Vista

Poor Microsoft is having trouble with their new OS. The problem? There isn't a compelling reason to switch away from XP. This has become such a big problem that Microsoft has been forced to put out a new version of XP just to keep up with demand. Dubbed SP2c, the new release will have no new features or patches. Instead it will just expand the pool of activation codes, so that Dell and friends can keep up with the demand for XP on new computers.

Now XP has an official End of Life date set for January 31, 2008. That means they have sworn to no longer offer XP to the market come February of next year. You'll still be able to purchase it, but only until the remaining licenses have been sold.

The good news is that Vista may actually be stable by then. Vista's first service pack is currently in beta, and will probably ship with the holidays. Not shockingly, the big improvements are all performance based. Prepare for Vista to finally run as smoothly as XP... with twice the RAM.