Microsoft announced they are going to release Windows Vista to enterprises in November of 2006, but the consumer version will be pushed back until January 2007. People all over the world are pouncing on this one but I have to wonder why? It’s 2 more months. Big deal.

The only people this will probably hurt is all of the computer manufacturers that earn a large part of their revenue in the 4th quarter of the year – the Christmas buying season. This could definitely hurt the HP’s and Gateways of the world since they need to have products configured and shipped to retail stores for most of their sales. This probably didn’t mean too much to Dell since they build everything to order and can probably recover from a slip in a ship date easier than the others. This is why Dell’s model rocks.

But there are many OS X fans on the Internet (remember, I’m a huge Apple fan) that either see this as yet another opportunity to bash Microsoft or see this as Apple’s big change to make huge gains in market share. I don’t get the senseless bashing. All it really does it turn people away from it. They may even be less inclined to check out all the great things OS X has to offer. But I don’t really see this as a huge opportunity to make big gains with OS X. We *think* Apple will have the next version of OS X released by the end of the year, but there will be a surge whenever it comes out. I don’t think we can attribute that to Vista’s slip. All Microsoft or manufacturers have to do is one thing and the Vista slip becomes irrelevant; for all purchases made after the date that Vista ships to the enterprise, include a free upgrade to Vista when it is released. That would appease 99% of new buyers.

Vista for consumers slipping a whopping 2 months will not bring devastation to the computer industry. Windows will remain dominant, Linux will still chip away in the data center, and I will still be happy with my PowerBook running the latest version of OS X.