Reader poll: Picking just one most annoying vendor of 2006 was not easy for InfoWorld readers. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Verizon were all on the track, but the winner “beat out Microsoft by a hair.” The reason: support, or lack thereof. This race was neck-and-neck, and though it placed at second, some voters even took a ‘no-more-Microsoft’ pledge. Tune into The Gripe Line, and remember that it’s not too early to cast your vote for the worst of 2007. New to our site: This week marks the birth of Career Focus, a blog dedicated to, well, as the name suggests, professional skills, notably strong leadership, effective writing, public and interpersonal speaking, and career management. The second post, for instance, is leading from the trenches because that ability “matters right now even if you don’t want to have your name on a parking place some day.” Notes from the field: The Vista snafus are already manifesting, explains one Robert X. Cringely. “Apparently the whole Vista thing has taken Intuit by surprise,” even though Intuit can predict tomorrow’s stock prices today. Jacques Clouseau, meanwhile, is snooping around on behalf of Dell. But it will take a man of more stature than that to uncover Google’s disappearing German site. Vista finally debuts, German Google takes a snooze. Show of the week: The emerging technology-laden DEMO ’07 took place this week and, our writers report, the focus was on people, not technology. That said, a smattering of products went on display, including a battery immune to power fade, one startup’s attempt to become the enterprise Skype, and tools for enticing users to generate content. Or, view pictures from the conference floor in this slideshow of DEMO. Technology Industry