[Rubber Duck]

Yes, unfortunately I am beginning to think that much of the scepticsim is justified.

I think that I incorrectly concluded that because Microsoft had claimed to be working on Longhorn for about 3 years that the integral browser would already be at an advanced stage. My incorrect assumption has clearly been that all they need to do was separate the browser routines from the new operating system and we would be in business.

I think recent events suggest that at the point Bill announced the launch of IE 7.0 bugger all work had been done on any new browser either intergrated or otherwise. The further delays with Vista also suggests to me that we have also been totally misled on how much development work had actually been done on the New Operating System.

It may well be that the answer is the assessment of barriers to entry in this market. It may well be that Microsoft correctly concluded that in order to prevent new entrants producing competing operating systems, they had two choices. The first is to launch on a programme of continually updating the operating system. The second would be to pretend to be doing just that!