No need to complain

If you don't like Microsoft's products, don't buy them. Don't use them. There's a great deal of free software out there which can do a great deal of stuff very well. The problems that Microsoft causes are down to us, the user base, choosing to use Microsoft. If they're that bad, switch, don't just complain and live with it. I expect that pretty much everyone who reads The Register knows what to expect from Microsoft, so there can't be many claims of ignorance.

I'm a gamer, so I use Windows. I think Windows is great, because it has games available for it that I want to play. Microsoft write things like Directx, which may not be the best API for graphics, but it's unified development in the games industry which allows a lot of low-margin games companies to exist. If I didn't like the games Windows runs, I'd buy a games console. If I don't want to use it for email, word processing, web browsing et cetera then I won't. I'll use Linux, or if I really don't want to have a dual-boot system then I'll buy VMWare and run Linux in Windows.