"This operating system has needed a steady diet of patches to stay close to healthy... You can think of Windows XP as a house with a second floor built of spackle, wood filler and duct tape," Pegoraro writes. "And even with all those updates, the operating system has met only a few of its goals while falling short of others in a catastrophic manner. And it's done so for reasons that can't all be blamed on XP's design or Microsoft's own actions. That, in turn, means that its long-delayed replacement, Windows Vista -- now due to ship in January -- may run into the same problems."