From BLOATware to BROKENware: Windows 7 'Starter' Ed.

MicroSquish has done it again: After building up high hopes for a new streamlined OS to replace that pile of BLOATware they dubbed Vista a few years ago, they’ve hornschwoggled us again. The beta & RC versions of Windows 7 were amazingly stable, but just recently I had the dubious pleasure of evaluating the much-anticipated OEM release on the latest “net-book” line of lap-tops, specifically Windows 7 Starter Edition: a version streamlined for this particular type of hardware. Unfortunately, it’s quite a bit TOO “streamlined”. Get this: there is NO way to change the desktop background (or wall-paper)! <--DUMB @$$ED IDEA. There’s no “Personalization” feature for modifying the desktop, and even right-clicking on any picture/image/photo brings up a pop-up menu that LACKS the “Set as desktop background” command. Here’s Microsoft’s explanation: LAME!! Even Windows 3.1 allowed wallpaper modification. Of course, they’re more than happy to include very-conspicuous links to an “anytime upgrade” to a much more expen$ive version that allows such. Very ironic that this restricted ver. of Windoze 7 is only available as OEM on net-book computers –-which happen to be available in almost every color in the candy store (ours is a nice luminescent purple, much better than those hideous pink ones that look like Pepto Bismol!).