I ask the question, “Has Windows Vista been released?” in a tounge-in-cheek sort of way. Of course, I know it has, but to be honest I wasn’t aware until about 3 days after it had been released and the only way I found out was because I was watching a TiVo’d episode of Jon Stewart when Bill Gates was on. I simply don’t care. (Apparently, according to search engine traffic, alot of people seem to care though).

When I worked with Windows on a daily basis in my former life, I was acutely aware of Microsoft news and tracked Vista development. When I switched to Mac in October 2006 (remember the interview about my switch?), I mostly forgot about Microsoft. Well, I remember every month on patch Tuesday when Microsoft Office for Mac recieves updates and I have to reboot the computer, but I digress.

Chris Garrett wonders if this Windows was one Windows too many:

There has been nothing at all I have read that makes me want to upgrade. Many people are saying the Vista experience is slower and more frustrating than XP. I don’t play games, XP works, it is all set up how I like it. I’m productive and do not have any serious security worries.

Mark asks when people will upgrade?

So do you plan on upgrading to Vista any time soon? Is there enough in Vista to convince you to jump early on the bandwagon? Having used Vista, I think it’s just fine. The look and feel are slicker, the security features are better (albeit somewhat annoying) and multi-media features are impressive. Despite all that, Vista is an upgrade rather than a new release, and like any upgrade, you really need to ask yourself if it’s worth the hassle and aggravation to move from something that works to something that apparently works better or differently.

I don’t know why this is an “upgrade”. I sure hope that Microsoft put 6 years into this OS for it to be more than an upgrade.

Meanwhile, The After Mac provides points us to SimpleHelp where there is a walkthrough on for those folks who must install Vista on their Mac. One has to ask… Why? I have Parallels with Windows XP and the only thing I can see a purpose for using it for is IE7 development. That’s on XP. Regardless, I’m sure someone can use the info.