Some things there are just no excuse for. Such as Virtual Workspaces, WinFS, a secure option for emptying the recycle bin, adn a better way of taking screenshots (even MacOS 7 allowed for an easy screen caputure command that sent things right to a .PICT file. It was crappy, but at least it was something simple).

But what if Windows was seriously all that and a bag of chips? What it it did all this cool stuff that the article wishes it could do? What if it was POSIX complient, came with remote VNC software, allowed you to burn ISO files, record and edit sound, had an amazing software repository, badass backup software, PDF creation, had built in Flash and Java support, would open .zip, .rar., .cab, and every other kind of compression format. Imagine every cool utility that you install after you install your OS and imagine if all that was built in. Imagine how great that would be. No more headaches, no more problems. Windows would do everything we want it to do and we would be happy clams.

Now there’s a few reasons that this doesn’t happen. Microsoft doesn’t want to give us EVERY feature because they want us to upgrade, they want to control everything. But….Microsoft is basically forcing people to upgrade their systems anyways by killing off the old ones. Hmmm.

The thing that got me thinking with this article was that something happened which is a reason why Windows sucks so bad: it kinda has to. Im sure we all remember the DOJ investigating Microsoft’s anti-competative policies. And yes, for the most part they were anti-competative and shitty, resulting in garbage products being shoved down our throats. But something else that MS was ordered to do as a result of that was NOT to bundle other things with Windows that the rest of us would probably love to have.

For example, Microsoft used to have their own JavaVM. It kicked ass. For those of us that had crappy computers at the time, it was a godsent. It was faster than what SUN had and ran better overall. Yet after the ruling MS had to discontinue it and they made you to to SUN to get their VM. Which ran like shit and caused me to be pretty pissed at the time.

Some of the stuff on this list I can see why it wasn’t included and really think it’s fine that Vista does without it. Such as Trackpad Gestures, Stickies, Screen Sharing, a program dock, and overly fancy desktop effects. This stuff I don’t really think most people care about and in some cases (like the gestures), I think we’re better off without some features.

And while most of the problems with Vista are directly blameable on Steve Ballmer and his crew, I can’t help but wonder how much better Windows would be if they were allowed to really do whatever they want with their OS as far as innovation without worrying about anti-competative practice.