I’ve written about Vista’s Service Pack 1 before and of course, I was wrong about some things.  Turns out it wasn’t released in mid-February as many had predicted, and it still didn’t bring a magical wave of clarity to something that fails to “Wow” me in the slightest.

Another rumor really circulating around the Web today is regarding Microsoft’s official official release of SP1 for Vista.  Now, Service Pack 1 has already been “released” for distribution once, regarding the Windows Vista team blog, but was quickly recalled due to many driver incompatabilities and errors.  If I remember correctly, Microsoft had these issues in the past with service packs for the still popular Windows XP operating system, but were smoothed out and patched swiftly and accordingly.  Now mind you, Vista is still an evolving and maturing platform and I have to say that it does have its definite benefits, as well as its many fall-backs.

Taking a step back for a moment, I have given Vista its fair share of testing and use on my machines, at least a good couple months in total, yet I still cannot remain convinced that Vista has enough benefits to cause me to upgrade from Windows XP.  The staff at Microsoft have done many great things with the Windows platform over the years and there are definitely many things in Windows Vista that I do enjoy.  But at the same time, I just cannot stand it as my primary platform.  Vista still needs much time to evolve and mature into a tuned system, much like XP has over these past six years.

While its a must that technology companies such as Microsoft develop and adapt to ever-changing products of today’s world of computing, I still remain unconvinced that Windows Vista nets enough benefits to approve an upgrade from previous platforms.  That being said, I’m very curious to see just how far Microsoft can push Vista as a platform.  Windows XP support has been extended until sometime in 2011, which is great for the many, many users of the system, including myself.  Manufacturers are only allowed to continue selling machines with Windows XP installed, or as an available option, until June 2008.

I really do want to like Vista, but I still cannot.  I know I’m not the only one who says this.