Since the registry was introduced, both windows and applications access the registry as if it were a no-cost operation (in other words, far more often than is actually necessary or advisable.) Even so, the vast majority of those accesses are for the same small set of data. Things like file associations, etc. There would be no significant performance penalty if text files were used, as that data would be cached anyway (just like it is with the registry).

The registry is used for these things, yes, but there's literally nothing that makes it hard or impossible to do the same thing with text files, so that's not really an advantage of using the registry.

In my view, the registry is one of the top 10 worst things about Windows.

Windows can do this? I change machines managed by AD all the time, but have never seen this happen. Nonetheless, it's not necessary to use a mechanism like the registry to accomplish this, so this functionality doesn't explain it.

Yeah, this is another pet peeve of mine. When I have to look in an application data folder, I have to find the right one through trial and error, because the folder that's used is apparently chosen at random. And don't get me started on the horrorshow that is the Users folder.

Because Microsoft doesn't like users and developers. That's the only reason I could find. When they introduced the registry in the first place, the primary advantage they talked about was the elimination of the onerous 64k restriction on .ini files (completely ignoring the fact that they could have just allowed .ini files to be arbitrarily large). Other advantages involved performance and being able to have all that stuff in a single place. Performance was never a big enough issue to be worth sacrificing the benefits of the .ini files, though, and the problem of having them scattered willy-nilly throughout the filesystem could have easily been addressed without eliminating them.

The only thing left that makes sense is spite.

For a handful of reasons, but topping the list is discoverability. Searching for everything involves knowing what everything is called or consulting a manual. If you want to do something that you rarely do, this is a big problem. Personally, I absolutely loathe this trend of using searching as the main way to launch applications. It's intrusive and inconvenient, and makes the OS more difficult to use. It's basically removing the advantages of a GUI while keeping the disadvantages, and introducing the disadvantages of the command line without introducing the advantages. It's just suck all around.

They're going to replace the control panel with a Metro app? Damn it. I was hoping that I could just avoid all Metro apps completely. That's really irritating.

As a user, I hate hate hate "release early, release often." It's a major pain in the ass.

And that is "upgrade only when I tell you to."

Wait a second. You can't call people who object to tracking paranoid because the tracking is provably being done. Why do you think people who object to being spied on are somehow nutty for objecting to it?

From my point of view, there are two problems. The biggest one isn't the ads themselves, but the tracking that is used with them. That needs to die a fast, painful death. The other problem, which is about the ads themselves, is that advertising is ubiquitous. When you can't even take a piss in many public restrooms without having to look at another damned ad, it's no mystery why people want to see advertising itself die.

Meh. When Netflix starts showing ads, I'll just stop using it. No problem.

Yes, this. And the switchover to digital broadcasting means that there are more people than ever who simply can't receive OTA broadcasts.

I'm not pretending. Netflix by itself completely replaces cable to my satisfaction. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar because cable sucks completely. Sure, Netflix and the like doesn't satisfy everyone's needs (what does?), but there's no need to be dismissive of people for whom it works or accuse them of being deceptive or misguided.

Personally, Netflix not only compares very well to a $200 cable package, it is superior to a $200 cable package. Cable offers nothing of interest to me that I can't get from Netflix, but Netflix is a much better viewing experience.

One.