Gartner says Windows is "collapsing." Well, sure. Strictly speaking, Windows itself isn't in a state of collapse -- Windows XP is still useful to a huge population of customers. But for Vista and the Windows franchise as a whole, things do not look good.

Last week, while I was at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center in Austin Texas, I was surprised to find that if I had wanted to cover the week’s most surprising Linux-related news, I should at been at the Gartner Conference in Las Vegas where two Gartner analysts declared, “Windows Is Collapsing.”

Coming at the time of an economy in recession it looks like Microsoft might actually be scared that customers might not spend money on a Windows upgrade. There's no way to go back in time and prevent the damage to Microsoft's credibility done by the Windows Vista release, we'll just have to wait and see what the future actually holds for Windows 7.

Not only did Windows Vista - billed by Microsoft as its biggest operating system for 10 years - fail to distinguish Microsoft's latest fiscal year from previous, non-Windows-Vista years, but Microsoft also missed its own expectations by several million dollars.

The circle of life continues at Microsoft. The software giant, desperate to freeze a market, has started evangelizing a “new” version of Windows (called MinWin) that will correct Windows Vista’s bloatware problems. But don’t blame Microsoft for the noise about MinWin and Windows 7.0... (due in 2010 supposedly)

VirtualBox may be free, but you still have to own a copy of Windows. If you’re not willing to shell out a few hundred dollars to Microsoft but still want to run Windows on your Intel-based Mac, there is one more alternative: CrossOver from CodeWeavers costs $40 and runs Windows applications on Mac OS X — without Windows.

Microsoft is usually very good at presenting new products years ahead of the actual launch - but there continues to be a very remarkable absence of a single strategy for support of Windows applications or Windows as a well integrated desktop.

What a coup Microsoft has pulled off. After getting millions of people all over the world to shell out for the sugar-frosted turd that was Windows Vista, here we are three years later at the Windows 7 launch, and Microsoft has people practically falling over themselves to pay more money so they don’t have to use Vista any more.

We are very proud to announce that a new project will soon see the light of day!

Introducing: PlayOnWindows!
Why?