I have better things to spend my money on than a computer that can run Vista.

Vista has already failed. You know the game is pretty much over when its most (allegedly) innovative software can be faked in Ajax in the browser. And Microsoft really should have noticed that if people needed more 3D graphics in their lives, VRML would have taken off and the web would have been full of virtual environments a decade ago.

The web-as-platform has decisively beaten both Apple and Microsoft as the platform for building useful software applications. And both Apple and MS are now reduced to fighting over who'll be putting the prettiest packaging around good-old-fashioned music, photography and home-movies. They've effectively succumbed to the worst tendency of the games industry : zero innovation (in fact boring rehashes of the same formulae, dumbed down) smothered in lashings of eye-candy that demand ever-more absurd hardware specs. in order to run; all in a desperate attempt to titilate the jaded palettes of the customers one more time.

It's the WaterWorld theory of software-making.

Really, really hard to see how Microsoft are going to make back their investment in Vista. Sure, they'll tax new PCs for a while yet. But, frankly, they could have done that anyway with a 10th of the effort. We know where they're headed; we've seen it with IBM : monolithic, unfocussed, and ultimately unprofitable, until someone finally breaks them up and lets a few of the pieces fly off in their separate ways.

ps : Remember if I ran Microsoft?

pps : Yes, Platform Wars is back with a new look - thanks to Google finally giving a minimal upgrade to Blogger. I approve. It's not ambitious, but it is nicely incremental, and feels a bit less clunky to use.