I’m sure I’ll get flamed, but there’s really little doubt in my mind but that Vista is just a big publicly released beta at this point. And I think that many of the complaints being blogged or logged out there go a lot deeper than people just being resistant to change. Technically competent people that I interact with are constantly leveraging well-thought-out complaints against Microsoft's new 'flagship' operating system.

My biggest beef
There are soooo many perf issues still to be ironed out. I tried using it in for some IIS7 and Server Core demos during a recent roadshow, and just couldn’t – the perf was noticeably laggy/unacceptable. I switched to XP on the same hardware, and had absolutely NO problems. (That and my Vista install was pristine – very few extra installed progs whereas my XP install is months old with lots of gunk/crap hanging off the side.)

Jumping Ship? Maybe...
At this time I’m seriously contemplating OS X or Ubuntu as my next OS at this point. As it stands, I’ll need to end up using a VM if I full-blown switch to Vista… so I really do toy with the notion of just switching platforms for my desktop (where I’ll still need to use VMs to get everything done).

Apple makes me drool, what is the world coming to?
And speaking of virtualizaton: Parallels is actually pretty damned enticing if you’ve seen it in person. In fact, after seeing it I’m actually pissed at MS about Vista. Apple is showing some real innovation when it comes to leveraging virtualization – making it so bloody transparent to non-techies that it’s sickening. (And this is from the company that stubbornly clung to one mouse button forever.)

With Vista I’m left with a bunch of programs (from Microsoft) that won’t work and Flip-3D. I guess I’m also safe from the fear of being tempted to somehow subvert DRM on my machine – something that has really kept me awake some nights. NOT.

If it weren't for Longhorn....
Although, all of my complaining aside, I’m really thinking of running Longhorn as my new desktop OS. It’s bloody performant, and even the April CTP builds I’ve been playing with are pretty damned stable. Plus, when I’m using it I get the feeling that there’s really been some serious development under the covers and that I’m not just looking at lipstick on a pig (a sentiment, which while I’m sure it’s unfair is never-the-less what I think of every time I use Vista).

Here's hoping that the Beta 3 release of Longhorn pwns. (I think it's slated to drop today?)