If you use the latest microsoft product, then you don't have any important data

In office, people prefer reliability over functionality. I do not see more functionality on newer version. I can't even name what functionality of new microsoft OS or office that will be usefull for office work or even at home. I think new OS or office would only be usefull for people who do a lot of presentation. Where every cool feature like rotating button or alike will attract people attention. Many laptop owner has complaint that Vista is a lot slower than XP. I have seen many of them keep reinstalling with recovery function to speed up their system. I can't even made Vista completely merge with existing network where Mac, old windows, and Linux can easily share data and printer. Simplicity should not sacrifice safety. There are ways to do things simple and yet safe at the same time. This depend entirely on designer brain. And it seems different windows OS and office get designed by different brain each time. Teaching user to backup the correct folder is easy. They can catch up fast. But they wouldn't be able to handle a problem caused by immature office or OS. I only use new OS and office once some sacrificed user do not report problem anymore. Usually it takes about two year after the product released.

Yes it seems you are not an early adapter. You prefer for the things to be settled down and see the benefits if there exist any. What I see in Vista is that, the company behind it thought it should be more beneficiary if they pre-managed some expert tasks before hand, while maintaining a good visual environment. They thought new computers should have been available with sufficient power capacity and for ease of use, they installed file indexing and disk defragmenting as default services to vista. These 2 should speed up user experience apparently a lot than xp. But obviously they didn't take into account rapid internet penetration with broadband access. Computer dramatically slows donw after a certain usage. It tries to index thousands of files newly created inside computer and tries to defrag the disk with may be hundred thousands of files to be simultaneously moved within the disk. That's the real reason (I'm not talking about huge graphic usage and allocating system memory for a better visual design) behind vista's turtle concept :) Apart from these? I liked vista but still using xp and linux in my main computer

The problem with Vista is the graphic slow things down. This is already realized by microsoft and try to separate graphic from the process. Unfortunately it seems even the new windows seven still don't have it yet. This method already done by Linux / Unix and by most games. Agree that file system will slow down by the number of file. The one that slowing down ALL operating system is the file indexing system. To get fast access to the file the index HAS to be maintaned at physical memory. Searching big index is slow, no matter what search method used. Changing file indexing method to databse like will not improve this much. Disk defragmentation only need to be done rarely. It would be good if the OS can do it without interrupting our work, but if they can't then it is better to do it manually. I prefer to archive any unused file to get faster file indexing system and also reduce file fragmentation: http://www.helium.com/items/1646708-5-ways-to-improve-slow-computer-response-through-harddisk-management The other factor that can slow down response time are registry. Ever since Windows 2000, registry can not be defragmented anymore. We can not even reduce it's size even when we already delete some big registry entry. And I think any software that featuring registry defragger are scam. I really miss this feature. This is another great advantage of Windows 98 over the newer one.