"Irrational"? Me? Way to go for the jugular, G!
You're right, of course (I mean about the anti-MS). In truth, windows is the best OS on the planet. My gripe is that it could be much better much quicker, only the competing alternatives are so incredibly lame.
Recently just for giggles I tried an install of SUSE 9.3. It would have been laughable, if I hadn't spent a week just trying to get 5 clean CD downloads. When I finally got the thing installed, I thought, "If this was 1995 this would be revolutionary". Not only did SUSE misdiagnose my monitors, graphics card and audio, it didn't offer me any apparent way to submit user-provided dirvers (I know there must be a way somehow, but in windows it's obvious). IMO, Linux isn't even the equal of IRIX, or the mac. Talk about fanboy-domininated PR.
So I'm not knocking windows. I'm knocking what that toad has done with the company and the opportunity. Most of his attention is consumed with destroying alternatives, rather than improving his own product. Sad to say, I think windows is our best hope for the future, although one of the things keeping windows honest is linux, and open-source software.
My point is that every one of my gripes about MSFT pales in the face of what Sony has done. And therefore this changes the playing field, and our expectations for our own machines. No one is going to gripe that Word and Excel phone home, when your Sony CD's threaten that kind of havoc.
So keep working on your Win Vista, Ham, although it isn't really meaningful to me until the WinFS arrives. If anyone had anything better, WinFS would arrive tomorrow.