A truly remarkable thing happened today: Microsoft released Vista to the public, yet concensus seems to be that few people care. There were no long lines at the stores, and the air seems completely devoid of buzz. Opening day seems to have come and gone with a whimper, not a bang.

Is it any wonder? Draconian licensing and a generally negative bias in the online press has scared experts away. A $400 price tag for a the full version needed for any sort of development work or virtualization is keeping web developers away. Steep hardware requirements are scaring off anyone with an older computer. The fact that a well patched version of XP is secure enough for most security experts leaves few compelling reasons to upgrade for those reasons alone. And a draconian DRM implementation has scared off anyone who cares about Fair Use.

Couple thease reasons with a generally broad and incremental set of features improvements rather than a single, killer app, and there is little reason to upgrade from a fully patched version of XP. So in the end, it all amounts to a perfect storm of nothingness. This has to be the stuff of Bill Gates’ nightmares. What a dud.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Tips & Tricks, Tools . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.