Never have I had any trouble doing whatever I need to do, and it’s been perfectly reliable.  So much so, that i recently swapped my Windows mobile HTC mobile phone, to an Apple iPhone, which is the most impressive little device I’ve ever seen.

Now, my first ‘real’ pc was a lowly AMD powered Windows 95 machine.  I have owned at least one computer with every major version of Windows since then.  Each one was a big step forward in terms of what you could do, and how easy you could do it.  XP is by far and away the leader in terms of amount of users with around 70% of computers on the internet using this OS.  Next in line is Windows Vista, presumably, because it comes pre-installed on almost all laptops now.

Now, I haven’t heard of a single place of work upgrading their office machines to Vista.  Being the sole person in charge of this at my place of work, I will never put Vista on any of our machines, and I know most others in my position feel the same way.

So where does this leave Microsoft for the future?  They have again extended the time they will keep providing OEMs with Windows XP.  They are never going to infiltrate the average office with Vista, their flagship OS, so what is their next move?  Windows 7 is in public beta, I’ve not installed it since I don’t own a PC anymore, but early tests indicate it is a vast improvement over Vista, with quotes like ‘substance over style’ appearing everywhere.  It appears Microsoft is trying to remove all the annoying parts of Vista and start again.  Surely then, starting from XP would be a better bet than starting with Vista?

I’m also keen to see how they deal with keeping 3 versions of their operating system supported.  They can’t leave reluctant sysadmins with vulnerable XP systems, and they have to keep supporting Vista…

Apple’s market share is getting larger by the month, and with more accessible versions of Linux around, as well as the infamous Firefox, Microsoft is losing its grip on the PC world.  I am now a Mac user, but I wouldn’t like to see Windows die a painful death.  The fact remains however, if they shoot themselves in the other foot with Windows 7, they are going to find it very difficult to get back up.