Windows Vista debuts today

I heard Bill Gates talking about Windows Vista on NPR this morning, along with a tech writer from PC Magazine saying that we'll all be using Windows Vista eventually if we're using Windows today. Even Gates said being compared to Mac's OS X isn't a bad thing, because you have to be compared to something, and that's the only other thing out there.

What they didn't talk about was whether or not most of the hardware out there could even handle Vista's memory, processor and graphics requirements. For the most part, the answer is no, and I predict a good year ahead for memory manufacturers, as well as the entire PC sector in general. Expect everybody from Dell on down to move a whole lot more gray, tan and black boxes over the next couple of years.

For my money, of which I'm not spending any, I've found Windows XP to be a very stable, well-appointed operating system. I even like things like Windows Media Player, the My Documents and My Pictures folders and the way XP handles photos and files. Nothing earth-shaking, just a solid environment in which to work. And the right-clicking? I'm a big fan of right-clicking, and I think Mac OS X would benefit from a two-button mouse with a similiar philosophy in regard to right-clicking.

One thing that changed with XP is that you have to be a registered user to install it -- no passing around a CD and installing on multiple computers without paying ... not that I'd ever do such a thing (I really wouldn't, but that's another bucket of brine).

Photo: Bill Gates back in the day, from a blog post titled "Bill Gates: Nerd Stud."