Mannerisms

Cameras don't work with it. Printers don't work with it. Tuners don't work with it. Only if you're prepared to buy everything you plug into your laptop or desktop from scratch, should you be prepared to embark on the high-risk venture of investing in a Vista PC.

The only person, I've heard, with a kind word for the OS is Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor Graphics, who at the recent IEF2007 meeting, said in a panel discussion: "The killer app which comes with Vista is its ability to mix hard disc with flash. It gives instant boot. Systems may be out by the end of the year. Instant boot is worth a great deal. Otherwise there's no motivation for corporations to move to Vista or for individuals."

Fellow panellist, Rahul Sud, founder and CEO of Lattice Semiconductor, said: "You're not obliged to use Vista. For me I'd stick with the previous version or, preferably, Linux."

It seems that Vista does not have the same interfaces to peripheral hardware as XP had. Therefore new drivers need to be loaded for peripherals. Therefore a large chunk of peripherals manufacturers are not providing Vista drivers for products, hoping to force people to buy new products which do have the Vista drivers.

This smacks of sharp practice and it is remarkably stupid of Microsoft to have colluded in such a scam which is infuriating loads of people.

Compatibility, compatibility, compatibility are the three things on which IBM and Intel built their businesses. Once you rile your customers from the previous generation by making a new generation product which is incompatible, you rightly risk losing those customers.

Some people are saying, wait until 2009 before thinking about investing in a Vista computer.

TOMORROW: TEN WORST PREDICTIONS