If Microsoft thinks their free or discounted upgrade coupons for Windows Vista are going to skyrocket fourth-quarter PC sales, they might be in for a surprise. Gartner, the research firm thinks it won’t do much to keep sales up as users may not want to pay US$49 to receive Vista Home Basic, or US$79 to upgrade to Vista Home Premium. If I were a user, I’d wait at least a year before I jump into any Vista to make sure my software programs run as they are now. Any downtime is a waste of time.

Gartner Views Vista Free coupons Are NoBig Deal source

According to sources close to Microsoft, the Redmond Wash. developer will toss a coupon into each Windows XP- or Tablet PC-equipped computer bought between 26 October 2006 and 15 March 2007 for a free or discounted upgrade to Windows Vista. Gartner is skeptical of the coupon’s ability to move PCs because of the upgrade prices most buyers will face. Under the “Express Upgrade” program, people who buy a PC pre-installed with Windows XP Home, the most popular SKU, must pay US$49 to receive Vista Home Basic, US$79 to upgrade to Vista Home Premium.

Looks like Microsoft will rollout this Friday a final pre-release version of Windows Vista before its code goes Gold and name it as Release Candidate 2 (RC2). The RC2 build is 5743, and Microsoft is currently testing it internally. As with the previous interim build, 5728, RC2 will be given out to beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and a random, limited selection of Consumer Preview Program (CPP) members.

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This Microsoft Vista Visual Tour by computerworld is extremely cool and it hghtlights some features that normal users aren’t going to like. Those features are also bound to come out in the RTM version and it’s a good read if you want to know its going to make your more productive or stressful. Read on at your own risk here

Business and home users will be nonplussed by the blizzard of protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and “Continue” boxes required by the User Account Controls feature, for example. Networking functions and settings are scattered all over the place. The same is true of what Windows XP calls Display Properties. By default, the main menus (you know, File, Edit, View, etc.) are turned off on Windows Vista folders, Internet Explorer 7 and several other programs and utilities that come with Vista. Listing 20 things you won’t like about Windows Vista was unfortunately all too easy. The question is: Why couldn’t Microsoft see this coming?

Thanks to Nima Dilmaghani, who is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, we now know how you can get your self a free legal production version of Windows Vista installed your on PC.

Free Legal Production Version Windows Vista Offer source