Windows Vista is here…well almost. Yes, the much maligned and often delayed Vista will finally arrive on Thursday. Unlike the local Target on “Black Friday” not many people are fighting to be first in line. Most pundits are cautiously optimistic and most companies are taking the old wait and see approach. Why – well a few reasons: Redmond’s failure to launch the product on time has many people wondering what took so long – five years between XP and Vista is an eternity in the software industry. Microsoft has also been notorious for the amount of bugs and gaps in their software…we all know that Firefox has exploded because of the many weaknesses in IE. Finally, the pure pain of transferring operating systems has many corporations weighing the expected upgrades versus the potential compatibility issues that may arise with other software, therefore making the early assumption it is just not worth it…yet.

Although we won’t be jumping on the Vista train anytime soon, I am excited about the upcoming changes. I love when companies innovate. Sure, you can knock that Apple has had many of these features with their OSX Tiger system, but I love to see a huge company like Microsoft take time to make changes and really want to create a better product. Will it have bugs? Probably, but innovation is exciting. Whether it is from such internet darlings as Google or behemoths like Microsoft – innovation will only breed innovation and force others to create around the new product offerings. Maybe I am optimistic, but here is hoping that Redmond gets it right. I can’t wait to see the new Aero design, the new expanded search features, the new photo and movie creators. Let’s usher in a new era and hope that, like Christmas morning, we awake not knowing what to expect and leave a little happier with the new surprises we just unwrapped.