Go deeper. This points to a major systemic flaw in a large portion (>50%?) of humanity, in that on the whole humanity would rather have ${whatever_it_is_they_want} rather than have less but more quality stuff. Not everyone has as much attention to detail of computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, scientists in general, etc.

I wish I could believe in that, but I think it's the beginning of a monopoly. Then, in about two decades, people will finally wise up and start to do something. Then, another decade will pass, and a better successor will finally take hold.

The same thing is happening currently in the software industry.

Apparently Server cuts out a lot of the bloat: http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/2008/03/16/why-should-i-use-a-server-os-for-my-workstation/

Really? What is the system call for that? Is it in the Win32 API?

Oh, I wouldn't have minded, but I got the humor anyway :).

I was genuinely surprised to see the Java download manager. When I followed the link in the source I saw some ActiveX stuff mentioned and assumed it was going to be IE only, but then the Java stuff popped up. I'd have to do more research, but I think the problem I had was more of a javascript problem where clicking on the download button did not change the current page as MS's web developer had intended it to, than an intentional IE lock-in.

Actually, I downloaded it on a Linux machine. The download button did not work, but I was able to look at the page source to figure out the link to go to, which then brings up a Java download manager through which the ISO downloads (which, incidentally, looks a lot like a bittorrent client, even telling me how many connections I was downloading through).

Is that a good thing?