Microsoft on Tuesday released a new tool designed to allow customers to see whether their hardware and software will work properly with Windows Vista.  Actually, you remember that before Vista even launched they had such a tool, so is this time-travel?

Nope, on Tuesday Microsoft launched the Windows Vista Compatibility Center.  Or at least, they were supposed to.  What you get if you go to the site is a simple "The Windows Vista Compatibility Center will be launching soon, please check back!" message.  At least, at the time of this writing, late Tuesday night.

While that's bad enough, the fact that Microsoft sees the need to launch a site 18 months after the OS itself was launched - well, that speaks volumes for the adoption rates of Windows Vista, no matter what Microsoft says itself.

Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President of Windows Consumer Product, unveiled the Center on Tuesday at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston.  According to his keynote, the site will list about 9,000 products (3,500 apps and 5,500 devices) and will be all about helping to “bust the myth” that Windows Vista is not compatible with many apps and devices.

Uh huh.  We're using Vista, but mostly for DirectX 10, and mostly because we've purchased some new PCs.  But as we've also said before, it's more of an incremental change than Microsoft would like us to believe.

Upgrade if you want, but it's not a necessity.