Forbes takes a look at Vista, and writes: "More than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: 'The Wow Starts Now', and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out." They also look at Office 2007.

"With Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft set a skilled handyman to work on the creakier joists of its mobile operating system, but stopped well short of a gut renovation. The new OS is really more of an honorable Version 5.5 than a true 6 - an accumulation of new, useful features that doesn't disturb the operating system's underpinnings or solve some of its deeper problems."

"Lines that once seemed clear are being smudged. Perhaps we delude ourselves to think that we once knew the difference between a 'big' operating system and a 'little' one, but today the biggest operating system ever written runs on desktop personal computers, not mainframes, and desktop operating systems are migrating to telephones and other consumer devices, while there is a trend for the "little" operating systems developed specifically for those devices to take on many of the capabilities of desktop operating systems as those devices themselves become more like computers. And, as further evidence that the apocalypse is upon us, you can, with Apple's blessing, run Windows Vista natively on your Macintosh. What are operating systems coming to?"

Thanks largely to the open sourcing of the JDK, 2007 promises to be the most exciting year in Java programming. With the developer community in the driver's seat, expect to see Java programming propelled forward, backward, and sideways, probably all at once. This article takes a look at what's ahead for Java in Open Source and predicts what is coming for the Java platform.

Development of Mac OS X 10.5 is wrapping up faster than many at Apple even anticipated, and at present, a release can be expected as early as late March, sources say. Alongside the release of Version 10.5, code-named Leopard, will be new versions of Apple's consumer software suites, iLife '07 and iWork '07, which saw their release date pushed back due to expanded feature sets in both the applications. In addition, sources confirm that iLife '07 and iWork '07 will both contain numerous features dependent on Mac OS X 10.5, but whether Apple has made the unlikely and drastic move of completely axing support for earlier operating systems is less certain.

"When Microsoft brings out a new operating system, it's always nice to know that you can actually take advantage of it. Sure, you're used to whatever you currently have, which is most likely Windows XP, but you also know that sooner or later, something new will come along that requires the new operating system. So when Vista finally shipped, I decided that the time had come. I'd upgrade one of the machines in the back room."