HMRC are only half the problem - it's activation and support you may have issues with. May be worth a try though, especially if you are over there on holiday. Bound to be cheaper than here.

Never thought about activation issues...might stick with Vista then. *Schedules a Vista Re-install for January 2010*.

That's what I'm doing. DX11 is coming to Vista as well as W7 by all accounts and I have little doubt that OpenCL will as well.

Hopefully some of the nifty features of W7 will find their way across, but I won't hold my breath. I also find that W7 doesn't thrash my HDD unlike Vista. I am 99% certain that Vista killed one of my HDDs by thrashing it to death on start-up.

Wouldn't there be some sort of "Get on the Internet" icon where you could connect and download a suitable browser, maybe from a list of choices?

I'm not sure, I don't think so - I think they're just bundling IE on a CD and letting manufacturers install whichever browser they like. I don't really like the idea of a full re-install, I hate spending a day reinstalling apps. and drivers!!

Funny isn't it, people complain about linux being hard work, when Windows takes a day to get going and I can have Ubuntu set up to my liking in under an hour!

Had an XP install up and running nicely in about 40 minutes over the weekend.

Didn't read the link....

Buuuut....How do we access the internet to download another web browser if there isn't IE to use first?

That's your problem. You're in the EU, you voted for the EU, Microsoft wants to say FU to the EU, so no web browser for you!

I think you can use the command line FTP command to connect to your preferred supplier and download the installer... Or buy a new PC with the browser of the manufacturers choice pre-installed...

I did?!?!

But yeah, I'm talking about maybe other people, I've got a portable FF on my data key, so I'm fine, can get other web browsers fine, but who ever decided to make this happen really needs to be slapped!!

Win 7 will also be bundled with a CD containing IE8, so no need to panic.

The version given to manufacturers will be, they can negotiate a secondary licensing to include IE8 on the machines. No mention of retail.

That said, the EU said that they have never asked Microsoft to include a version without IE and are not happy with the Microsoft solution.

This is just Microsoft soft telling the EU that they can play silly buggers just as well as Opera...