Windows XP as the last great OS from Microsoft

There's been plenty of negative sentiment about Windows Vista on the web, not to mention from people I come into contact with from day to day. I installed a beta version and found it unusable. I later installed the final version on my laptop soon after it was released. That lasted a few weeks, before I uninstalled it in frustration and went back to XP. I was strongly pressured into installing it at work and have been using it there for a couple of months now.

But I don't like it. I have tried to keep an open mind about Vista. But I am just not warming up to it.

There are plenty of compatibility issues. Vista supporters around me quickly remind me how it's still early and that those problems will be solved soon enough. OK, that's probably true, but I don't remember it ever being this bad with previous versions of the OS. I get the sense that a lot of vendors just don't believe in Vista, at least not yet. Or is it that Microsoft has forgotten how important the real user experience is in the end? When a user's device doesn't work, he doesn't care that it's really the device manufacturer's fault; to him, Vista is broken. And I basically agree.

But the bigger problem for me is that I just don't see Vista as giving me anything really useful. XP has been working wonderfully for me. What would I want to give that up? What compelling features does Vista provide that make me feel like I have to "upgrade"? I haven't found them yet.

And I'm left wondering if we'll ever see another operating system from Microsoft as good as XP.

Microsoft seems to be in decline. There are signs they are collapsing from the weight of their own bureaucracy. It's become increasingly difficult for them to release anything of great quality, let alone doing it on time. Many of their products no longer work together right out of the gate. And there's just so much bloat.

I predict the next great operating system will come from some other company. I think there's an opportunity here for someone to come out with a lightweight, superfast, rock-solid, Windows-compatible operating system that just does what we want. Just the basics. Let the developer community build add-ons. Sounds like a job for Google. Are they working on an operating system?

In the meantime, I find myself continuing to resist Vista. I do not intend to install it just because it's there. Why should I let Microsoft pressure me into "upgrading" when I have something now that works perfectly fine?