Still, I can say at least this much about Vista: I've had fun using it so far. Yes, Vista is still a work in progress and there are some annoyances that go hand-in-hand with running Windows -- the User Account Control window, for instance, pops up a lot. Why do I have to give an admin OK anytime I want to change the time and date? And what's with the plethora of control panels? By my count, there are 49! But so far there have been no show-stoppers. To paraphrase the praise usually reserved for Apple's Mac OS X, it just works. And on Apple hardware, it just works exceptionally well.

While there will no doubt be untold numbers of comparisons in the months ahead between Vista and Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.5, what I'm doing right now -- speeding along with Microsoft's next operating system on an Apple laptop -- would have been unheard of a year ago. Now, it could very well be a glimpse of the future.