With the launch of Windows Vista, Bill Gates is giving it the proverbial ‘one hundred and ten percent’ in explaining to everyone in the world why they should care about the new operating system.

In response to analyst speculation that Windows Vista could be the last Microsoft operating system of its kind, as we know it, Gates replies to Newsweek, “Well, people have said that at every major Windows release. Java was going to eliminate Windows programming, or thin clients were going to eliminate people buying PCs.”

The Microsoft chairman says that operating systems keep getting better and richer and that there are no shortages of radical things that will be happening in the next release. When asked if Microsoft will be back with a new OS in 2010-2011, Gates was confident enough to say, “Absolutely.”

Gates said that the next version of Windows “will be more user-centric,” meaning that users should be able to move from PC to PC, whether or not it is their own, and still be able to access much of their own information by using Live Services, regardless of where they are. “So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things.”

“In Vista things got a lot better with [digital] ink and speech but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet,” Gates predicted. “Students won't need textbooks, they can just use these tablet devices.”

“Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We'll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we've got a pretty good outline,” he said.

Coming back to the present, one of the big advantages that Windows Vista provides is a platform for users to jump to for getting instantly caught up on a lot of new technology and security features. Although some of the improvements in Vista can already be found in downloadable updates for Windows XP, the majority of users do not take advantage of added features through Windows Update.

Take, for example, Internet Explorer 7, which is offered to all Windows XP users as an optional update. According to Gates, less than a third of Windows XP users downloaded the new browser, and even less take advantage of less advertised new additions. So how many people have upgraded to IE7? “I would say it's less than 30 percent,” Gates replied. “We’ve had this incredible desktop search [available for download] that won every review, and I’ll bet that less than 10 percent of Windows users went and got that. Now with Windows Vista, you get something better. For most users, it’s the first time they’ve seen it at all.”

With Windows Vista, Microsoft expects that the “wow starts now,” as stated by one of its advertising slogans. But in early January, one of the new Apple TV ads pushing the apparent social-cool factor of a Mac depicted poor “PC” as having to undergo surgery just to upgrade to Windows Vista (see the commercial here). While Bill Gates admits that he hasn’t seen that particular ad, he’s taking exception to the depiction of the PC. “I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are,” he said.

“And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say?” Gates continues to express his disgust with the Apple ads: “Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.”