No the whole premise of April Fools' Day is to waste my time. Why the hell am I spending today reading stories that aren't true?! The whole thing is completely moronic and anyone who engages in the practice should be shot. It's the very definition of "not clever and not funny".

My first thoughts were also "Is speed really the issue here?" but for different reasons. I used Open Office for eight months before having to give up due to a massive number of small niggles that when combined make it very unpleasant to use. I think a lot of issues need to be addresses in Open Office before speed but sadly none of the problems ever seem to be addressed and they instead seem to focus on adding new features. In the end I had to give up and switch to Kingsoft Office 2009.

Whoever is designing the interfaces at Microsoft seems to be living in a fantasy world where functionality is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is "wow".

Things have been going rapidly down hill since around 2005 when they reversed the order tabs appeared in Visual Studio. The new arrangement meant that tabs appeared on the left and pushed all the other tabs along so the position of your files was constantly changing making it hard to keep track of where they are. Microsoft could simply provide the option to revert to the sensible behaviour used by every other application where new tabs appear on the right but despite the public outcry they refuse to do this. So much for their claims of "Work your way".

Next came Internet Explorer 7 where they ditched the traditional tool bar and spread the buttons to the four corners of the earth so nobody can ever find the button they one. I don't think there's a single person who likes this arrangement but once again Microsoft refuse to include any customisation to the intereface so you can "Work your way" just as long as "your way" is the way Microsoft tells you to work.

Then there was Windows Vista which adopted the attitude of "why do in 5 clicks what you can do in 20". Everything now takes more clicks to do so productivity is reduced. For example in XP you could change your resolution, theme, wall paper, screen saver and power saving options all from the Display Properties dialog but in Vista they were spread to multiple different places, making it harder to get things done. The functionality and consistency of interface provided by menus was abandoned and now every window has a different interface with stupid pictures and lots of "wow". The new start menu is worthless and abandons the tree structure to replace it with a list of applications you have to scroll through slowly, further reducing the productivity of Vista users.

Then there was Office 2007 which also ditched the consistent menu style interface and switched to ribbons. It makes it impossible to find the options you're looking for and someone who had the misfortune of getting Office 2007 with a PC once said to me "I've just spent 20 minutes looking for one options in the ribbons".

Windows 7 takes Vista and makes things even worse. The combined quick launch bar & task bar makes it hard to see if an application is running or not and impossible to see how many instances of the application are running. The fantastic Windows Classic theme has been removed completely and now you're forced to use wasteful themese where all windows have thick borders and fat title bars. Consistency has been further abandoned and things like the theme selection dialog box has been replaced by something entirely customised which users have to learn to use. Ribbons have been added to other applications like Paint and the whole thing seems to have been designed to be has hard to use as possible.

Other application interfaces have been destroyed, for example Windows Media Player with it's 1 pixel thick jog bar, lack of menus and ridiculous button arrangement.

The one thing Microsoft used to do right was user interfaces but they've now abandoned everything that makes a good interface. Things such as consistency, clarity and efficency have gone and instead all we have is "wow". I used to use all Microsoft applications but by destroying their interfaces across the board I've been abandoning them one at a time. After trying the Windows 7 beta I've been forced to switch to Linux.

I must admit I'm having a hard time with Linux and there's a lot to learn for a 30 year old who has been raised on Microsoft products. However, it's definitely worth the effort since Linux really does let me "Work your way" while Microsoft just makes that claim and in reality you have to work the way Microsoft tell you.

I always wondered what would bring an end to the Microsoft monopoly and it turns out it's Microsoft themselves. They seem intent on making their own products such a nightmare to use that people are forced to go elsewhere and I'm more than happy to oblige them.

When you move a heavy load do you get bogged down in "a poverty of self-perception" because it was the wheel that made it possible to move that load and not your own ability? Do you become "empty and self-loathing" when you hammer in a nail because it was the hammer that made this action possible? Do you become "a hollow, rotten chasm" after driving to work because it was the motor car enabled you to make your commute? Most of your achievements are already performed with external enhancements in the way of tools and other devices and this simply extends this principle to internal enhancements. I don't have any emotional problems with regards to using tools to enhance my performance and I would have equally few problems making use of cognitive enhancement tools if they helped me achieve more. Instead of deciding for everyone the simple solution would be to allow each individual to decide whether they want to use these enhancements. That way insecure and emotionally unstable people who are concerned about the enhancements making them "empty and self-loathing" can avoid them while more stable people can enjoy the benefits such enhancements have to offer.

I'm sick of reading how any and all work related to human enhancement raises moral and ethical questions. Moralists are the reason medical science is stuck in the stone age since the stop all human experimentation and if you can't experiment you can't progress. This work could vastly enhance peoples' lives in ways such as curing mental conditions like depression to increasing intelligence and dexterity. However, progress will no doubt be stopped while morons who know nothing about the subject debate the moral and ethical issues. There's no way that "rewiring the brain" will be permitted in a Luddite society like ours where we still need to debate what human rights should be given to a clump of cells.

"The Web site provides access to several Microsoft online training programs, including how to use the Internet" - This is fantatic idea. Now anyone who can't use the internet can just go on the internet and...oh wait.

The 3 day charts you linked contain too small a sample to prove anything and you need to look at a longer term chart such as this six year chart to see the true picture. When the NASDAQ was up 100% in 2007 Micrsoft was unchanged and while the NASDAQ is currently even on its 2003 value Microsoft is off nearly 40%. Microsoft is failing and investors know it.