Windows 7 is coming 2009 fall, but would it be a smart move to jump to it leaving trusty XP sp3 or Vista sp2?. Some vendors (Dell, Hp) want us to shift to Vista right now while other wants us to buy future DX 11 hardware which is one of candies Windows 7 is going to come with. Just like vista, the more people jumped shifting to it the more pain they felt, i think in the technology world, no matter its hardware or software the first consumers who get it are really "Lab Rats". They are the people who are experimented on and later improvements are made on the products based on the painful cries of early customers.

So the question arises, "Are we going to be the first buyers of Windows 7?"

For example, lets say you were one of the users who bought the first 1TB hard drives in the market, now you not even paid the premium over buying something which is new in the market but you also got least competent product available in the market. The people who bought those hard drives know that they consumed more electricity and they had pretty high temperatures as compared to the 2nd generation (or 2nd time produced same models) 1TB hard drives. Those 2nd generation hard drives drew less power, were cooler and much cheaper. Why it was like that? because the first generation hard drives had more platters (magnetic disks inside hdd), the more of them consumed more power, produced more heat and hence goes the production cost up, way up (cost is also associated with competition, as new products have nearly no competitors, cost is usually set high to make enough money before someone else start competing). New products doesn't means that they necessarily use new technology, as in case of our hard disk example the manufacturer (Seagate) just increased the platter counts (without much bothering about temperatures and reduced lifetime) to compete and get an edge in the market. (2nd generation 1TB hard drives used 2 platters each of ~500GB).

So this hard drive example applies everywhere in the technology world, whether its a new PS3 (or PS3 Slim) or PS4 or Xbox 360 or 720, always avoid 1st production of the products because of the reasons stated above. Vista took 2 years of patching to make it working stable, i personally think software take much longer to get stabilized, buying them on the launch day makes one nothing more than a Lab Rat, the one who buys until at least its 1 service pack is launched is considered more smart. Following these guidelines will ensure that you have right product, at right time and at right price point.