Well, I believe it is safe to say that Microsoft is losing some of their fan base over the continued Vista delays. In the past two weeks, I have heard from two product managers and one CTO - they all were clear with their belief that Vista was going to be a big let down.

Wow, even I might not have gone this far. But remember this is coming from the people who have to develop around this new operating system. And all I have to do is use it. Now there’s an eye opener for you. Hey Microsoft, you are beginning to frighten the troops a little. Perhaps you need to communicate that things will in fact be OK and that these perceived headaches are only beta issues, nothing to be concerned about?

Seriously, even though I am hardly a Microsoft fanboy, I don’t believe for a second that Microsoft will be releasing an OS reminiscent of Millennium Edition anytime soon. You have to consider that for the first time in many years, we are seeing MS working their butts off to make up from their previous shortcomings with the pre-SP 1 Windows XP OS.

But even with the improvement in effort, there are growing concerns from those in the development community. There are even more serious concerns with stability and usably of Vista and whether or not this will be worked out in time. Keep in mind that this is not even considering the challenge of OS adoption as most people are quite content with XP.

So this begs the question: Will I be upgrading from XP to Vista myself? The short answer is yes, but not on my primary machine. I will purchase a Vista box for software reviews - that’s it. My desktop will remain a XP/Linux combo and I will also be upgrading my notebook to the MacBook Pro. Hey, being that I can do Linux, XP and OS X on one machine, it just makes sense since it is time for a notebook upgrade anyway.

The only shortcoming I see with this decision is the battery life of the MacBook Pro. When compared to the new IBM notebooks, it’s like night and day with regard to battery life. The IBM notebook is the clear winner here.

But the fact remains that I use Windows out of need, not because I like it. I think that I am ready to try some new experiences. And I believe that the MacBook Pro is just the tool to provide me with those new experiences.

No matter what I choose to do, any upgrades will be a few weeks down the road anyway, so I still have plenty of time to change my mind. For now, I have other obligations that need to be attended to first. But here very soon, I may find myself becoming a serious Mac fan. And for some reason that prospect bothers me deeply…

[tags]vista,microsoft,xp,cto,macbook pro,os adoption[/tags]