That creaking sound, the dust, that feeling of vague but imminent doom? It's not an earthquake. Your office isn't falling into a sink hole. It's the warning signs of Windows collapsing. According to a presentation served up last week by two Gartner analysts, Windows is plummeting like a Herman Miller chair tossed off the C-Level balcony at One Microsoft Way. The reasons are obvious: Vista is a bloated mess. That creaking sound, the dust, that feeling of vague but imminent doom? It’s not an earthquake. Your office isn’t falling into a sink hole. It’s the warning signs of Windows collapsing.According to a presentation served up last week by two Gartner analysts, Windows is plummeting like a Herman Miller chair tossed off the C-Level balcony at One Microsoft Way. The reasons are obvious: Vista is a bloated mess. Corporate America doesn’t want it. Even Microsoft’s own mid-level managers couldn’t hide their disgust at what their overly hyped OS simply can’t do.Fact is, the future belongs to nimble, lightweight operating systems and applications. That’s why Google skipped right over rolling out a desktop OS and went straight to Android. Having used a Windows ‘Smart’ Phone extensively over the last six months, I can tell you: calling Windows Mobile “lightweight and nimble” is like calling Oprah “a skinny be-yotch.” Sure, she’s trimmed down a bit, but I wouldn’t want to go five rounds with her. A slow, power hungry, unstable, and maddeningly hierarchical OS is not something anyone wants in their pockets. Yet even with all its faults, Windows Mobile is still light years ahead of Vista in those areas. If I’m going to use a fast, simple, power efficient device in my pocket, why the heck would I want some arthritic dinosaur on my desk? A cheap thin client with my applications floating gently in the cloud makes a heckovalot more sense. Windows Live? Please. Windows in a Persistent Vegetative State is more like it. Give me an XO laptop with Google Office and a 3G connection and I’m a happy man.This is why Gartner is right, and why Microsoft should be spending its time and energy repairing its own crumbling OS instead of giving Indian rope burns to Yahoo shareholders. But will they listen? Not bloody likely. Certainly not while Ballmer still enjoys furniture-heaving privileges.Meanwhile, in yet another in a series of embarrassing revelations, a Microsoft product manager admits that Vista’s infamous User Account Controls — the “are you really sure you want to do that? really?” checkbox — were put there to deliberately annoy users, and that this was going to somehow force ISVs to build more secure applications. Per ZDnet UK: “The reason we put UAC into the [Vista] platform was to annoy users — I’m serious,” said Cross, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Thursday. “Most users had administrator privileges on previous Windows systems and most applications needed administrator privileges to install or run.”As if using Windows weren’t already annoying enough. Thanks guys.Got hot tips or more Vista annoyances? Post them below or email me: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Super swag awaits top tipsters. Think you’ve got the right stuff to pass our tech quizzes? They’re not as easy as they look: • The InfoWorld News Quiz • Test Your Geek IQ • Test Your Network Security IQ Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business