To me, Vista is just XP with a new GUI But seriously, to me Vista is once again an interim-release of the "real OS we all want" (according to MS), which will have the WinFS and other stuff. I've read somewhere in two years already they plan to release the successor of Vista. To me, it's getting spooky 1. 98SE support has been cancelled: people have to move to XP; 2. Vista is introduced and support for XP will end in two years: people have to move to Vista; 3. In two years from now, the next Windows is introduced, surely shortly after, support for Vista will be ended and people have to move on to the Vista-successor. In the process, it's mostly MS and the hardware manufacturers benefiting from it; I doubt your average consumer, who does some word processing, emailing, web browsing, DVD-burning, will actively benefit from all these moves; all these average tasks can be done just as well on XP.