(Column) - And again, Windows Vista is delayed to January 2007, as opposed to its original and vague Q4 2006 release date. What is Microsoft thinking? Seriously, the company has been delaying Vista for a long time now. Not only that, but Microsoft stripped numerous critical features to make the deadline, but apparently the laziness, disguised as security improvements this time, depicts irresponsibility and distrustfulness beyond what most of us expect from the Redmond, Washington-based software "giant" (so much for that moniker).

Microsoft needs to get its act together to maintain its credibility, at least whatever’s leftover; it’s atrocious to see a company with nearly unlimited resources push back products for perfection, since any sensible user knows its wishful thinking. "This came down to a few weeks. We're trying to do the responsible thing here," said Jim Allchin in a recent conference call. Oh really, is that so? The only thing you are doing is delaying the next round of bugs in a new package and capturing headlines because of incompetence. And then you puzzlingly wonder why people dislike the company so much. Believe it or not, this is where having limited competition in a marketplace is sadistic.

Microsoft clearly has no one to compete against, and thus it doesn’t necessarily feel obliged to release a competent product. Only if we had a few OS makers, and the world’s largest software maker would bend over backwards to release an OS on its due date, regardless the lack of features and security enhancements.

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