This week amazon.com began taking advance orders for Microsoft’s long-suffering Windows Vista upgrade (the upgrade formerly known as “Longhorn”). Amazon lists January 30th, 2007 as the shipping date. This is in line with past guidance from Microsoft, but executives have been quick to point out that they will ship no Vista before its time. If problems arise in the final stages of beta and Release Candidate testing, further delays are possible.

Microsoft plans to ship Vista in several variants, from a $99 “Home Basic” upgrade to the $259 “Windows Ultimate” upgrade. Most users will probably come down in the middle, shelling out $159 for the upgrade to “Windows Premium”.

Buyer beware, however. Vista Home Basic is a stripped-down version of Vista, without the graphic “bells and whistles” (called “Aero”) of the pricier versions. Home Basic may be the only Vista version that’ll run well on your older PC, or even a new PC with integrated graphics rather than a dedicated graphics processing unit. Without Aero, Vista is reduced to Windows XP Service Pack 3. Yawn.

Here’s some thoughts. Microsoft, with your $5 billion R&D budget, why not release one awesome version of your operating system, at one price (around $129, I should think), that won’t require most users to buy new computers? Why not include best-of-breed applications that actually let you do something meaningful with your computer “out of the box”, rather than preload it with cheap demo software and services that people will immediately uninstall (if that’s even possible)?

While you’re at it, why not release an operating system that’s built with security in mind, rather than lining the pockets of security software makers? Why not engineer the guts of your operating system to make it secure from the inside, rather than having the gall to charge your customers for additional security products that “protect” your own operating system?

Why not release an operating system that’s feels like its built with the end user in mind, rather than the software engineer? Why not release an operating system that doesn’t require an army of trained IT professionals that pay mortgages and send their kids to college on the backs of the end users?

Why not release cool new features and upgrades on an almost annual basis, rather than every half-a-decade? Lil’ old Apple can do all this stuff. I guess money isn’t everything, after all.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski