Once again it’s time for another Microsoft Windows release and the technology sections of media are doing their rounds in hyping up, what essentially is a non event in the minds of non-techies and layman alike. Although I consider myself to be somewhat of a technology buff and would like another OS to play with, to be sure – to fill in time perhaps or perhaps, to avert an episode of navel gazing, but when it gets released tomorrow I can’t see myself rushing out to get it. In fact, select stores offering it for purchase at the unholy hour of midnight tonight, for the die hard fan-boys to lay there hands on a copy – hot off the press.

However, when all is said and done, it is not that much different to Vista. Some would argue that it is merely Vista SP3 and yes; I’ve downloaded the release candidate and have experimented with it on my laptop to to some degree, but it really hasn’t anything compelling to offer other than a few tweaks and performance gains. Not worth shelling out two to four hundred dollars to have the privilege of adding to the Microsoft coffers.

But there are those people that seem genuinely excited by a new operating system release and it makes me wonder why people get attached to things like Operating Systems, which merely allow a user to operate their computer? I can sort of understand but not quite get why such things instil a sort of passion in people. Computers can be quite personal things, whole experiential episodes of ones existence can be stored on them, in digital photos, documents and in social networking and the like, so there is a vested interest in how it all operates but becoming impassioned by a tweaked set of code is bordering on infatuation like a love affair or something. It just doesn’t seem right.

Placing the personal in personal computers aside, is this loyalty or infatuation to Microsoft Windows just branding and marketing genius? Has our continual use of Windows, at work and at play clouded our sensibilities and invoked a part of us which is usually reserved to bonding with our own kind and extended it to some malformed and abnormal partnership with a piece of software?

Maybe. However, thankfully not all of us are blinded by what we see on our screen and not able to see the forest for the tress but certainly if you are lining up at midnight to purchase an operating system, whether it’s OSX or Windows 7 you’d do yourself a small favour by taking a little time out to do some navel gazing before heading out that door.