Selling Windows Vista isn’t just about glassy interfaces, optimizing performance, and let’s not forgot those “gadgets.” Productivity software is just as important to consumers as a “modern” interface, and doing things like overhauling and reinventing applications like Outlook could have just be the key to getting consumers on board with Windows Vista, and might be the cause of some consumers’ dissatisfaction.

Microsoft announced their plans to retire Windows XP licensing to OEMs and via retail chains by June 30, 2008. However, according to ARN Net some top PC vendors such as Dell are planning on using a loop-hole to get PCs out the door to businesses with XP pre-installed on them rather than Vista. What’s the loop-hole you may ask? The loop-hole is a clause in Vista Ultimate and Vista Business that allows one to downgrade their operating system if the customer wishes to do so.

I’m still not sure whether I should even classify this as news, per se, but take it as you will: if you’re sitting in front of an operating system-less PC, holding a copy of Vista SP1 in your right hand and a copy of XP SP3 in your left, and you can’t decide which OS to go with, your now barren PC will run better with XP SP3.

The recent hullaballoo over the exploit that opens up Vista through Adobe Flash has the hacking community grinning from metaphorical ear to ear.  The same can’t be said for Adobe, and what’s less of a surprise in the midst of the controversy is that Adobe is now claiming it knew about the exploit all along.

I think we can all agree at this point in time that Microsoft is sitting not-so-pretty in a pot of boiling water over the whole “Vista-capable” debacle.  Though the bundle of corporate emails originally seemed to indicate that Intel was the bully responsible for the early release of Vista and the ensuing disaster of a marketing strategy, continued research has shown that graphical giant Nvidia has had the most adverse affect on Vista operating systems thus far.