And so it spreads - proving once again that Windows is the ultimate computer virus, and Microsoft the world's leading malware producer. Any reason this time will be different?
................
No, this time won't be all that different.
As you say, MSFT's viral distribution system practically guarantees sales success.
However...
Many people are going to be unhappy with Vista.
They're going to be unhappy in the short term, as driver support issues are clumsily sorted out, and even more so in the long term, once the AACS infrastructure is closer to completion. Many of these people were happy or, at least, comfortable with XP.
These folk are going to express their unhappiness by writing surprisingly negative reviews (as we're now seeing), staying with WinXP for much longer than MSFT would like and, ultimately, migrating to other operating systems such as OSX and the friendlier flavors of Linux (for example, Ubuntu).
Needless to say, this won't seriously hobble the Redmond machine but it will, I predict, widen the currently tiny non-MSFT desktop space.
.d.