End of an empire.
This is a perfect example of how disconnected and bloated MS have become, and how increasingly irrelevant they will become if they do not get their act together. Your story reminded me of a recent netbook experience which had Win7 starter and would not allow my wife to change the wallpaper due to "restrictions" on this version of windows, crazy! Anyway, her netbook got trashed by a boot virus that I could nor repair so a re-install was needed. I baulked at the idea of spending half a day or more re-installing the whole thing, so I made an "executive decision" and installed Linux Mint 12 LXE in little more than about 20 minutes! More importantly she loves it, finds it more user friendly than Windows 7. It's exactly these kinds of situations which will keep on turning users away from the increasing garbage of MS. I recently bought my first table with Android on it, it's really excellent and easy to use and have no trouble working with my MS Office files on Polaris and connected to my MS Exchange account and syncing perfectly - why would I even need to think about Win 8 RT or even Pro to be honest?
