Next to the no sideloading of applications the worthlessness of the browser is the next stumble block, I hope the phone dies a quick death, or gets a decent browser like IE9 with at least some intention to start supporting HTML5

No if the goal was to kill someone it's called murder. Homocide in general is less specific about the intent.

That is "battle.net 2.0" the new and improved version, that WoW and Starcraft II use.
The original battle.net as it is in starcraft or warcraft 3 hasn't really evolved all that much since their respective introductions.

APB has it both, you can opt for buying X hours, or for buying a monthly unlimited plan.

Vista SP1 actually, that's why 2008 came with "SP1" on release.

The NT kernel has always been a hybrid one, and your example of UNIX being modular is backwards. Linux and UNIX(*BSD, Solaris) have monolithic kernels.

Mini Win likely refers to MinWin? That's just changes to to the existing kernel though: http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/mark-russinovich-explains-minwin-once-and-for-all.aspx

My bank uses a text message that sends you a code, but you can choose for the old fashioned list of codes.

You can even request a couple codes in advance for when you'll be going somewhere and you know you don't have access to your cellphone.

I quite like the text message system over the physical device that some other devices/blizzard's authenticator use because I'll have my cell phone with me everywhere, but the physical device is unlikely to travel with me.

But they are also a very vocal part, that gets seen by others.

Hoping that a beta OS wont touch your files because they are on another partition isn't a very good way to go about things.

Windows 7 had exactly such a bug when it first started arriving where it would corrupt MP3 files.

Open internet explorer, type address. Address get's removed and replaced with about:blank and I get some sort of weird error about the site not being available.

Open a new tab get a "Connecting..." message and my browser locking up for a few seconds.

Even if it were faster at rendering the actual page, if it takes that much more time and effort to begin typing the url they already lost.

2008 is the server version of Vista and 2008 RC2 is the server version of Windows 7.

I wonder what sort of strange OEM you got your new computer from then, since I'm sure all the ones I know would install a browser.

Microsoft bundling in their OS, and OEMs installing it are two different things.

But then they already have the browser that their oem installed.