You know technically it's not my turn again to add a blog entry but I just got excited about this one and ... well couldn't help myself. Big news: Microsoft is finally doing what I have been saying they should do for 10 years - they are opening up retail stores.

I'm sorry but no matter how you dice it; even if Apple computers DO turn out to be the best computers ever invented (smirk, sniff ...) I will always stand by the fact that a huge contingence of Apple newbies that jump on the Apple band wagon did so because of some very nifty advertising/marketing. Ooo look at the fancy white boxes in that store with all the beautiful nerds ...

In case you haven't guessed it, I'm one of the last of the MS supporters, now currently down on both knees begging God (Mr. Bill Gates) to not entirely mess up Windows 7 as he and his cronies did with Vista. I should also add at this point as a disclaimer that yes I did indeed advise my wife to buy a Mac but that was only because I was midly interested in learning what all the hype is about (another interesting topic of discussion for my next blog entry).

Why do I personally like MS operating systems? The file system is more intuitive for me, you have a host of cool free software available, I can use things like MS Access without having to mess with running parallel operating system (yeah ... you know you are one of those proud Mac users that has to run multiple operating systems - admit it - that's a pain having to dual boot etc.) and honestly I think I'd miss the blue screen of death if I swapped over to Apple.

So anyway ... back to Earth. Did it seriously take Bill and the boys THIS LONG to catch on to the fact that 99% of computer users out there wouldn't know what a computer is if it walked up and "bit" them (tried to make a funny bit/bytes reference there but ...) on the nose? So lets think about this - if most people barely know how to work a computer how are they supposed to use one to buy one? And please don't tell me that they can still go to Best Buy because that's kind of like asking a t-shirt store to sell logos - Best Buy is in the business of selling computers not operating systems. The fact of the matter is it's the Apple retails stores that catch the attention of the average Joe/Jane walking through his/her local mall.

My hope is that Windows 7 does turn out to be better than Vista, that MS does a half decent job of producing hip and trendy retail store to attract the non-computer literate 99% and that I can finally relax and use the MS file system and computer setup that has kept me personally satisfied since I started using PC's all those years ago. For now I will sit nervously happy amongst the 75% of Windows users waiting to see how many hardware components of my work computer fail when I upgrade to Windows 7.