How many different versions?

Cut down from seven, at present there are six different versions of Vista available (actually twelve if you count the difference between 32 and 64 bits, and this is a big difference), from Starter (only available in "emerging" countries) through to Ultimate. Anyone who bought a computer with XP Home on it will tell you that cut-price means cut-down. Crippling the operating system depending on your price point will only frustrate users and supporters.

Digital Rights Management

DRM is just getting ridiculous. Vista takes it over the top. There's a stack of information and opinion on the net about this so I won't go into detail, but agree with the rest of the world that Microsoft is going about copyright protection completely backwards, and is pandering to big media companies at the expense of the consumer. In addition to the DRM features limiting your use of data which you may or may not own, the activation and validation of Windows itself is now more draconian than ever. This simply fuels the piracy bushfire and the millions spent developing and enforcing it would be better spent reducing the price to encourage legitimate use.

A brand new networking system!

The TCP/IP stack has been written from the ground up, with a view to improving performance (and enforcing DRM no doubt). New is not always better. We've been through 15 years of network security holes, get ready to go through many of them again.

What's new anyway?

Even if you use a computer all day I suggest that you rarely use Windows. Computer use is about the applications, not the operating system. Put all the new search bits and pretty features in to entertain us until the novelty wears off, we're still going to spend a lot more time in Firefox, iTunes or Photoshop than we will in Internet Explorer, Media Player or Paint. Vista is very pretty if you have the hardware to run it with all the frills turned on, but as soon as you have a performance problem all these superfluous features get turned off, and you'll be doing little more with the system than you are doing today.

Boy you really don't like Microsoft, do you?

I may be deluding myself, but I like to think that I can judge an operating system on its merits. Vista is not all bad - there are significant advances in security, but most are only available on the 64 bit version that the majority of users won't be running for years. I like the fact that the 'My' prefix is gone. There are performance gains in Terminal Services that are very welcome. Microsoft have learned from Apple about usability, but not to the point of producing the type of emotional connection Mac users feel with their computers. Eventually I hope that we can get back to the kind of stability that we had with Windows 2000. There's no such thing as a perfect operating system but the flaws I've discussed above are significant enough for me to decide that I can't recommend an upgrade to Vista anytime soon.