While I have been a PC user since the mid 1980s I have always found Microsoft's aproach to OS design to be severely lacking for a company that makes so much money yet don't seem able to sink it back into the areas of development that really need attention. CPM-86 showed great multitasking potential back in the mid 80s yet it took Microsoft another 10 years before they even introduced a multitasking OS. And we are now only getting closer to shaking off old DOS legacy code still built into the OS. I don't know why Microsoft didn't simply build Windows correctly back in the late 80s/ early 90s and simply emulate DOS in software rather than continuing to try and keep building Windows on top of DOS code for which we have been paying for for years in terms of instability. Bill G. has made some unwise decisions over the years, and though it has not hurt his success in business it peeves me that the money made is not really used to improve the product.

Though given that web browsing is simply accessing a network and providing FTP, HTML and Java protocols, web protocol should be provided transparently as you browse files whether they are local on your computer or elsewhere online. This pretty much means that IE capability should eventually become integrated as are all other network protocols. It unfortunately makes sense. But Microsoft's claim that they can't not integrate IE with Windows is an absurd defence. It is a business decision to make such a claim, not an issue of software engineering design.