Yet I think that one feature in particular brings a big increase in productivity in Vista: instant search. Also, I believe that for the for an employee who rates “regular” on the tech saviness curve, Vista’s mobile features in notebooks is very useful: features such as hooking up to a projector, LAN meetings/presentations, as well as the increased security protection (as annoying as UAC can be) are extremely useful for companies in reducing IT costs and increasing productivity.

Personally, I look forward to Windows 7 and the increase in polish and fit/finish that it will bring, along with the increased productivity that will result from the new taskbar.

Businesses (and consumers) always need to look at an innovation and ask “sure, it’s NEW, but it is USEFUL or BETTER for me ?” In the case of the new versions of windows the answer is not just NO, but in fact these new operating systems cost money and time without delivering any measurable benefit – they are not easier to use, they run the same software on the same hardware, and are less reliable.

However, after a while XP will become too obsolete and Office will need so much memory that the 3GB limit of XP (since it’s got no 64-bit support) won’t be enough so businesses will start to see value in upgrading again. It just takes time, and math.

Also, it would be a nightmare for developers: should I, as a developer, write software for this UI or for that one – increasing costs as well.

Just like you said, Windows 7 needs to bundle everything together – thank God Microsoft didn’t listen to the split-UI proponents out there and stuck to a single interface. But it looks like 7 will still have 7 different SKUs that will annoy the living $hit out of customers.

Having separate interfaces is going to make jobs more difficult for both the End User and the Technician stuck repairing his network. He will essentially have to learn two operating systems instead of one.

Windows 7 needs to bundle everything together, have the same features, but have some of those features disabled or inaccessible to lower versions of the software. That’s how it needs to be done.

“More importantly, Apple does very well in making one OS with one SKU. It’s very simple to pick an OS when one option is available. Apple has one OS that serves everyone from creative professionals to business executives and from engineers to ten year-old children. And finally – Apple has one UI that fits everybody’s needs – it’s flexible, intuitive, and beautiful.”

That is awesome.