Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing, and Ed Bott has a run-down, summarising reaction (mixed, mostly positive), the perils of installing it over old versions (nothing new there then; why would you subject yourself to that?!), noting how good it is on new installations, even on old hardware, and the key question of whether it’s worth upgrading.

I haven’t tried out any of the betas. I’ve read some of the reviews, but I haven’t used Windows Vista. My gut feeling is it’s probably a pretty good upgrade, but I must be getting more cautious in my old age, because I’m not going to touch it until at least SP1, or perhaps even SP2. Not only does that give MS the chance to get all the glitches under control, it also gives a bit of time for the hardware to catch up so that it provides nice performance.

In fact I have half a mind to buy a laptop at some stage to replace one of my desktop machines. Picture it, sitting in a hammock in the sun in the backyard working/surfing, a beer by my side. And if I do, I think I’d be looking to make sure it’s XP, not Vista. I don’t need the hassles of a new OS to learn, not for a couple of years.

This means though, that if I’m going to do this, I’ll have to be quick: “On January 30, you will be hard pressed to find a machine that doesn’t have Windows Vista available,” Mr Allchin said.

But hey, what I really want to know is… what are the built-in games in Vista? Looks like depending on which version you get, there’ll be the oldies: Freecell, Hearts, Solitaire, and Minesweeper, as well as Spider Solitaire, Shanghai, Purble Place (aimed at the kiddies), Mahjong, Inkball and Chess. What, no 3-D Pinball?!? Ripped off! I wonder if you’ll be able to copy the EXE across from an old version, like people did with Cardfile from Win3.1 to 95.