Vista XI vs World XI

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_vista_disaster_back_story.php
 

this time customers are saying, "no thanks". It no longer feels inevitable and XP looks just fine as a stop-gap. Cloud computing feels more inevitable. The browser is all that matters, maybe Silverlight, Gears and other ways to tie the PC to the cloud. So Firefox goes from strength to strength, Apple is on a roll and Google Apps get taken seriously.

Vista has some cool stuff under the hood. But that's like saying telling people your car has a revolutionary new carburetor when the engine keeps stalling and the back wheel just fell off.

Specifically, Vista has all the network stuff that Ray Ozzie needs to make his P2P vision (re-drafted as Mesh) into a reality. Vista adoption would also drive IPv6 and that enables P2P at a totally different level. P2P matters because it puts PC horsepower back as the driver and that of course makes the OS the driver again. P2P search for example could disrupt Google. P2P video could disrupt YouTube.

But those are all pipe-dreams if Vista stumbles and falls coming out the gate. And Vista seems to stumble and fall all the time.