Over the weekend my son Phil and I built a computer and a server for the test lab I use in my business (building computers is also a hobby we share). One of the machines was a Vista box, the other was a server which I'm testing the Windows Server 2008 RC-1 Hyper-V software that came out last Thursday. I'm sure I'll be writing about the Hyper-V RC-1 software in several upcoming blog posts.

It caused me to think about 2008 and to look back at the 2007 ups and downs of Vista since its introduction earlier in the year. The Vista SP1 service pack is coming in February 2008, while at the same time Vista is being compared to Windows ME, another Windows operating system Microsoft "didn't get right".

I don't really agree with that analogy, and yes, Windows ME was totally useless. That's why I don't agree that Vista falls under the same category. Windows ME was a few features slapped onto Win98 while Vista is part of a rewrite of the entire Microsoft OS code base. But of course Vista has failed to meet expectations on several fronts. I have my own views on what can turn things around for Vista and save what could be another potentially disastrous product upgrade.