>”Windows 95 included a browser built into the OS that not only served web-pages, but handled many of it's other display tasks. They're also the guys behind MSN, Windows Live, Sharepoint, Infopath... Just now jumping on it, eh?”

Yup, Sharepoint, and Infopath launched when?? 10 years after Win95? Good point! They were definitely “on it”! “Hey, Wait for me! I am supposed to be the leader!”

Oh yeah! MS was ON TOP of the Internet with he release of Win95! Not!

Windows95 validated the concept of running a fully graphical interface (yup, those Macs sure are lousy! …let’s copy them!), but Windows95 was almost obsolete when it shipped! It only vaguely addressed the most important trend of the era – the emergence of the Internet and the Web. Sure, Windows95 included a rudimentary first version of IE, but it had to go through 2 or 3 more versions before it was a competitive browser. Moreover, Office95 didn’t even have an e-mail client. Outlook didn’t even debut until Office97.

Even Gates did a mea culpa over missing the Internet trend!

And in many ways, history is repeating itself with Vista and Office07. After many anticipating Vista for a very long time, while the graphics finally take advantage of the current hardware capabilities, and with the addition of greater search capabilities and security safeguards, Vista and Office2007 may have missed the biggest opportunity in software today – the move to Web based applications (or software as a service (SaaS) or Web2. IE anti-phishing features do not exactly constitute a new way of working on/with the Web.

What does that mean? For two examples, neither Vista nor Office2007 have capabilities to let you save files directly to online storage. And IE lacks fundamental much-needed enhanced tools for managing and organizing online credentials and connecting with web based bookmarked services.

But it does have lots of new features, widgets and sidebars! Unfortunately, just like with Win95 and the Net, Visa lacks a new way of working with the web.

Yup, they're going to tell you how it will be when they can't even come up with a worthwhile "media center" after how many years?

>How does Media Center relate to this at all?

How? By Convergence and Integration. You know, the topic of the article??
Obviously the concept is a bit confusing to you. Just as Media Center has proven the concept illusive to them as well!

"Orcas" huh? With their code bloat, it should have been called "Blue".

>”I'm sure you could easily show them how to include all of their features in a much more efficient and conservative manner.”

Oh, and as far as bloatware? I don’t have to come up with a viable alternative with a much smaller footprint! Everyone else has!

With Win95 , it was the 3rd party apps that defined the extension of the capabilities, not the OS itself. And I suspect that like Win95 and the net, so it will be with Vista and web based apps.

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