Newton meets the Apple

There is no right to a free lunch. There is no right to common sense:

The European Union's blind hatred of Microsoft looks to have backfired bigtime and millions of European users looking to upgrade to Windows 7 will now have to reinstall all their programs and data rather than a doing a simple upgrade from Vista.

As a result of the EU's antitrust action - taken on the pretext of offering users more choice - Microsoft plans to ship special European variants of its new OS, scheduled for launch in October. The E version of Win7 has IE8 stripped out, while the N version contains neither IE8 nor Windows Media Player.

But because the upgrade path from Vista to the E or the N versions of Windows 7 won't support an in-place upgrade, users will be forced to do a clean install, having backed up all their files and settings and reinstalling applications afterwards.

All done in the name of your protection mind you.....