Surprise surprise.....

I think the sooner vendors go to open source the better - I also wish Apple would relax a little to allow users to adopt their OS as there are a lot of clause all aimed at invalidating the warranty which to be quite frank put me off it.

For the past few years Microsoft have blatantly been marketing orientated and for some strange reason the powers that be overlook Microsofts data collection policies.

I installed Veritas onto a server once in which part of the server install was the .Net 2.0 framework - the router crashed during the install (which I didn't think was required anyway for a local install) - an error message flagged advising the connection to a URL had been dropped (something like - http://s.microsoft.com/register)

On querying this with Symantec (Who were seemingly as shocked as myself) it turned out Microsoft had taken the liberty of allowing each install to register itself. I did query the contents of data which was logged but alas I am still awaiting the information Microsoft said they would supply.

I must how ever point out another 'Big Guy' for who this is common practice is Sky TV - they also routinely collect personal data on viewing - although they advise they do not track where they get viewing stats from which to me defeats the purpose if you don't track where it comes from to allow corelation.