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This is a pretty good list of reasons for and against upgrading to Vista. I agree that there are definite improvements in Vista (check out my review) but overall some of his reasons for upgrading to Vista aren’t very good, in my opinion.

First of all, using USB storage as RAM? While this might be useful in extremely low memory situations, I can’t imagine most systems using Vista would have any use for it. We are slowly moving into the range of 1GB of RAM minimum for new systems. The idea is kind of cool (and could be done in Linux/*BSD for awhile now), but is of overall limited use. I’m not saying it will not be useful to somebody, but it’s hardly a reason to switch operating systems.

Second, while improved security is definitely a reason to upgrade to Vista, its security has yet to be fully tested. I have no doubt that there are improvements (judging mainly by my own, albeit limited, use of the OS so far as well as reading the opinions of other people more knowledgeable about this topic). Meanwhile we have XP which has 5 years of hardening behind it, and many security applications are out today that help enhance XP’s security. I think it’s too early to judge Vista’s security just yet.

Third, improved network performance isn’t a reason for most people to upgrade to Vista. Perhaps if your company’s server is running on XP (but most likely it would be on Windows Server 2003 which is what most of Vista’s under the hood improvements are based on). Most home users are on relatively slow broadband connections (1 to 6MBit), and most companies are using 100Mbit. Generally only a high-traffic server will benefit from improved network performance. It is great that Microsoft has improved it, but again I don’t feel that this is a reason most people will think about when deciding if they should upgrade to Vista.

All this is not to say that upgrading to Vista should not be done. It definitely should be done, in time, because the improvements it brings to desktop computing are definitely needed. The interface, and integrated search, are definitely improved and useful. We know most computer users (the general population) do not install much in the way of third-party applications to their system. The fact that Vista (at least Ultimate) includes many of the useful applications that have been standard on OS X for awhile is a worthwhile reason to upgrade. My opinion is that upgrading to Vista is not particularly necessary and what you get for the price and after the years of development is sub par. If you want to upgrade you might as well do it as part of a new computer purchase. This way you will be able to take advantage of all the new features in Vista with reasonable performance.