In short, don't believe everything you read.

Michael over at 4sysops penned another excellent deconstruction of the very same Vista Bashing Initiative I've been openly worrying about here within our community. Michael discusses how intentional misinformation and outright bad data drives the anti-Vista vitriol we keep seeing within the IT press.

If you've paid attention to my Give Vista a Chance series here within our community, then you're familiar with my pro-Vista arguments that illustrate specific features and logical reasons behind why Vista behaves differently than previous Microsoft operating systems. You also know why those behaviors ultimately provide a more manageable and more secure OS than before. Yes, architectural changes in Vista cause some (mostly older) apps and drivers to break, and additional hardware is necessary in some cases, but I've illustrated that these are all for a purpose.

Furthering the pro-Vista messaging, TechTarget asked me to write an opinion piece that again attempts to explain in plain english why the anti-Vista position doesn't hold water. In the June issue, I'll present another argument in our very own Windows Administration in Realtime e-Journal as well.

There is a level of particularly dangerous editorializing about the coordinated misinformation you're seeing out of specific IT press organizations. The job of the press is to educate the reader on news within the industry. Although opinion pieces such as blog posts are simultaneously critical to show the opinions of authors in the know, when those opinions are being shaped by editorial preconditions you the reader lose in the end.

While in my pieces above I've hinted towards widespread anti-Vista messaging, Michael in this post and this post points the finger directly at those news and blog organizations directly engaged in this coordinated campaign to shape the opinions of administrators.

On deep background I recently interviewed a contributor for one IT publishing house. According to this person, the editors with this group have internally mandated that their contributors are forbidden from writing content that shows Vista in a positive light. Any pieces submitted that do not specifically target Vista's faults are summarily rejected. According to my contact, "Any time I write about Windows Vista, I have to write two or three separate pieces with the expectation that most are going to be thrown away because they show too many positives associated with WIndows Vista."

This level of editorializing on the part of the news and blog organizations that we rely on for information is nothing short of an attack on administrators. In the opinion of this blogger, it represents a dangerous misuse of the very bully pulpit that is trusted by readers for accurate information. My justification for the end result of this reasoning was recently validated through a piece written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDnet and later analyzed by myself.

In that piece, he polls his readership to determine the reason why readers are skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7. His third question tells all when it asks Based on what evidence are you giving Vista a miss? As of this writing, 43% of respondants (the plurality) are skipping Vista because I'm taking the word of others that it's not good enough.

That response should illustrate to the reasonable person that any coordinated messaging campaign goes far in shaping the opinions of its readers. Considering the volume coming out of the anti-Vista camp, its no wonder that the vast majority admins I speak with tell me they're skipping Vista and yet can't give me good reasons why.

Let me know your opinions about this position. As a call to action, if you've been swayed by what you read in the press and have developed your own anti-Vista stance, consider another look. By "taking a pass" you're potentially putting your own environment under an unnecessary level of risk. Vista's added security features, better manageability, and enhanced troubleshooting features are compelling arguments towards the upgrade consideration.

And, most important of all, imagine the situation you'll find yourself a year or two down the road. Here, Microsoft releases Windows 7, and you find it to be immaterially different than the VIsta experience -- a future situation that isn't entirely unheard of. Will that reality drive you to keep Windows XP past Microsoft's next release as well?