Linux fans always say that...
If Windows end, next would be another Microsoft product.<

Microsoft conducted an experiment dealing with people's preconceived notions concerning Vista. They called it the Mojave Experiment. It's pretty interesting.
http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/?WT.srch=1<

While Vista may be better than most think, that isn't important. It's like the stock market, if people think there's a depression, there's a depression regardless of what is actually happening. What will keep Microsoft on the desktop is people are unwilling to change and proprietary document formats will lose their full formatting without Microsoft.<

I think you misunderstand. I don't object to power users, its just that most of the people that I've found that have little or no trouble with Vista are power users - the very people who have the patience and understanding to work around/through the various issues and who are more likely to have the kind of hardware that Vista can make use of. Power users are the people I tend to debate the subject with, and often seem to be blissfully unaware just how big the gap is between power users and the general computing public.
Also, please don't hear what I'm not saying - Vista isn't the horrid train wreck that most contend it is. However, the "Mojave Experiment" takes Vista a little too far out of the real world that people are forced to contend with it in. Vista has its problems, and in a lot of ways its one step forward and two steps back.

In a lot of ways it is the evidence of just how important it was for Windows to be one man's vision. You can't get a "Gates by committee" OS. Can you imagine if Apple suddenly went from Jobs to 8 layers of management with perpetual meetings? Oh, we already saw something similar when the board thought there wasn't a big difference between running a computer company and running a Cola business. <

Originally posted by AnonJr
I think you misunderstand. I don't object to power users, its just that most of the people that I've found that have little or no trouble with Vista are power users - the very people who have the patience and understanding to work around/through the various issues and who are more likely to have the kind of hardware that Vista can make use of. Power users are the people I tend to debate the subject with, and often seem to be blissfully unaware just how big the gap is between power users and the general computing public.

I don't think I did, I just wanted to point that, as non power users are concerned, don't really know any OS that deals with them any better, at least OSes that don't run on proprietary hardware (not that I know OS X - last time I used an Apple was about 18 years ago).
Personally, I don't like Vista that much. Some experiences with my wife's laptop haven't been very stimulating. Also, for my own personal use, I still use too many gadgets without drivers for Vista, so I'll happily stick with XP.<