If you listen to the conventional wisdom about Vista, one of the biggest complaints is that it's a lot more bloated and slow than XP. A lot of current Windows users would be very happy if the next version of Windows was slimmer and faster. But what kind of bloat could be cut out? One reader pointed out that "One person's bloat is another person's feature." Do some users really have to lose their favorite features in the name of performance?

New features certainly can cause bloat. So can the messy accumulation of old features that never seem to go away. Those crusty layers of features -- for example, support for 16-bit Windows programs or DOS applications -- build up like barnacles on the hull of a boat. Every once in a while, Microsoft scrapes off a few of them, but usually they stay there for compatibility reasons. Vista is suffering from both of these forms of bloat.

There's another kind of insidious bloat, though. Don't forget that Microsoft's first try at Vista was thrown away in 2004 in what was called "The Reset." That must have left Microsoft in a frenzy to deliver something to replace XP. In that environment, where shipping is the ultimate feature, performance goals seem to have fallen far down the priority list.

Perhaps the Windows foundation is in much better shape than Vista would indicate. For evidence of that, look to Windows Server 2008, which performs much better than Vista even though it's built from the same code base. With some attention to performance, it might be possible to de-bloat Vista without removing any end-user features. However, I think Microsoft could get some brownie points by dropping some end-user features, or perhaps just turn them off by default They could point to those performance gains to let users know they are serious about making Windows lean and mean. Those few users who need 16-bit apps can run Windows 3.1 in a virtual machine.

I don't think Windows Vista or its successors are a lost cause -- if Microsoft does "The Reset" on its priorities and its way of thinking about new releases. Shipping is a feature, but performance also is a feature. Windows users don't need extra features or expensive user interface glitz to convince them to like the next version of Windows, they want reliability and performance.