Outlook has it (and Outlook Web Access) since 2010 or so.

It's slightly faster than Win7, still runs all my apps, and has much better battery life. Those things alone are enough to get me to move to it, although I've been using it since beta. I'm basically using it like Win7 with a different Start Menu. I don't find it "jarring", and the fact that it's customisable to let me move all my most frequently used things close means it's actually better than the old start menu anyway. For my really frequently used stuff I pin them to the taskbar anyway, just like I used to do in Win7. And for the most part I use the Windows key on my keyboard because it's more efficient than moving my hand to the mouse.
I tend not to use too many "metro" apps usually because I have a desktop app (i.e. I use Outlook instead of the Mail app, FoxIt reader instead of the reader app). If a metro app happens to be the default I'll use that unless it doesn't do what I want. One metro app I really like is the video app, mainly because it has DLNA support in it which lets me stream video directly to my TV.

RedHat don't make much money from selling GPL code, they make money from consulting & support. And it's hard work for them.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. Hyper-V got live migration 2 years ago (that's in 2009 when Windows Server 2008 R2 released). Clustering Hyper-V is available for free with Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (the absolutely 100% free hypervisor that supports things like live migration & dynamic memory). And as for market share - all the reputable analyst numbers show that Hyper-V is second to VMware, Xen is third & KVM doesn't feature.

SHIFT+F10 will give you access to a command prompt during setup, which you can then use to vew status messages and parameters and stuff...

But surely a 3MB patch is still less than the entire browser download - so therefore less bandwidth?

So the original poster is correct - they didn't do their analysis properly. If they'd planned properly they would have figured out that they could get maximum benefit by doing the migration properly. Of course, if they'd done their analysis they would have realised that their problems weren't to do with windows, rather to do with how their infrastructure was operated and managed.

The way they do filtering with NuFW is interesting - it can authorize outgoing connections based on the _application_ that is trying to create the connection, by calling back to a PAM module on the client machine. And there are rulesets depending on the logged in user group. Beats forcing everyone to use proxies.

Microsoft's ISA/TMG/Proxy has been able to do this since version 1...

You are confusing designed by default with default behaviour. They are two different things. Default behaviour in the Win2k/XP timeframe was poor - Vista & Win7 change this.

I also suggest that you read the Windows 7 logo program requirements: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9668061. One of the guidelines is around proper behaviour with UAC, and another is around programs putting data in the right place.

You know, bitching about self signed certs is actually a Good Thing. I'd rather my device/client told me that a cert is only self signed, then that gives me an indication of the level of trust (a self signed certificate just says "i'm ok, trust me").

Only a short comment - calling iTunes "great desktop software" might be considered delusional in some places :). iTunes is fairly average at best, it's media management is pretty poor, and it's library functionality is pretty bad. MediaMonkey is a far far better piece of software for managing your media.

Interesting.
a) it is an open standard
b) there can be no conforming implementation because the standard has not been finalised. You can bitch about this once the standard has been released, but until then there is no way to conform
c) by the same token we should also reject ODF, since the specification is both vague and incomplete (formulas anyone?)

Yep, if an operation takes out the system then the mirrored system will also die. They are in total lockstep so there is no protection of the application. It does give you near instant protection should the hardware or the hypervisor fails, but not if your app or OS should fail.

Serious question time: Is it possible for anyone who is against Microsoft on this issue to have a serious conversation about this, and not resort to accusations of astroturfing?

This is a discussion between adults (hopefully) and if you're interested in it being a discussion then lets leave the astroturfing comments out of this.