You know when you’re doing something that sucks and you keep telling yourself to hang in there because something better is around the corner? Does anyone else get the feeling that that is exactly what Microsoft is doing with Windows Vista and 7?

As was one of my predictions at the end of last year, talk about the follow-up to Vista keeps getting louder and louder. In fact, I hear about it now much more than I hear about Vista itself.

That’s probably a good thing since few people seem to actually like Vista, and those that claim to often are fans of the word “but.” Rumor now is that Windows 7 could be out as soon as next year, which will be somewhat humorous in that the amount of people upgrading from Windows XP may actually be higher than those who will upgrade to it from Vista — since so many people still haven’t upgraded to Vista.

Early talk is that Windows 7 won’t be that much different than Vista, but rather will be more like a version of Vista that is how it should have been in the first place. But I guess you could make the argument that the same is true for the iPhone software 2.1 versus 2.0.

I hope Windows 7 is better. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate Windows, I just hate using Windows machines are they currently run. Part of me kind of misses Windows 98 sometimes.

Would I ever go back to using a Windows-based machine as my primary system? In all honesty, probably not — but it’s not entirely impossible. If the product is better for me, I’ll use it.

Everything is moving to the web anyways and I hardly open any stand alone applications beyond a browser anymore. I love the way Google’s new Chrome browser runs on Windows (XP) — I actually think it runs better than any of my Mac browsers.

So I could switch back, but it would take a lot.