A Tale of Two Operating Systems

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Microsoft released a pair of operating systems in late 2007 and early 2008, and in case you've been living under a rock or had so much fun over the holidays you forgot how this ended, we'll let InfoWorld's Doug Dineley take it from here:

We suppose it happens in families too, where one twin seems charmed from the start while the other lives under a shadow. Certainly that's the case with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, the one almost universally heralded and the other widely snubbed. Still, isn't it odd? How do two operating systems, born together and sharing so much DNA, arrive to such different fates?

With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft listened to the features and capabilities that IT customers said they wanted, and the company delivered. With Vista, not so much.

Windows Server 2008 has been widely praised as a mature and polished Linux killer and a no-brainer upgrade from Windows Server 2003. J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows blogger, minced no words: "You must move to Windows Server 2008."