When I see things that are very wrong in MS products, i wonder how this can be. Much smaller companies produce very high quality software (maybe because they are small?) whereas it's the basics that get me.
If you accidentally hover over the print button in an Outlook email, the system stalls for about 2 or 3 seconds, presumably while it is having a look for printers or something. Why? Why stop me working because of a hover? Is it their way of trying to buy seconds before the button press rather than afterwards?
Why is your software model so flawed that updates and fixes are large and take ages to install? I installed Access 2007 (only) and Microsoft Update then offered me something like 150Mb of fixes!! (how big is office anyway?) they took longer to download than Linux would do for 20 times as many fixes. Also Linux installations after updates can be done usually in less than 30 seconds whereas Windows ones go on for minutes.
Another horror story, I reinstalled a copy of Windows XP that I bought about a year ago and went to Microsoft update and there was 500Mb of updates for it. 500Mb!! It took 2 hours to install after it spent several hours downloading.
Come on MS, these are basics. You had a chance with Vista to right many wrongs and you mucked up big time. Are you surprised that loads of people have started using Linux?
IE8. A step forward in web standards apparently. It scores a paltry 18 out of a 100 in the acid test web site compare to the next worst 'other' browser which is about 75 and Opera 2 for Windows can manage 100. Please Microsoft, get good people and write good software otherwise you will die!!!