Why Windows XP should be available until Windows 7

Editor's note: This column is part of a new series, "Making It Personal", that explores our love/hate relationship with personal technology.

As the world's most prominent operating system, Windows has dominated the tech
industry for well over a decade and its competitors - Mac OS X and Linux - have
failed to gain the kind of penetration Microsoft has.

But ever since the days of Windows 98, we have been forced to deal with a slew
of Windows issues that have plagued individuals and companies alike. Instead
of being the highly intuitive operating system Mac OS X is, Windows became bloated
and difficult to use. Instead of offering sound functionality and customizability
like Linux, Windows became quite the opposite.

To make matters worse, malicious hackers and spammers started developing a
slew of attacks that proved deadly to Windows systems. Responding too late,
Microsoft has allowed the security issue to become such a concern that some
have migrated to other operating systems. And who can blame them? With Microsoft
doing very little to protect them, the decision seemed quite simple.

But for all of its issues, Windows XP was still a relatively reliable operating
system after Service Pack 2 was released. Once installed, SP2 offered the kind
of functionality and security that we had hoped for and although there were
still security concerns, the operating system worked much better than any of
its predecessors and finally made sense for businesses and individuals alike.

And just when XP was at its height, Microsoft decided to drop Windows Vista
on us, claiming "The wow was now." Sadly, the company failed to realize
that the only "wow" coming out of most people's mouths was followed
by something like, "what a crappy operating system."

In essence, Vista is nothing more than a pretty OS that loses any sense of
reliability and reignites that uneasy feeling I got when using XP SP1. Of course,
Microsoft doesn't agree.

According to the company, Vista was designed with security, good looks and
functionality in mind. Instead of being an XP clone, Vista has the fine looks
of Mac OS X and the usefulness we had come to expect from its predecessor. Sadly,
the marketing team must have missed the memo because I haven't experienced anything
of the sort.

Let's face it - Windows Vista is junk in almost every sense of the word. Sure,
it's better looking than XP and I like the Windows Aero interface, but what
really matters is how well the operating system performs at the tasks we ask
of it. And so far, it has failed miserably.

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