The Economist magazine (http://www.economist.com) "is the premier source for the analysis of world business and current affairs, providing authoritative insight and opinion on international news, world politics, business, finance, science and technology, as well as overviews of cultural trends and regular industry, business and country special reports."

The Economist magazine is published weekly and each week they also make much of the material available in audio/PodCast format. One of the podcasts looks exclusively at "Technology and Science". In this weeks Economist technology podcast they report on what's been happening with Microsoft XP and Vista. Tthere is also mention of Microsoft's commitment to XP upgrades and patches 'till 2014 Microsoft Windows "7" and the version of Windows to come after "7" currently called "Midori". http://gizmodo.com/5021126/microsoft-midori-is-a-secret-post+windows-operati...

The podcast can be found at:

http://downloads.economist.feedroom.com/economist/t_assets/20080707/20080707...

...or... http://preview.tinyurl.com/5d5sye

...also of interest related to "What's happening with Microsoft VISTA?": http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E0DA163DF933A05755C0A96E9... http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jht... http://blogs.computerworld.com/intel_backstabs_microsoft_by_abandoning_vista

June 26, 2008 - 6:40 P.M. Intel backstabs Microsoft by abandoning Vista Preston Gralla The news that Intel has decided it won't upgrade its PCs to Vista must be especially bitter for Microsoft because court documents show that Microsoft may have launched its ill-fated "[Vista Capable] PC" scheme at the behest of Intel. Is this the kind of payback that Microsoft expected?

According to the New York Times, Intel has decided that it won't upgrade the PCs of its 80,000 computers to Windows Vista. The Times reports:

"...the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly."

[...]

A refresher for those who might not remember the "Vista Capable PC" scheme: It was a marketing scheme in which people claim that Microsoft misled consumers into buying the Windows Vista Capable PCs, even though the PCs couldn't run the most important features of Vista.

According to court documents released in a suit related to the scheme, Microsoft's John Kalkman sent an email to Scott Di Valerio, who was in charge of the company's relations with PC makers, noting that the Vista Capable PC scheme was being launched on behalf of Intel:

"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded. This in turn did two things: 1. Decreased focus of OEMs planning and shipping higher end graphics for Vista- ready programs and 2. Reduced the focus by IHV's to ready great WHQL [Windows Hardware Quality Labs] qualified graphics drivers. We can see this today with Intel's inability to ship a compelling full featured 945 graphics driver for Windows Vista."

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/02/28/did-microsoft-lower-its-standards-to... Kalkman makes clear in the email that it was a mistake to try and bail out Intel:

"...it was a mistake on our part to change the original graphics requirements. This created confusion in the industry on how important the visual aspects of visual computing would play as a feature set to new Windows Vista upgraders."

So Microsoft went out on a limb to bail out Intel, and this is the payback it gets? They're no doubt talking about back-stabbing at Redmond these days.