Have you just purchased a new computer, desktop or laptop? Did you get the choice of what operating system to use? That was probably your first introduction to Vista. Vista with its 50 million lines of code says it is strong on security. But security for who? The computer owner/user or the providers of the software that is bundled into all of the new machines?

For instance, Microsoft Office 2007 is included on all new computers with Vista. But what if you're content with your windows 2003 and don't want to relearn and spend money for the newer version? Simple, just uninstall Microsoft Office 2007, right? But you discover one major problem, there is no option to "uninstall" available that will allow you to remove Office 2007 from your system. One whole gig of memory wasted on a program that you don't need and didn't ask for and cannot use without paying big bucks.

And how about Norton? Once its trial period is up, and you decide against using it, you find that when you try and uninstall it, it gives you an error and sends you to the Symantec site, to gather your information and says that you need further software just to uninstall something that you didn't want and didn't even ask for!!

Is this a vast conspiracy to take away your rights to chose what you use on your own computer? Is this "Digital Rights Management" gone awry? Is Microsoft through the Vista operating system trying to control how you use your computer and what you install on it?

Microsoft has already headed down this path by not giving the consumers a choice of operating systems. As far as they are concerned, it's Vista or nothing. XP is being removed from retail stores and will soon no longer be available. It seems that all the companies in this possible conspiracy ship their computers with nothing but Vista and will tell you without Vista there is no warranty.