Enjoy the Vista while you wait

Hands-up anyone who’s bought Microsoft’s new Vista operating system. Ok, hands-up anyone who knows of anyone who’s bought it?

I’m guessing there won’t be too many hands in the air. Herald technology writer Peter Griffin was pragmatic in his recent comments which included

“…(it) will be a couple of years before this version takes off.”

And vice-president of Internet NZ, blogger David Farrar, also had reservations, noting:

“I usually wait for six months after a Microsoft product comes out before I try it because there are usually some bugs in there.”

And there’s the rub. Regardless of the hype and promotional activities announcing the shiny new software, I bet it’s not exactly running off retailers shelves. Why? Because it has a major hurdle to overcome – Microsoft’s reputation for the first version of anything it releases being full of bugs – just as David Farrar said.

On the plus side, Microsoft overwhelmingly dominates the global market in terms of software on the vast majority of home and work computers so it can probably afford to wait until people upgrade and end up getting Vista by default when it’s pre-loaded onto their machines pre-purchase. In the meantime, I’ll leave it up to the ‘early adopters’ to let Microsoft know what and where the holes are and hopefully, by the time version 2 or 3 or 2010 comes out, it’ll be worth the wait.