Will be interesting if anyone comes up with a "Monopoly" or "anti-competitive" class action lawsuit. It's hard to compete in the marketplace with an entity that can charge you $85 for WinRT while their cost is Zero - yet you all have similar hardware costs. The $85 per unit cost savings places MSFT at what some would call an unfair advantage.
Now, if MSFT were the sole purveyor of these WinRT tablets, one could argue that they are merely another Apple type of supplier. But, unlike Apple, MSFT is selling their OS to tier suppliers such as Dell, HP and others.
Going on record as saying I’m not thrilled about this. MS is designing an OS around tablets and smartphones, and while is probably in their best interest for the current market, leaving desktop and laptop users out of the mix might be seen as a move to force people on to tablets and smartphones.
Mea culpa: I completely understand that there will be a standard MAK desktop available, but according to my sources, it will not be enabled by default. This, I believe, will change before release, or the installation option for OEM/retail disk packages will be guided to allow the user to choose their default input option. Windows 7 does this to a lesser degree by having tablet support enabled by default.
Overall, Microsoft is getting better with their operating systems, but they are trying to cater to too many market segments at a time. Windows RT sounds too much like CE to me, and we all know how well that did.
That Metro is one butt ugly GUI. Is there gonna be a way to get rid of those fruity-colored clunky tiles? It’s like it was designed by Fischer-Price for a Speak-N-Spell.