Microsoft is hard at work trying to battle the public and businesses’ perception about Windows Vista. They already published a whitepaper named “Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista“, detailing some of what they believe are misunderstandings. Now, they also published a document wit five reasons to deploy Windows Vista – and why you shouldn’t wait for Windows 7.The five reasons are your usual marketing speak concerning Vista; stability, security, productivity, mobility, and so on. However, there’s also an interesting chapter on Windows 7. The gist? Moving to Windows Vista now will ease the migration to Windows 7 once it’s released.

There is no need to wait for Windows 7. It is a goal of the

Windows 7 release to minimize application compatibility for customers who have deployed Windows Vista since there was considerable kernel and device level innovation in Windows Vista. The Windows 7 release is expected to have only minor changes in these areas. Customers who are still using Windows XP when Windows 7 releases will have a similar application compatibility experience moving to Windows 7 as exists moving to Windows Vista from Windows XP.

Here we have Microsoft reiterating that Windows 7 will not contain any massive changes, and that it will build on top of the foundations laid by Windows Vista, improving them. Interestingly, the recent rumours concerning Apple’s next release seem to point at the same route: stabilisation and optimisation. Assuming those rumours hold any water, we might be looking at some sort of truce between the two competitors.

Probably not meant as such, but interesting nonetheless, as it gives the rest of the market (like Linux, BSD) the time to catch up – or move ahead – on the desktop side of things.