I personally haven't made the switch from XP to Vista. From what I've heard and read there isn't much reason to do so. It's not that computer journalist are saying that Vista is terrible, it just that it doesn't live up to all the hype. Vista was in development for around 5 years which is a long wait for what some have nicknamed ?XP Service Pack 4?. This is the tech community's way of saying, ?It's evolutionary, not revolutionary?.

Vistas failure to create a revolution has generated rumours that Microsoft has lost its way. The general consensus is that was the company's structure that caused this disappointing level of progress.

Around 95% of all computers are running one version or another of Microsoft Windows. This staggering monopoly was what made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. So even if Microsoft's monopoly is starting to decline, it's still going to take at least several years if not a decade or more for it to be overtaken. In which time you would think that they can come up with at least one more killer version of Windows.

If there's anything that is going to stop Microsoft in its tracks it's the competition which has improved dramatically in the last couple of years. Linux is a very strong alternative to Windows. Not only is it free to use, but it also is supported by free software.

On the other end of the scale, Apple have launched Leopard ? their best operating system so far. Apple has a beautiful looking interface that is second to none. OS X functions very well with hardly any bugs, unlike Windows XP which occasionally suffers from a plague of minor niggles. This might be just a personal gripe, but surely there should be a more thorough way of uninstalling unwanted software. Resorting to msconfig might be an effective work around, but it's hardly user friendly and it is too easy to disable something important by mistake.