We can only hope it fails, because RT is basically an Apple style jail cell without the pretty garden.

The more consumers stupidly vote with their dollars for monolithic control by a single corporation over the devices they purchase, the sooner the internet will revert to something akin to the dark ages of Compuserve and AOL a decade ago.

And, you will find you don't really own what you paid for anymore. Like a Playstation, if you alter it, hack it, put something on it they don't want you to, you'll get sued, locked out, penalized.

All that can be done with clever combinations of copyright and license agreements you have to sign at purchase, which usually nobody reads.

Like Apple's new Lightning connector: copyrighted, even though it does nothing that a standard USB connector couldn't do just as well. And it has a chip built in, solely to prevent you from plugging something in that Apple doesn't want you to plug in.

I hope people wake up before these things turn even more extreme.

Interesting, what makes you think Windows 9 will be here by 2014?

History is against you, given that only Me has had a life lasting for such a short time and that had more to do with introducing the NT core to the home than anything else.

95 lasted 3 years, 98 lasted 2 years (only 1 if you actually believe that 98SE was a whole new OS), Me lasted for 13 months, XP lasted for 5 years, Vista just shy of 3 years and 7 3 years.

For 9 to be here in 2014 you have to believe that 8 will be as unloved as Me was, which from all i've heard from people who have actually used it, is not the case - everyone is stating it runs quicker than 7 on the same hardware.