CNET News.com is rapidly degenerating into a mudslinging centre. Every single news story dealing with Windows has a couple of legitimate criticisms of Microsoft's business practises followed by tens of posts from people calling them Apple fanboys, on Apple stories the reverse is true. My kingdom for rational discussion!
I've decided enough is enough, with the exception of stories from The Pervasive Datacentre by Gordon Haff who's writing seems not to draw these kinds of childish antics, this will be my last comment on a CNET Windows story.
Putting aside the concerns of prior art (which I believe there is here), let’s be honest here folks. Most people don’t care about this nonsense, they just want a computer that works. As soon as the general public starts getting messages saying they need to purchase a premium extension to do something extra that other machines could do out of the box, there’s going to be even more negativity.
This whole move along with having 7 different versions designed to confuse consumers, one version of which only allows three applications to run at a time (lunacy) shows how completely out of touch Microsoft is with their customer base. It’s a shame, because Windows 7 has the potential to be much less of a headache to use than previous versions.
The sad thing is, they can get away with it, and they will.