Windows hasn't been my desktop environment for about seven years now. I have found I have no need for it, a Linux desktop does everything I need to do very well... Yet Microsoft's recent announcements about "Windows 7", the new version of Windows, find me sitting here feeling I have no choice but to discuss it, or be drowned out as a hopelessly irrelevant columnist. This is the power of the marketing megaphone of the monopoly player on the desktop, even though it isn't my desktop.