Why Vista? Still waiting for an answer.

Making Your Move to Vista: What You Need to Know Scot Finnie and Valerie Potter November 10, 2006 (Computerworld) -- By now you should be aware there are many pluses and minuses to Vista. It's not a slam-dunk decision, but there's a lot to like about the new Windows. Once you decide to make the upgrade, you'll find that you're confronted with more than the usual number of questions to answer and details to sort through before you arrive at your Vista upgrade path. (ComputerWorld)

The article is one of the more informative I have seen in a long time, but it still is not answering, for me anyway, the core question, which is, why do I need Vista? And this is not a trivial question. They say that real world minimums are 2GHz processors, 2 GB of RAM. That makes the desktop machines almost half the size of most production file servers. For word processing. Let's face it, most of the people in the average office (and I mean closer to 80% than to 50%) are doing little more than typing memos, whether it is in email or some word processing package. Of the remaining 20%, most are still sitting idle more than they are crunching through any sort of processor intensive activity. Yet the push is on to upgrade systems that are essentially paperweights now.

From a pure usability perspective, Windows 2000 was more than acceptable for most office applications (I won't talk about management - while it is not a trivial issue, it is not something most operations are involved in). Where Windows 2000 let you down (here is the management issues) then XP more than picked up the slack. And if you pay attention to your security you do not need to really worry too much.

Vista is not something I would recommend anyone rush out and buy, especially if you are still catching up from other versions. I do not see a real need for it, nor will there be one for quite some time for most users. Microsoft may have finally hit the wall by providing an upgrade that really is not needed.