade disc for my laptop. And I haven't chased them about it.
What's really needed is for Microsoft to pull an Apple - not Leopard necessarily, but something that actively re-energises the platform. That's what's missing from Vista, more than anything else. With Windows 95, with OS X, with Linux, with all these other platforms, they make a stand for what computing can be, and where it's going. Vista didn't do that. It was a release aimed at boosting Microsoft's bottom line and trying to secure its empire. It's there to shift boxes, not change the status quo.
Microsoft has no excuse for that. By 2010, it'll have been almost a decade since the last big jump, and that's an eternity in technology. At the very least, it's long enough to come up with at least one genuinely essential reason to upgrade. The WOW sure as hell hasn't started in my study...
