There’s a lot of bad press about Vista. Mostly consumers frustrated with inability to find support for drivers, problems with their upgrade, and some wondering what the benefit for upgrading is. I wish I could believe that it’s a harbinger Microsoft’s future, but I doubt it. Microsoft is to monolithic to be unseated. What we lack is something better. There is Apple, which is certainly capable of taking Bill’s place, but it’s really the same thing, same philosophy of computing. Linux is kind of a step in the right direction, because it supports a standard for operating systems, letting users at least pick from different distributions, while still being able to run the software they need. But the problem there is that it’s free. I know that seems weird to complain about something being free, but I don’t think it will work with the philosophy that we run with our country in the long run. I think Microsoft’s existence is the only reason it has experienced any success. I’m certainly not saying that Microsoft helped develop Linux, it certainly didn’t, but it’s the fact that windows existed that gave people the desire to do something different. It’s fueled the passion to bring Linux into the mainstream. If Microsoft vanished tomorrow, I would push for a commercialization of Linux distributions. Honestly, corporations aren’t going to take anything seriously that doesn’t cost money. It just doesn’t compute in the corporate persona.
Anyways, knowing that will definitely never happen, we need some sort of mind blowing change in the very fundamentals of computing, that makes the whole world all different, and then we need to make sure Microsoft doesn’t get a hold of it.