I wonder if there is a predictable life-cycle of a corporation?

I remember reading the "Cycle of Democracy" years ago and trying to figure out how right it was and where the US was on the cycle.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. "From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence: "From bondage to spiritual faith;  from spiritual faith to great courage;  from courage to liberty;  from liberty to abundance;  from abundance to selfishness;  from selfishness to apathy;  from apathy to dependence;  from dependency back again into bondage." Dr. Alexander Tytler

It could be (metaphoracly) the cycle of a naturally occuring (market-based) monopoly.

Vista is not going to bomb by any means but it's not innovative enough to get the marketing spin that XP had over 95.  I think that the Vista news has saturated the audiance so much so that there will be a collective "meh" next week.

All I know is you can no longer pre-order Vista on Amazon at the request of Microsoft. What's all that about?

I've got to have it. If I don't, who's going to moderate the Vista stuff? You can add that to the cost of my subscription...   

ista is not going to bomb by any means but it's not innovative enough to get the marketing spin that XP had over 95. I think that the Vista news has saturated the audiance so much so that there will be a collective "meh" next week.

I agree.  I think another issue is that many people have tried Vista (beta), that the wow factor is not there for them. 

However, I think you will still see people waiting in lines just because there are certain people who "have to have" the latest things. 

I don't think there is a huge killer app for Vista. From 3.1 to 95 was a huge leap. From the wreck of 98SHOTT3R to the 2K-based XP was huge (note many people did not even bother to make the 2K to XP switch). There is nothing compelling about Vista, especially considering the upgrades a lot of people will need to run it.
MS' biggest competition is their installed base. Look at Office for example. Who honestly needs more than Office 97 or 2000? 2003 was not necessary, and 2007 is just more bloat. For what people do on computers, there just isn't a need to upgrade. Until the entire dynamic changes again with speech or holograms or some such, word processing, surfing, gaming and music/videos will dominate and Vista will stagnate.

You can add my "meh" to the collective...I have no need for vista...I'm sure its nice and all that but with all the bugs that come with these things I have no desire for new ones. And my present pc works just fine. Plus with WB I can make it look like vista...without the bugs...lol

I think that Microsoft created a major problem for themselves by letting the version life of Windows extend as long as it did with XP. From a consumer product point of view, it is a product that you have to buy but is never quite "finished". Upgrades, updates, forever and ever! Think how many times we have updated XP. More than enough to provide mucho commedian material. Still trying to fix it after all these years of updates.

This could have been broken up my versions releases. Instead, we are pre-trained to expect a product that will not work, require constant updating, and that will always be the case. So we might as well wait for SP1, etc., etc., Letting XP hang out there as long as it did, has had a lot to do with this negative product perception and I fear has dampened the desire to start the update/upgrade cycle all over again although we all know that we will.

I've personally downloaded & installed the ctp previews for vista (beta2, rc1, rc2).
I can't see myself upgrading the xp workstations at the office where I work anytime soon.
The machines we currently run are relatively new (ibm thinkcenter workstations, ranging in age from 6mths - 2 yrs old). Even on the newest machines I have at work with 512mb - 1gb ram and newer, faster SATA harddrives among other decent components, they received less than stellar ratings from vista system analyzer, most of them scored 1 - 2 out of 5. To install vista on these machines and have it perform as fast as XPSP2 currently runs on the same machines would mean a significant $ investment in hardware upgrades/replacements and I just don't see that happening anytime soon. What will vista offer me currently that I can't get with my xp machines? Increased security? I already have my users running as restricted user accounts, AD policies are in place which help determine what can & can't be done on these machines, the machines are patched & kept up to date using WSUS & SMS, antivirus & antispyware clients are installed and scans are run on a regular basis - these xp machines run great, run clean and my users have all the tools they need to perform their jobs on a daily basis. The vista interface & inner workings would represent too much change for my users to cope with, so sufficient training would have to be put in place to get them up to speed on how to use the new Vista OS (heck I got lost using windows explorer in Vista, I would expect the same from my users). What would be my ROI on hardware, software & training investment required for Vista? I just don't see it at all.

Plus maybe it's me, but the lifecycle seems to be shortening for these OS releases.
With NT4, I got up to service pack level 6a.
With 2000 I got up to service pack 4 (yes an update rollup package was released after that but there were also several updates after that, I would have appreciated SP5 for my windows 2000 server investments. I'm currently on track to replace my 2000 servers with 2003.
Windows XP is currently at Service Pack 2 and SP3 won't be released till 2008 so as not to interfere with the release of Vista. I would be very disapointed if XP got to SP3 and reached it's end of life shortly afterwards but it looks like that's where it's heading.

I just don't see the hype, why do we need Vista? It can't be because of the slick new interface, windowblinds affords me a myriad of different interfaces with vista like transparency among other great features.

Vista doesn't currently offer me any real reasons to switch, I'm sure I'm not alone.