The MS Office tool bar gets a lot of flack. But it's not aimed at you or I. My mum can use it. Nuff said. Many corporate customers (lots of money) have legacy a

The MS Office tool bar gets a lot of flack. But it's not aimed at you or I. My mum can use it. Nuff said. Many corporate customers (lots of money) have legacy applications that require IE6. Cluttering the browser more would not be helpful and would garner more ill will. Backing out of the browser market and letting Apple/Google/Mozilla "win" would again be counter productive. IE8 is a good browser. Yes, its behind the others in many ways, but give them some more time. They had to build up from IE6, and I think they have begun to close the gaps quite quickly. I agree with open video and audio being a good direction. Merge with Linux? Why in the world would they do that? I don't have experience with the registry, so I can't comment here, but again, a linux style replacement is not going to be in MS's best interests. Ignoring the Linux part, yes, standardization is going to be key for them moving forward, and I think they have made some big steps with that in Vista => Windows 7. Why? I don't see how renaming possibly the biggest name in computing ("Microsoft") would help them in any way.