Vista - The Last Microsoft OS?

OK, that title was deliberately provocative. But my point is very simple. Ubuntu and Fedora have convincingly demonstrated that users don't have to wait months and years to upgrade their operating systems. They can incrementally upgrade parts of their system every single day! My Ubuntu machine shows me a bright orange icon at the top of the screen every now and then to announce newly available versions of all the software I have installed. I have just to click on the icon, examine the list of new application versions, and choose the ones I want to install/upgrade. In minutes, my machine has been upgraded without even a reboot! A lucky few enjoy that luxury today, but with almost universal broadband in the very near future, that will rapidly become the preferred way to upgrade operating system software, - continuously, a little bit at a time. Linux users will always have the most up-to-date version of their distribution. Can users of any other OS say that?

Microsoft is notoriously quick to copy winning features from its competitors, so watch for the company to switch to a fully subscription-based model soon. Pay Microsoft an annual fee, and have a steady stream of incremental upgrades pushed to your computer. No more waiting for years and years for the next version. That move will be the end of monolithic, full versions of Windows, each with a unique name.

And that's why I think Vista will probably be the last Microsoft OS.