A big question, but one the British Observer newspaper asked this week. Here at Syntagma we’ve nicknamed Vista Windows Horizon, because however fast you move toward it, it never gets any nearer.

The plain fact is that the moveable feast that is Vista’s consumer release date is likely to slip yet, yet, and yet again into Q2 next year, and possibly even further. What are the odds that it misses the Christmas buying spree for 2007 too? They must be worth a small flutter at least.

But is it really that bad? The Observer remarks: “Microsoft’s problems with Windows may be an indicator that operating systems are getting beyond the capacity of any single organization to handle them. Whatever other charges might be leveled against Microsoft, technical incompetence isn’t one. If the folks at Redmond can’t do it, maybe it just can’t be done.”

When Jim Allchin confronted Bill Gates in 2003 and demanded the Vista code be rewritten from the ground up, he must have sensed that the project might already be broken-backed. But what if it is?

Last week Robert X Cringley made the point that Microsoft is losing its battle to control THE platform because the platform has fragmented and moved into other areas.

Some questions simply don’t have an answer because the answer has yet to materialize and relates to a different question altogether.

Update: See also, Windows Vista and the Schleswig-Holstein Question.