Well what was great about 2007 is probably repeated by everyone:

• iPhone
• Facebook
• Vista – yes you may laugh but despite its faults it still made improvements on the desktop market

But rather than predict what may happen in 2008, I would rather just tell you about what I’d like to see in the hope that someone sees this and can make it happen.

A 3G iPhone I think we all know is coming in 2008 but I’d like to see this on more carriers in the UK than just O2 who are the devil incarnate. If this doesn’t happen then I can see a lot more pressure to get iPhones unlocked and portable between networks.

I’d also like to see a new Apple notebook based on similar tablets that are available on the PC side which incorporate touch technology similar to the iPhone. I’ve always fancied a tablet but the only one that I have ever come close to buying was the Toshiba Protégé R400 though that is still a disappointment in certain areas and I now feel only Apple could get it right.

I would also like to stop seeing cases like the current Opera browser against Microsoft. I think Opera need to look in the mirror to work out why they aren’t getting market share rather than trying to jump on a band wagon almost and bash Microsoft. Apple package a browser and in either case it hasn’t done anything to hurt Firefox, maybe it is just because the Opera browser just doesn’t work as well. The only good thing that can come out of this case is to see Microsoft becoming standards compliant, which as a developer I stand right behind Opera on.

I’d seriously like to see the Zune challenge the Apple iPhone next year – at the moment Apple is running away with it and that’s fine, they are great products but a little competition has a nice way of keeping people on the straight and narrow which would be ironic for Microsoft

Oh and finally this -

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Outlook Express has been out since Windows 98 and during its life has had holes found and holes plugged, unfortunately more holes have been found than have been plugged and the way it was integrated into the OS and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer didn’t help it.

However an alternative and much improved mail application from Microsoft is available. Microsoft launched an e-mail client to supercede Outlook Express in the form of Windows Mail (which came with Vista) and Windows Live Mail is the upgraded version of that which is available to all.

The Windows Live Mail beta can be found at ideas.live.com and I don’t think it is restricted so anyone can get it and it can be used with any POP3 or IMAP email account.

Because this is a beta you shouldn’t expect it not to have a few gremlins and because it is a Microsoft product you can’t expect it to be without a few gremlins. But on the whole, this is a very mature beta and, well, anything is better than Outlook Express…

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In short yes. Office particularly is a fantastic product and much improved over the previous versions; if you only buy one of these Microsoft Office 2007 should be it.

It has the brand new UI which makes things a lot easier and once you get to learn what is quite a radical departure from any other version of Office you will find doing even the most complex task easier.

So what do you get for your money below is a table from Microsofts site which goes though what each version contains.

Just one pitfall to look out for, as you will see the ‘Home and Student’ edition doesn’t come with Outlook which I don’t particularly agree with although Microsoft are probably only doing this so that users may pick up ‘Live Mail Desktop’ which is the replacement for ‘Outlook Express’.

So what about Vista? Well it got more of the attention rightly or wrongly, but should users be upgrading yet?

It isn’t an easy one to call, anyone getting a new PC should have no quibbles about upgrading, in fact I don’t think there will be much choice. For everyone else, I would say hold off until you upgrade. The improvements in Vista are great, it does look nice, it does things properly for a change but does that necessarily justify the expence of picking up a copy, not to mention the cost in possible hardware upgrade that you might need? I don’t think so. But don’t get me wrong Vista will run fine on a half decent PC that could run XP, you won’t get all the fancy stuff which some say is the main selling point but it will still run.

So what version of Vista should you get? The best guide on the product version is on the winsupersite.com where they have an in depth review which I’d suggest you read before doing anything.

Paul has also brought out a great book which goes into great detail about Vista and things it may take some of us a long time to figure out oddly enough called Windows Vista Secrets.

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We have just had the release of IE7 and Firefox 2 which has got mixed reactions, but more on that later.

First I want to talk about another major release that is looming and if you are reading this, no doubt you will have heard of Vista at some point or other.

It seems like a life time since we first heard of Vista or Longhorn as it was back then.

Well now the madness has started with only days to go before Microsoft release Vista to manufacturers to start printing the DVD’s that will end up in the shops, we are seeing Vista mentioned everywhere.

If you buy a Dell or a HP computer now you can get a voucher which will allow you to upgrade your copy of Windows to a similar copy of Vista

This table which I have sourced from Paul Thurrott’s winsupersite.com explains how it may work in the US which I suspect will be the same if not too dissimilar in the UK.

Paul Thurrott has been covering the life of Vista from the Longhorn days and his site is a wealth of information and definitely worth checking out. I’ve been running Windows Vista mainly on VPC’s and as such I haven’t been able to get the full aero glass look and feel but even without that Vista is impressive.

But it isn’t all about looks, Vista has improved on previous version of windows in so many ways. Security is another one of those areas which is close to my heart and one that Microsoft couldn’t ignore so it is nice to see that the security model in Vista works.

In Windows XP you really needed to run the user accounts as just standard accounts for the best security but the way that they had been done just meant this was never feasible. Now this is no longer the case, the standard account type is actually a workable option.

I am really excited about Vista and already spec’ng out my next PC at Dell which is adding to the excitement, new OS new PC – what a Christmas this will be!

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