OMG, the hour is nearly upon us! At midnight Windows Vista will go on sale all around the world. Can you hear the excitement? Hmm, maybe if you took out your white earbuds. How about now?

In case you found the other day's 10 reasons to upgrade (and 10 not to) less than convincing, PC World took a stab at it too, upping the ante by 50% with its 15 Reasons to Switch. Here's the first five:

1. It's the Interface, Stupid (Aero is pretty)
2. Flip Over Windows Flip 3D (Alt-Tab is pretty)
3. Live Thumbnails (taskbar hover previews)
4. Boost Performance With ReadyBoost (not just an energy drink anymore)
5. Cool Performance Tools (Reliability and Performance Monitor)

If you're the kind of person who likes to go shopping at midnight, USA Today has the scoop on Microsoft's launch events. CompUSA stores will be open from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.; 14 Best Buy locations will be open until 12:30 a.m., and the Detroit, Cleveland and San Diego stores will have NFL players on hand signing autographs (synergy!!); Steve Ballmer will be making a morning appearance at the midtown Manhattan Best Buy; and 10 Circuit City stores will be open until 1 a.m., with NFL players in Miami and Nashville. Oh, and CompUSA is offering to install Vista on your machine for $50, and will take it off for free if you experience a bit of the old buyer's remorse. [Via Consumerist]

Thrilling! Just. Thrilling. I, personally, will be asleep, because none of those stores are within 150 miles of me. No, really.
So, on the eve of The Big Release, it's time to take stock one last time. Cast your votes in our very last pre-launch poll:

Still pondering whether or not to get Windows Vista on Tuesday? I'll give you 10 reasons why you shouldn't from APC Magazine. Expensive! Lousy drivers! UAC! DRM! Case closed! Er, not quite. Here's 10 reasons why you should... also from APC Magazine. Multimedia! Better drivers! Search! Undelete! DirectX 10! Case closed! Uhhh... I'm not making this any easier for you, am I?

While you ponder that imponderable, I'm going to move on. It seems that government officials in South Korea--one of the most wired nations on Earth--are recommending that the citizenry not upgrade to Vista. Why? Because, apparently, South Korea is mad for ActiveX, the proprietary browser plug-in technology that powers much of the country's web services, from online banking to stock trading, shopping, and gaming, and apparently many of those services cease to work in Windows Vista (presumably because of UAC). More than a reason not to upgrade to Vista, this seems like a fantastic demonstration of how stupid it is to build web services on proprietary technologies. The irony, of course, is that ActiveX is Microsoft's own proprietary invention.

In gaming news, FPS luminary John Carmack--you know, the Doom and Quake guy--says he's not exactly chomping at the bit after Vista or DirectX 10 just yet. "Personally, I wouldn't jump at something like DX10 right now," he says. "I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there's a really strong need for it." For now he's quite satisfied with Windows XP and accuses Microsoft of "artificially" forcing gamers to upgrade with DX10. "Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista. They're artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS ... They're really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it." He calls DirectX 9 "quite good" and also praises the Xbox 360's graphics API.

Phew. To catch up on the previous four days of our Vista Countdown, hit the archive.

Today seemed like it was gonna be a low-buzz day for Vista's impending retail release, until I came across this tidbit: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Monday, just an hour before Vista's midnight launch. As Candace Lombardi over at CNet points out, John Hodgman, who plays the PC on Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads, is a regular Daily Show contributor. I really hope Stewart & Co. can get the two together for some hijinks. We'll be sure to post some video as soon as we can get our little paws on it.

In other news, remember that huffing and puffing over Vista's copious DRM cruft and the response on Microsoft's Vista blog? Well, of course there's now a response-to-the-response. Peter Gutmann, who wrote the original "Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" to which the Vista blog post was in reply, has added an addendum to the original article in, er, reply. Gutmann calls Microsoft's response "PR spin" and makes a pretty strong case, but I'll leave it to you to judge for yourselves.

Lastly, a Vista tips from the fine folks over at Lifehacker: How to disable annoying "Need your permission to continue" prompts. To quote our own David Chartier: "What happens when you try to save your users from your own security and usability mistakes over the last 15 years or so? Apparently, they revolt and hurl your solutions right back in your face."

In case you're not all caught up, you can check out the previous three days of our Vista Countdown over here.

Five days until Windows Vista is unleashed on the general populace. Back when we did our Vista upgrade poll, about 15% of you said you wouldn't be upgrading to Vista until after they release the first service pack. Well, good news for you: Microsoft is already laying the groundwork for Vista SP1's release. CNet says Microsoft has outlined an update with minor enhancements along the same lines as Windows XP's SP1, rather than a large overhaul like XP's SP2. "We expect Windows Vista SP1 to be a standard service pack that will include security updates and hot fixes, as well as limited other changes focused on improving overall quality," a Microsoft rep told them. Sorry, folks, that means no WinFS for you. Again. Redmond says expects Vista SP2 to be ready "in a timeframe similar to that of service packs for previous versions of Windows." Windows XP's first service pack came out 11 months after the OS' initial release.

Vista's release is no cake walk for Microsoft, owing in part to the fact that the internet is a very different animal than it was the last time Microsoft released a new OS. We now have the marvel that is BitTorrent, and as you might imagine it's as much a thorn in Microsoft's side as it is the movie industry's. Computerworld has an interesting article on the piracy challenges Microsoft is facing even before Microsoft hits retail shelves. "The pirates that cracked early copies of Vista all sidestepped Microsoft's latest antipiracy technology, the Software Protection Platform," the article goes. "SPP is supposed to shut down any copy of Vista not registered to Microsoft over the Internet with a legitimate, paid-up license key within the first 30 days." Microsoft is trying to scare consumers off pirated copies of Vista with boogey-man stories of viruses and malware, which I'd say probably isn't too effective on the sorts of people who are in the habbit of trolling BitTorrent for pirated operating systems.

And speaking of malware, Webroot Software, makers of Spy Sweeper, have issued a press release warning of "potentially ineffective blocking capabilities in Windows Defender, slow definition updates, and weak anti-virus capabilities in the default anti-spyware and anti-virus components of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system and Live OneCare suite." Are there really scary vulnerabilities in Vista and gaping holes in its anti-malware software? Well, probably, but what Webroot is doing here ain't public service. Webroot's CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck says the company wants to help cunsumers "make informed decisions about their computing security needs," which, if he has his way, means loads of them buying Spy Sweeper for their new Vista setups.

I wasn't planning on doing a countdown to Windows Vista until yesterday, and though there are piles of articles out there I could link to about Vista's failings, it seems unfair to focus on that for the week leading up to its release. Maybe I'll alternate days. Today I bring some tips and info for those who are all jazzed for Redmond's new baby.

First a tip from the How-To Geek on the Built-in Quick Launch Hotkeys in Windows Vista. Here's how it works: When you have some programs in your Quick Launch menu, each one will automatically be assigned a number--1, 2, 3, etc. from the leftmost icon to the right--and pressing the Windows key and that number will launch that program. Head over to the How-To geek for a more thorough explanation. Handy!

Another handy feature is Vista's built-in Snipping Tool, about which Lifehacker gives us the low-down. It's a huge improvement on Windows 95 and XP's nearly nonexistent screenshot functionality, though not, as Lifehacker's Gina Trapani points out, as robust as some third-party tools like the venerable SnagIt or my lightweight and free favorite FastStone Capture. Still, for basic screen-capping needs, the Snipping Tool is an invaluable and obvious bundled app.

Finally, you may have heard some of the huffing and puffing over Vista's thoroughly integrated DRM technologies. I won't get deep into it now, but if you want an overview Wikipedia is, as ever, a great resource. If you're concerned about Vista's DRM, you may want to check out Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers) at the official Windows Vista Blog. In it, Dave Marsh, Vista's Lead Program Manager in charge of video technologies, says "It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC." It's a pretty one-sided article, as you might imagine, but I suggest you read it and judge for yourself.

Windows Vista lands in one week, everybody. Personally, I can't wait--not because I'm going to go straight to the store and buy a copy, but because I can stop writing stories about everybody and their mom's predictions about the impact Vista will have, and start writing stories about the impact it actually has. Eventually.

Actually, those articles are already starting to trickle in, like this one: The 5 Sins of Vista, from IntelliAdmin.com. In it, Steve Wiseman outlines five things in Vista that are, well, kinda broken. Here's the executive summary:

• The new file browsing interface is broken - Ew!
  
• The new start menu sucks (Kind of) - Kinda ew.
  
• Windows Networking is a mess - Clear as mud.
  
• Windows Search Is Broken - Double ew!
  
• Windows copying has not improved - Sigh.
  

I think we're sure to see some really great stuff in Windows, but when stuff as fundamental is search and file copying still haven't gotten any attention from Microsoft, I start to wonder just what they are working on over in Redmond.

In related news, Microsoft has disclosed that one out of every five Windows installations in use today is "non-genuine," i.e. possibly pirated, says BetaNews. [Via Digg]