Read the whole thread. As stated before, what they fear is a Closed online store managed by MS, where Steam would have trouble working.

Actually, Steam itself proves that people are willing to accept closed systems...

Anyone who does any kind of engineering R&D knows that Windows and Office products are getting progressively worse. They're designed to be user friendly for a casual windows user. For anyone who wants to do anything "sophisticated" it's a huge pain.

Nobody is forced to use Steam for non-Valve SW, the fear is that MS Store (or whatever it will be named) become mandatory for all Windows SW sold online, paid certificates become mandatory for every SW, either on physical support or sold online and HW become locked and usable only with OS certified by MS or certification authorities approved by MS. Now, if MS owned both OS and HW, like it does on its XB consoles and its other first party HW like Zune, this could be acceptable, but MS wants to close the whole PC platform, of which it owns only one of the many possible operating systems, and that used to be one of the most open systems, despite Windows being proprietary. But I don't worry too much, as Android could succeed doing also on PCs what Linux failed at: tablets are Android's trojan horse for this market, and all the limitations MS imposes on portable (and cheaper) versions of Windows to avoid HW makers start using them on full fledged desktop and portable PCs instead of the more lucrative full version of Windows, will just make Windows tablets less competitive. Greed can be good up to a given limit, but too much greed can blind businesspeople. But MS, also pushed by Newell and other third parties, could do the same reasoning and realize it's pushing itself too far and give up its most dangerous plans, let's just hope it do it.

Right, I feel the main problem with Vista was significantly higher requirements over XP. As long as you had the latest hardware, it was fine. But many upgraded their XP machines and there were problems galore.

When I was a technician people would tell me they hated Vista. When I asked them to explain why, they never had any real answers. I think most people heard it was bad and believed it to be true.

Windows 7 seems to be considered amazing, but I don't see any difference. It has problems much like past operating systems. But people were told its good so everyone just seems to agree.