Even Gartner, who I have always thought as company that has over-hyped Microsoft, has come to realize that Vista was a horrible horrible mistake.

The entire Windows eco-system is collapsing because it is too big and not secure enough. So much of the corporate expense of Windows is not just the Microsoft licenses, but the huge cost of management and security software. This cost also includes massive hardware costs that are incured by every system that needs to run that software.

I think the tipping point is here. Look at the success of hardware like the Asus Eee laptop. Apple! Are you listening? Blot is out and you are next on the chopping block if you aren't careful! 

I was just messing around with my Zaurus PDA this week. I've been installing Android, the gPhone software. I also installed a full debian distro on it called Titchy Linux. Then I installed Angstrom, which is also a Linux distro based on the former OpenZaurus project. 

These are all Linux based operating systems that are running on a device with 64mb RAM and a 4gb hard drive. It runs Mozilla, which in and of itself is probably enough for everything that I need as long as its connected to the net. This is easily accomplished with my Sprint Razr and bluetooth.

Sadly, even my $99 Razr is able to do many of those things on its own too. So in a world where cell phones are able to run a great deal of productivity software, why would I want to use Vitsa (or OS X Apple!) on a  $1500+ PC? Even gaming on the PC is hard to fathom as gaming consoles with at least as much power are available for $300-$500.

For home use, at this point, there is no way I would ever purchase Vista. I've got everything on Linux now and I'm never going back. But where Microsoft is really going to lose out is businesses. I think that at the very least many businesses are going to wait for the next version of Windows if they can (but who knows if that will be any better reall?). At the most businesses should be looking at commodity hardware that can run free operating systems and leverage the browser based technologies they are already using.

Even that may be hard for those businesses that have stupidly relied on proprietery Microsoft technologies like ActiveX and IE specific web pages that are not HTML compliant. But if you were a CEO and you had to spend money on either Vista, or making sure that you will never be trapped in Microsoft's web of insanity again, what would you choose to do? I'd choose to spend the money and dump the nasty Microsoft only web technology and free my desktops to run any OS that complies to standards. This isn't so horrible for Microsoft if they get their act together. In fact, I hear their IE8 will be highly standards compliant and does well with the HTML Acid test. 

If I can do a ton of work with a 64mb RAM Linux PDA, then operating systems that can only run on expensive high end hardware are doomed.  We are seeing that bare itself out in the market right now.