I would never do that, but then again, I like my Windows (10) and it's updates ;) On my new self built desktop, I just transferred the license from the old one. People who request a refund are usually Linux/GNU/FSF/FOSS fans who hate Microsoft, which is sad and childish, but their right of course.

Well, call me crazy, but I actually think there's a lot of benefits to the subscription of office. Not only do I get 1TB of onedrive storage (which IMO justifies the price on its own), but I also get to install the latest version of office on 5 PCs/Macs and 5 tablets. Bonus: 60 minutes of free calls with Skype (to real phones), not that I use it, but nice to have anyways. No install media - just click install on the office site. The Windows 8 thing is changing. Win9 will be desktop centric. Luckily for us :) Let's see how it looks in the end of september. What detection issues in IE? Browser or feature detection? Since IE10 (and somewhat even 9), I can finally write apps in Firefox or Chrome and they will look and behave exactly the same in IE11. MS finally got it right, and it's actually a lot faster when animating stuff with lot's of CSS3/SVG.

Google has been evil for years now, I would say, ever since the guy that came up with the mantra quit. The privacy issues are the worst. The terms for their services are pretty bad, even worse than facebook. The two matters that came out in the news was the buzz fiasco and the recent terms merger. Google can also be quite annoying in how they connect their services to each other, not unlike what microsoft did and was punished for with IE-bundling in the 90s. Buzz was automatically connected to GMail, and now Google+ is connected to almost every Google service. You can do video chat i GMail, but if you want a conference, you must .. wait for it .. "upgrade" to Google+. They also misuse they position as search monopoly (not really a monopoly, but windows wasn't either - wikipedia defined a monopoly as something different before the open source nerds came in and changed gradually. Apparently they weren't too happy when I linked to the old definition i discussions. I still like open source though). Google has favored their own services over others. It's weird that they can do this until EU comes in, and then change it slighty when the EU/FTC gives them a second chance. Never heard of Microsoft and Intel getting a second chance. Google really hates Microsoft. I don't think most of the employees do, but the leadership does. It seems that Schmidt, Brin and Page has a personal vendetta against MS. That's why they silently deprecate support for services, protocols and formats made by Microsoft - even if they are standards. The stuff I remember is that they recently removed some support (export?) for Office 2003 formats in Docs/Apps, even though lots of people complained about it. They are also removing exchange (ActiveSync) support in GMail, so that Windows Phones can't connect to it anymore. MS got a month to solve the problem. Now, WP users get a lesser good alternative, IMAP :S Another case is the youtube blocking. Youtube employees actually wants youtube to be on all platforms that has millions or more users. They were going to help MS solve the problem until Google execs put the foot down. Just recently they blocked GMaps on Windows Phone aswell, saying; Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers. Now that's evil right there -> Programming their own services that are the most popular to use non-standard WebKit extensions. You see, Google doesn't want Windows Phone to gain any market share, and that's fine, really, but their methods are a bit suspicious. Their arguments for dropping this and that are qui

Ouch indeed. They should've at least speced the display higher. Huge win for Apple ;) MS has (seemingly) commented on why they chose that resolution though: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-explains-why-they-chose-1366768-resolution-for-the-surface-rt[^] Bottom line: because they wanted it to work well in lit conditions (lower reflective rate). While this may be a good reason.. techy people will not see it that way when comparing.

They _could_ compete on style for several groups of people. Many reviewers say when _using_ metro/modern and multitasking with it, iOS feels like the stone age. It's very fluid. As for hardware style, people generally agree that it looks very good. The cover and its available colors are also very cool. Apples cover is also cool, but it, of course, lacks keybaord/touchpad. As for productivity, yes. Why? Office is included! Pen input! OneNote! Spec comparison: Surface has: microSD-slot, USB-port, 2GB RAM, stereo speakers, 10.6" screen, 1366x768 res, 720p front and rear facing cameras, no GPS, no 3G/4G, hardware keyboard/touchpad new iPad has: no microSD, no USB-port, 1GB RAM, mono speakers, 9.7" screen, 2048x1536 res, 1080p (5mp) rear camera and VGA front camera, GPS, 3G/4G, no hardware keyboard/touchpad Microsoft wins with SD-slot, USB, 1GB more RAM, stereo, bigger screen, 720p front facing camera and the touch cover Apple wins with higher resolution, better rear camera (I think), GPS and 4G 2GB ram means more tabs open while being able to open huge files in office. Huge win. Huge win for Apple with GPS and 4G. Software outtakes: Surface has a desktop, desktop IE, desktop office, file explorer - all optimized for touch. Huge win. IE is better and faster than current Safari. iPad doesn't have file system access unless you jailbreak, and thus no desktop for file exploring either.

In a login box we'd made for system X, the client complained that the password label didn't start with an uppercased P. My bosses snapped! haha.. oh the memories ;) There were of course much more important tasks to be concerned of :D

It seems that I am the only one that is going defend IE here today ;) CSS3 gradients is implemented in IE10, and comes with Windows 8 in oktober. As for IE9, the only stuff of real everyday value that's missing is gradients and text-shadow, but they're long over due indeed. The positive thing about IE9 is the speed. It's awesome at animations containing rgba backgrounds, transparent pngs and shadows etc. IE9 wins over all browsers on this one. I notice this all the time on the project we're working on at work right now. IE9 really excels with its buttery smooth animations. As for the IE-team caring about standards, they're probably the team focusing on it the most right now, and also getting it right (which means without bugs). I believe it was on MIX they made fun of chrome because of the clipping bug in css3 columns. IE9 also does border-radius correct: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/BorderRadius/Default.html[^] while many of the other browsers don't. IE10 will probably blow away the competition _when_ it comes out.

How about JPEG XR? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XR[^] I'm curious to how it compares to WebP with compression and quality...

Took some days to get used to.. but now I love it. If you put your "new-things-hatred" aside, you'll see that it's perfectly logical and actually quite beautiful UI wise in Office 2010 and Win7s WordPad, Paint etc. (not so beautiful in Office 2007 though). I've compared the height here: http://zipdot.net/shared/ribbon_vs_toolbar.png[^] 2010 doesn't come out too bad in height compared with the OSS alternatives.. only a few pixels higher. Office 2003 on the other hand is like 2/3 of the height og 2010 (just bing/google image search it). But really.. height isn't an issue here, because you can hide it in Win8 - people seem to forget that.. or do they just ignore it for the sake of arguing? It's not hated by _that_ many people... it's just that the people that really do hate it screams the loudest - just like (F)OSS-people do on forums.

It doesn't really consume _that_ much space.. Look here: http://zipdot.net/shared/ribbon_vs_toolbar.png[^] Frontpage 2003 (equal to Word 2003) http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/281287-Microsoft_Office_FrontPage.png[^] 110px on Office 2010 on Win7 90px on LibreOffice Writer on Win7 110px on OpenOffice Writer on Ubuntu 76px on Office 2003 on XP 34px (approx. toolbar height) difference between Office 2010 and Office 2003 - I can live with that (and I do).

Ah yes.. but IE9 RC is still quicker (sunspider-wise). Here's the results om my machine: IE9 RC : 292ms FF 4b : 333ms Chrome 10b: 344ms Opera 11 : 333ms Firefox is sucking more each day.. the only reason I use it is because of firebug at work. Number of HTML/CSS-features on FF is nice though, but it still crashes alot. IE9 RC is now my main browser besides FF for development. I think it's awesome. They're missing some CSS3 like gradients, text-shadow, etc. but atleast they implementet border-radius, border-shadow, svg, canvas and other goodies!

Well.. there's Spotify - a great example that desktop apps still rule, and will probably (hopefully) do for some time, because they are just better.