A lot of reviews are out there about Vista, which, frankly, you could have easily missed if you weren’t paying attention to the tech world. Some people are surprised by this, considering that it has been several years since Microsoft released a new version of their operating system; they think it is a sign of Microsoft’s declining influence. This seemed like a reasonable way to think about things until I considered Windows 98, 2000, and XP.

Basically, I remember a lot of hoopla surrounding Windows 95, particularly the TV commercials featuring the Rolling Stones. I also remember stories about people waiting in line at midnight to buy the CD and a lot of at least generally positive reviews. I think that this was at least a somewhat reasonable reaction, given that Windows 95 was such a large improvement over its predecessors from Microsoft. It was a usable interface for the desktop. It also had a lot of problems, and the other releases I mention above seem to have been mostly bug fixes for those problems.

I don’t think anyone can really say that Vista is a revolutionary product. From what I can tell, it’s a marginal improvement over its predecessors, which is not a bad thing, but also not deserving of a lot of comment, one way or another. And it seems like all Windows releases since 95 have been and will be like this until they jettison some legacy code. The thing is just too big to improve much at one time, even when you spend years on it and abandon a lot of the things you had planned to include.

So, for once I think the press has it largely right on this one. And I’m sticking with my Mac.