Windows Vista has its share of compatibility problems, but when a senior Microsoft employee is dispatched to a customer to fix a driver issue, things are bad.  The average consumer will never get this level of help but one Charles Walling did get it.

There’s some bad news for folks thinking they can buy any PC with Vista Business or Ultimate and downgrade them to XP. As it turns out, Microsoft has put limits on the types of PCs that are allowed to be downgraded.

Vista’s rather topsy-turvy life has, at the very least, demonstrated that the corporate and business worlds can truly decide the fate of an operating system. CIOs from around the U.S. and Europe have spoken, and the verdict isn’t a good one for Microsoft’s drowning operating system.

The European Commission feels there should be more competition in the technology sector. The Commission also feels Microsoft’s anti-trust practices are hindering competition in the European Union.

Vista has a problem.  Not a problem related to software or compatibility but a problem with developers.  Developers do not like Vista and while this may change in the future it is not the current preference.  Microsoft could have listened to consumers and businesses but instead decided to push Vista and it has pushed too hard.

As many of you may know, Microsoft has announced plans to stop the sales of XP license to all OEMs such as Dell by the end of the month June 30th. This might cause some of you to panic as it would limit your operating system purchase to Vista only.

All of us should be aware by now that the last day to get the OEM XP option is approaching fast, just two weeks remain.  As a result, manufacturers that offered free XP downgrade options are starting to cancel that option and Dell is one of them.

Vista has problems with being compatible with older software and drivers, but Microsoft may have a new weapon in its arsenal to combat that.  It recently acquired Kidaro Technologies, a desktop-virtualization software vendor which could allow the company to produce virtualization for Vista that would eliminate some or all compatibility issues.

Microsoft has indicated that those who have decided to skip Vista and wait for Windows 7 could be at a higher risk for facing problems. These problems are said to vary from security issues to forestalling the inevitable issues one would face on Vista.

Last week Microsoft filed lawsuits to 21 resellers for software piracy in the US. Considering software piracy is on the rise and eating into Microsoft’s profits, it’s a smart move to start hitting back to show the seriousness of the matter.

Vista has enough of its own problems without having to concern users with third party software issues, yet, they do exist.  Symantec made a partial admission that its SymProtect feature was responsible for registry corruption during both Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 upgrades.  The company recently delivered a software utility to locate and repair these registry problems.

I talked about people petitioning against Microsoft’s decision to retire XP by the end of the month yesterday. Now big sites are getting in on the action creating petitions for users to sign to make things more official.

The built-in search feature of Windows Vista is no match for the Spotlight search feature of Mac OSX which is unobtrusive when indexing, fast to find your files right off the bat and just smarter.  Microsoft is playing catch-up with its search feature and with the latest update may just be getting there.

There seems to be a growing number of consumers who apparently don’t wish for Vista and want XP. Petition groups are forming around the Internet. People are also calling in to Microsoft support lines and asking that the life of XP be extended beyond its expiration date this month.

Microsoft made a lot of mistakes with Windows Vista.  One was not providing device manufacturers the proper information so device drivers could be ready, another was not having proper backwards compatibility with existing software and hardware and another was too many versions.