Stories by: Oliver Rist

Some weeks, the dog is man's best and fuzziest friend; others he's chasing you around the yard and snapping at your heinie -- I'm having a real "Tom and Jerry" moment here.

It must be a little like trudging your furry feet all the way from the Shire to Mordor, only to see that big damn gate manned by a thousand orcs who look like Paul Venezia after a hard night drinking. You're filled with despair, like that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach after writing about little else besides Vista this and Vista that for the last six months, only to realize that I'm sitting down in my well-worn lab chair, about to install Beta 3 of Longhorn.

It's 8 a.m. last Friday. Yours geekily is tilting forward to pluck the milk from the fridge, the better to coat my breakfast withal, and TING! My lower back pops a spring, my mouth leaks a whimper, and I wind up lying flat, staring at my bedroom ceiling with the cloying scent of Bengay wafting through the room. This is how I spent the entirety of what U.S. folks tell me was the first beautiful weekend of spring in this otherwise aesthetically challenged state we call New Jersey. And, yeah, I wasn't just grumpy; I was also unpleasantly surprised. Undoubtedly a similar reaction to what BlackBerry users suffered earlier last week when their service went the way of my lumbar elasticity.

Lately, it seems like it's all about disk space. They're no longer file servers but document repositories with multiple versions of single documents saved ad infinitum -- just in case of a finger-pointing fest. Not so much the trouble with Word files, but your average PowerPoint file is now over 20MB, easy. Five or six versions of each of those multiplied by dozens of sales people and hundreds of target customers, and suddenly, you're talking real space. To say nothing of photo albums, corporate podcast libraries, online training videos, and gigabytes and gigabytes of e-mail. Hell, my home-movie collection just topped 150GB.

Impenetrable questions I've been pondering: The difference between acute dyslexia and the way Linux programmers name their software. How Apple Store sales personnel differ from those at the Clearasil human testing lab. Whether the proliferation of Law & Order: X and Ebola virus outbreaks are somehow connected. The difference between Office Communications Server and Microsoft Response Point.

Vista's security advances may be ambitious, but they could seem ho-hum in comparison to those of Longhorn when the server OS stampedes onto the scene later this year. The last time we saw Longhorn it was still prebeta 3, but its security promise remains bright.

Certain things exist without explanation: Ben Affleck's career; the micro PC; Tofurky. For many, LCS (Live Communications Server) 2005 fell into this category. Is it IM? Is it voice over the network? Does it use Messenger or something else? Redmond has recognized the Great Mystery of LCS and is looking to make things easier to understand with the platform's upcoming release, now to be called OCS (Office Communications Server) 2007.

Certainly no coincidence, Microsoft has decked out its much-anticipated OS upgrade with beautiful landscape wallpapers -- vistas, to be exact. But, as calming as these background images may be for end-users getting acquainted with Vista, for IT directors, the landscape approaching an enterprise rollout of any new Windows operating system has always been rocky. Convincing management with compelling ROI, quelling grumpy user rebellions, and making sure the whole thing doesn't blow up in your face are by now well-known impediments along any Windows migration path. It's enough to make IT departments considering the journey downright cautious.

Moses crossing the desert. The Red Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino. Microsoft getting shrink-wrap around a Vista box. All involved more than their share of blood, sweat, toil, and tears. But for the folks out in Redmond, Washington, the day has finally arrived: Vista is shipping to consumers Jan. 30.

As soon as Tobey Maguire gets bit by that radioactive spider and starts swinging around on gross-looking web thingies, his uncle has that quote that defines his future: "With great power comes great responsibility." The big M needs to adopt that philosophy, too.

Microsoft has been managing our expectations of Longhorn like a barker for Barnum & Bailey. What it has lacked in loud music and snarling 500-pound felines, it has made up for with lavish trade events, platform unveilings and the occasional banana-snarfing, 800-pound-gorilla technology.