Let's be real here: for those of you who have nothing better to do that hate Microsoft, and those that who forget that if it wasn't for MS a lot of us would not be employed. Lets consider the current economic environment, business cycles, current and future support of XP. If we follow the reasoning; that everyone needs to upgrade right away, and if they don't then the software is a failure, then we should all be buying a new car every year or every time the automobile manufacturers add a new feature to the current model.

We are talking about a company that has an unprecedented command of market share in desktop and server OS's; a company that supports hundreds of platforms, and thousands of combinations of machines and devices; is the single largest target for hacking and other attacks in the world, and still manages to ably run most companies desktop and server infrastructures.

Is Vista perfect? No; is it better than XP? It depends on the usage; does it make sense to move from XP to Vista? Again it depends on many factors, but to say its bad because IT departments are not switching to it across the board in the middle of an economic turn-down is irresponsible. Will many IT departments leapfrog Vista? Probably, but again it depends on when 7 comes out, what the economics are and when XP support ends.

We have leapfrogged many sound technologies, it didn't make them less capable, it was just a matter of timing.

As for those moving to Linux because you somehow believe that Windows is less secure, it has been shown that Linux and Apple both have serious security issues, it???s simply that because of the huge population of Windows machines its security issues are amplified. My guess is that if Linux or Apple had as many installed systems, their issues would be just as bad if not worse. Further, many think-tanks have already compared the TCO of Linux against Windows in an Enterprise model and they have found Linux to have a higher TCO.

So lets get real and get of the Rhetoric express.