Platforms: After waiting for the arrival of Service Pack 1, Randall Kennedy writes that he is now ready to make his formal pronouncement, in The Post-SP1 Vista verdict: Wait for Windows 7. Factors for that decision include poor performance, lack of value, and the existence of Windows XP. “When the choice is between a buggy, bloated, immature OS with no tangible value add vs. a lean, clean and reliable (if somewhat dated) OS that has the broadest support base in the history of personal computing — plus performance to burn — there really is no contest.”The news beat: A list of features in Microsoft’s next IM version is leaked, revealing SPIM, a security feature that reports users who send spam. A U.S. federal court clears the way for Broadcom to pursue an injunction against Qualcomm after a long-standing dispute over cell phone patents. And China Mobile is testing a 3G Windows Mobile handset and says it expects to finish building 3G networks in eight cities by year’s end. Columnist’s corner: Just what every Visual Studio aficionado might add to a holiday gift list, Visual Studio 2008 has gone gold. “That means one of two things: Don’t bother showing up for work after the holiday break unless you know it cold, or start planning that ‘training’ junket for early in actual 2008,” Tom Yager advises in Microsoft’s homework for the holidays. “Visual Studio 2008 goes a long way toward erasing arbitrary boundaries that Microsoft created between .Net, Web, and native apps, and for the first time in a long time, there is a reasonable, Microsoft-blessed pathway to targeting the Mac. But some boundaries remain firm.” It’s a 32-bit toolset, for instance. Software Development