As I watch the back and forth between people who like Windows Vista and those who, umm, don't, a thought occurred to me.

More than underscoring a weakness in Windows Vista, the opposition proves a point that unfortunately Microsoft's PR department is slow to pick up on:

People LIKE XP.

I saw the same thing after Windows 98 came out. A lot of users were reluctant to change, not so much because 98 was bad, but because they were content from what they were getting out of their Windows 95 machines and had a hard time understanding how the experience could be improved upon.

In the case of XP, it delivered everything the unsophisticated end user could ask for: stability, security, and an intuitive, user friendly interface. Those who had lived through the BSOD era brought about in the 98 days (and continued through the ME days, when the blue screen seemed more common than a clean boot), were ecstatic to see what XP brought about, and the system brought about the long awaited merging of personal computers with multimedia.

I can't argue about the advantages of Vista, especially as it is built for advanced systems and optimizes 64 bit architecture. But the fact is, to many end users, XP is adequate for their needs.

Microsoft built a great product in XP, one that a lot of people are sorry to see go. And there's a lot of public relations potential in that fact. It's just too bad Microsoft does not seem to realize it.