Dave Plummer

I don't know.

Because it's also annoying.

It is, especially if you have to phone activate.

And that was just the case that we had to carry with us as an albatross around our neck, where you've got to pass data up to the clearinghouse, the backend systems that are going to approve your key.

You've got to tell it all your hardware parameters, like how much memory and hard drive space and the various things the hardware key is bound to, as well as the product key.

And you've got encoded in letters and numbers that somebody is willing to read in over a phone.

And if you think doing product activation is painful over the phone, could you imagine being the person that worked on the other end of that line?

I mean, that's just got to be a mind-numbing job to listen to product keys for eight hours a day.

One of my more popular episodes of late has been why you can't move the Windows taskbar.

I had no idea, but the outrage is palpable amongst people that you just put it on the left or top and you can't anymore, and it is an affront to their existence.

And I understand it to a certain extent.

Well, it does cost, right?

Because the freedom to put the start menu on the left or the top or the right...

really increases the complexity of the code that renders the start menu and lays out the tabs and does all the things.

And now it's a much larger surface for bugs and it's a much larger piece of code to maintain.

So you probably need more developers or another developer or some portion of a developer's time.

So the question becomes at what point is it still worth it to satisfy the niche needs of a small set of users?

And those decisions weren't mine to make, but I could see it from both sides.

I bet it was.

I bet it was a scheduling decision when they rewrote the start menu.