Microsoft’s long-awaited new operating system, Windows Vista, is now completed for release. Once it comes out, of course, you can expect years of patches and updates, but for PC manufacturers putting the operating system on their machines, this is the final draft. IT insiders who’ve been messing with various beta versions over the last year tell me that, functionally, Vista is pretty nifty, with a raft of new organizational and design features that really pump up the computing experience. I’m glad to hear this—much more so than, say, when I heard that Microsoft had kowtowed to foreign governments over its software design.
As good as Vista is likely to be, it will, like all previous versions of Windows, have flaws (hence the regular updates). And I’m sure we’ll hear calls from so-called consumer advocates to regulate the product for whatever cause du jour these folks come up with. But when governments—who have no particular expertise in designing good programs—get to step in and dictate the terms of something as complicated as operating system software, companies lose the ability to control their product, making it more, not less, likely that flaws, security holes, and other problems are likely to occur.
--Peter Suderman
