Office Depot: Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at The Inquirer, by May 30th Office Depot will only be carrying computer products that have been certified by Microsoft and carry the 'Designed for Windows XP' logo. This may be an initial glimpse at how Microsoft could introduce Digital Restrictions Management by ensuring all retail hardware and software products are approved by Redmond."

I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[FreeLinux]

But, this is simply a marketing decision. Most of the "lesser" applications, the ones without certification, usually aren't hot sellers at the depot.

Did you Vote [linuxsurveys.com] for Linux?

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[account_deleted]

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Or..

[WittyName]

It could mean Office Depot is sick of getting returns for software that "almost" works..

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[Angry White Guy]

Uhmmm, What about Counterstrike?

Must be a slow news day at /.

[jbellis]

Microsoft may be a monopoly, but Office Depot is hardly the only place to buy software.

Might not be as bad as it's made out to be here

[Random BedHead Ed]

Software will still be available online, and from other vendors. As long as Microsoft doesn't require software makers to register with MS in order to make their products function properly on the OS, it can't be as bad as the article makes it out to be.

Just another Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's attack on 3rd party developers over the years have made it pretty obvious, but I guess some people still haven't got the message: this is an invite-only party.

Re:No

[d3kk]

How is Microsoft abusing it's monopoly power? Don't get me wrong, I don't like them much either, but this seems like it's entirely an Office Depot decision as opposed to a Microsoft decision.

Wouldn't this hurt Office Depot more?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, according to a friend who works at Staples, for every one copy of Office or serious stuff they sell they sell 3 games and about 20 pieces of $10 old shovelware. Assuming the same is true at Office Depot, what are the odds that the shovelware is going to be, or bother to get, certified?

People are not going to start buying $60 games from you just because you stop selling the $10 games, they'll go to someone else selling the $10 crap.

Re:No.

[Anonvmous Coward]

This isn't a microsoft decision, it's an Office Depot decision.
Haven't we seen this in the past when 3.11 change to 95, 9x changed to 2000...
Move along.

I agree, this is hardly an MS Monopoly move. You all complain about software not working the way it should, but when a step is taken to light a fire under companies to make it work better with MS's big OS, the Bill Gates of Borg icon comes out.

You all really should figure out what you want from MS instead of taking the attitude that anything they do (or, in this case, somebody who's selling MS products) as negative.

Business Alliances

[FortKnox]

Sweet crap people. Its called a "Business Alliance" and it happens an aweful lot, and not just in the IT industry.

Re:No

[Telastyn]

*shrug* It's not a leap of imagination, or even too much conspiracy to think that Office Depot won't be getting any BSA visits in the near future... or a nice donation from their friends in Redmond... or a nice discount on their own windows software for being 'such good friends'

I agree that it's not an abuse of monopoly power, but to assume Office Depot does it out of the kindness of their hearts and not their wallets is perhaps naive.

This IS a big deal.

[binaryDigit]

If others start following suit (read Walmart, Best Buy, etc) then this could be a very big deal indeed. Esp. if these retailers extend this thinking to their online sales. Think of it this way, Microsoft could effectively control the release dates of it's competitors products (or at least retail release dates) by controlling exactly when they are granted "certificiation". They also have the advantage of ALWAYS having at least a bit of a heads up on any products that their competitors are about to release (no springing a new Office suite on'em). Once again, having the OS company also sells apps is just a bad idea. How long before the OS will refuse to run any apps that have not been "blessed" by Redmond themselves?

Re:Fight this!

[bwt]

I disagree. Do NOT get the ones where you can disable it. Get the ones that do not include it at all.

Re:free market

[alienw]

If it was an Office Depot decision, it would be OK. If it was a decision made under pressure from Microsoft, it's not OK. Because monopolies have unprecedented power, they are subject to additional restrictions.

Re:Might not be as bad as it's made out to be here

[Mitreya]

It is a first step... once that goes through, other things will follow. Do you really think that Microsoft wouldn't consider requiring registration of all software products?

Anyways, isn't that monopoly abuse? Again? Few months after the trial?

Glimpses

[riqnevala]

"This may be an initial glimpse at how Microsoft could introduce Digital Restrictions Management by ensuring all retail hardware and software products are approved by Redmond."

It could also be an initial glimpse at how I could suddenly switch to linux, if windows gets too restrictive..

Have you sent "installed linux today" -email to microsoft yet?

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I have never bought software from an Office Depot, but doesn't this mean that no MacOS or Linux products can be bought or sold there? That's a little alarming."

Is there even a such thing as a Linux app being sold on a store shelf? (pssst, that's partly why Linux isn't exactly ovewhelming people in the desktop world.)

As for Mac, according to OD's site, the only software they have is MS Office and TurboTax. Yep, Office Depot's really racking up the karma with Slashdot.

MS has no obligation to approve your product

[DunbarTheInept]

MS has no obligation to approve a product. They can deny it for any reason. They could deny a product a certification purely because it is a product that competes with their own. Also, when Office Depot says, "We only will sell XP-approved software", without the qualifier, "when said software is for Windows", they are also cutting out Linux and Mac. Granted, it's entirely possible that bad journalism is at work here, and we are looking at a misrepresentation of what Office Depot's real policy is.

What the heck does that mean?

[isomeme]

This may be an initial glimpse at how Microsoft could introduce Digital Restrictions Management by ensuring all retail hardware and software products are approved by Redmond.

By similar reasoning, it could be an initial glimpse of their plan to breed a race of immortal dragons to rule the world. I mean, seriously, exactly how does a business decision by Office Depot map onto a technology initiative by Microsoft? Sure you can draw a dotted line, but it's a long and twisty one, and at that level of conspiracy analysis you really should have your foil-lined hat on before you start.

Re:Could just be the start...(was:I'm with you...)

[cayenne8]

Well, I peruse my Sunday ads every week, looking for bargains on things I can use....I've gotten some good stuff at Office Depot, mostly hardware or CDR's there...I go where the best deal is...I've already gone to their site and emailed a letter expressing my concern about this policy. Are you going to wait till your 'favorite' store does the same thing?

Re:Well...

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

Actually according to the headline, "Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved"
I don't think Office Depot considers Red Hat or OO to be Windows XP apps.

But it might be

[FuzzyDaddy]

It might work, but you will get one scary-ass warning from Windows. I installed a new ethernet card in an older system, and there was a slip of paper which showed the message that would pop up if installed on XP. I wish I could remember exactly what it said now, but it would certainly have made me think twice about the software.

Remember the EULA on windows from two years back? It said "This product cannot be used in life-critical applications, because it contains Java from Sun Microsystems." Don't underestimate the damage a sinister sounding warning message can cause.

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[Schnapple]

I think by "products" they mean things like video cards, printers, etc. There's an approval program for these sort of things, and since people tend to buy the "official looking" things, Office Depot has found a nice way to get rid of the non-selling items.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dealing with product returns is probably a far bigger issue than anything Microsoft has to say.

Re:piracy (but piracy of what?)

[frovingslosh]

Won't this just increase the rate at which software is pirated?

Perhaps it might, particularly if the trend moves to other retailers. Office Depot isn't the first place I think of to get software, but apparently some people do buy there, and as a low profile seller they might have been a good place to start this practice, then when it shows up at the major retailers it can be dismissed as "nothing new".

But in asking if it will not just increase piracy, you should also ask who is behind this, who would be hurt by piracy and who would indirectly benefit. While OfficeMax didn't outright say so, I would bet that there was pressure from Microsoft to put this policy in place. So what software might this cause an increase in piracy of? Software not officially blessed and approved by Microsoft. Might this not be a small side benefit that Microsoft actually would welcome, putting another nail in the coffin in the little guy that will not play by Bill's rules? Clearly all Microsoft products will have the logos (even if, as is many times the case, they don't meet the same standards that independent developers are required to have to get that logo!) so this will not increase their piracy, only that of the competition.

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[chrisseaton]

I wish everyone would follow the guidelines. Why the hell would you have a link to the uninstall in the start menu? How often do you have to run the uninstaller? Can't you spend all the three seconds to go to the add/remove applet, and have a cleaner menu. Whenever I write an installer, I just put one icon - a shortcut to the main program - at in the Start/Programs folder - so subfolder, so uninstaller. Just the shortcut. I can't see why anything else is nessecary.

Re:MS has no obligation to approve your product

[cayenne8]

According to the memo from one of the Vice Pres. at OD, said "Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer and Notebook Computer must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores." This doesn't sound like just windows software only, this sounds like ALL software and hardware sold through them has to be XP certified...whether or not it can be used by another OS such as Mac or Linux...

With Good Reason

[burgburgburg]

This is not simply a marketing decision. It isn't even a good business decision (unless Microsoft has promised Office Depot to make up any lost sales of hardware/software, or had threatened to not give them volume discounts unless they did this). This is a monopolistic action by Microsoft through a proxy to completely reign in the marketplace.

No matter how onerous, capricious or illogical, MS can make any criteria it wants to grant/withhold the "certification". Testified against us? Your program doesn't handle Croation well, you're out! Working on Linux compatibility? Your drivers try to use "reserved" space, you're out!

Re:Must be a slow news day at /.

[Blindman]

The issue isn't that it is Office Depot, but that someone as done this. Basically, they have made Microsoft the gatekeeper for inclusion on their shelves. The fact that this is Office Depot doesn't make it a big deal, but this may open the door for places like Best Buy or CompUSA to follow suit. If that happenned, then it would very quickly become difficult to buy a software product that Microsoft didn't approve of.

It isn't the magnitude of the step, just the direction. I, for one, don't like where this is going.

Mod me down

[ShooterNeo]

Mod me down for saying this (on a side note : I think its lame to say "mod me down" : but if I don't say it, people will think I'm trolling. By putting that tag on my message I'm admitting the message is inflammatory)

Anyway, there are some notable advantages to a system like Palladium. Theoretically, it could enable certain types of applications that aren't possible today which involve trusting the client. Yes, I'm aware that even if the hardware is integrated into the processor someone could still steal the private keys the system depends on, and create an emulated version, cracking the system wide open. I'm also pretty confident the initial versions will have some subtle but still gaping hole, allowing them to be cracked with ease.

However, in theory if it all works right (and from a theoretical standpoint it IS possible to make it work right and be unbreakable) applications running under its protection would have their memory space protected against intrusion.

There is NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING planned that would stop you from writing your own applications that hide under this umbrella (but an integral part will be the system kernel, so microsoft OS only), and I'm sure microsoft will encourage you to do so. There is nothing that will stop you from running untrusted code : it just won't have access to resources belonging to trusted applications (unless you've hacked it of course)

Palladium won't prevent you from installing a different OS on the system, you just won't be able to run trusted apps in that OS (technically its possible to give these same features with open source. The actual keys would have to be hidden, controlled by someone, but everything else could be viewed and contributed to) . Yes in theory SOME types of remote hacking exploits could be stopped. Network applications would now only process messages that are signed by code that your palladium chip certifies as meeting certain criteria. This could make it possible for a microsoft server app to only even look at messages sent by a microsoft client app, preventing many hacks.

This means the application could have secret information in it that needs to be hidden from the end user. For instance, the application could be a movie player that decrypts a spiffy new high definition format which is capable of encoding 1080p digital movie quality video, copied byte for byte straight from the version used in theaters. It could be an online gaming client that to run efficiently must have certain information protected from access and tampering(coordinates of other players, your crosshair location, the current state of the world physics system, objects occluded from view, and many many more). The current generation of MMORPGs have very limited interactivity (cannot aim, shitty AI, no physics, no elements that require player twitch skill) because the client cannot be trusted with anything (and even then it has to have SOME information that could be useful to a hacker) nor control anything interesting.

And yes, it could be a document viewer that reads encrypted documents. The document files themselves might contain more information than the author wants revealed, so the viewer would obey certain rules about when the file can be accessed, and what machine. Currently this is impossible to create because someone could steal the decryption key the viewer uses right out of memory, or edit its code such that it no longer obeys restrictive tags in the file.

None of this would stop you from using untrusted players to view your current data files, and nothing would force you to convert. Unfortunatly, since the keys to the kingdom will be controlled by microsoft bad things could come from this. They could charge monopoly prices, use it to squeeze out their competitors, and do many more things. However, I believe that this has the potential to be a killer app. If you don't want microsoft to rule the software world even more than it already does, perhaps the open source community should look to creating their own, equivalent, alternative.

It HARDWARE - not software

[gordie]

From the article: "Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer and Notebook Computer must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores" - note the italics are mine. We are not talking about software but hardware that must be XP certified. So don't worry about that game, worry about that Video card or printer etc!!!!

don't like it, write

[geekoid]

Really, write a clear and concise reason why you don't like there decision.
You could be surprised at how seriously corporation take these letters. Hell, I got Saturn* to drop the price of a car when a I wrote them a letter at how angry I was at the way a sales rep. treated me.

*Saturn is a car company that has a non-negotiable car price.

Office Depot Matters

[the_rev_matt]

Most small businesses do their shopping at Office Depot or a comparable office store. The "who the hell cares, no one buys computer related items anywhere but Fry's/newegg/CompUSA/random local specialty shop anyway" posts are naive and uninformed. A lot of non-technical people buy their equipment at office stores, not least because many of them have corporate accounts there. The implication here, while not stated explicitly, is that there will be no non-windows software at all. Back in 99/00 I convinced several clients to put linux on their servers largely on the basis of it being sold at Office Depot. This is an important marketing presence for linux. Not critical, but important.

Moreover, having a fairly major outlet only carry XP certified hardware will possibly encourage manufacturers to cut back on support for non-XP operating systems across their product lines. This will not only affect Mac/BSD/Linux users, but users of Windows 2000, NT, 98, and ME (yes, both of them).

Re:free market - BS

[frovingslosh]

Anyone who thinks Microsoft isn't behind this just hasn't been paying attention. And if you think it's a free market where Microsoft is concerned you haven't been paying attention. They have been found guilty in court of monopolistic practices. Sure, they just decided they were not going to accept the sentence, and actually managed to get a ruling that changed their punishment to effectively "just do whatever you want", but the fact that they were found guilty still remains. It's not a free market when a major monopoly gains it's power by illegal means and used that power for illegal unfair trade practices. Given all past history, and the wording of the Office Depot letter (requiring the XP logo and not just a Windows logo, for example) it's extremely likely that Microsoft simply did business as usual and used their monopoly power to force Office Depot to do this, and will soon force others to do the same.

I just bought a notebook, and although I searched I was not able to buy one with the features I wanted in the price range without paying the extra Microsoft XP tax. Don't tell me it's a free market when a company found guilty of these monopolistic practices in federal court can continue to do business as usual.

Hardware is the Target

[Mahrin Skel]

This is a squeeze on the hardware manufacturer's more than anything else. One, you have to pay MS for the certification tests (I forget how much it is, but it's a sizable chunk), and they probably want to turn this into a profit center. No matter what they do, the OS and Office market is not going to give them significant revenue growth, so they're going to extract a tax from the peripheral hardware side.

Two, if you can't get your stuff on the shelves without MS certifying your drivers, and MS is a bit...slow about certifying devices with vendor-supplied Linux drivers.... Guess how many companies will look at the 98% of the peripheral/card market that is Windows and the 2% that is not, and decide they don't need to distribute their own Linux drivers, after all? We'd be back to 1995 for Linux drivers, rolling our own from reverse engineering.

Three, to really implement DRM for video and audio, you need to build it into the video and audio cards, and MS is still pushing their own DRM standards. If they can turn XP certification into a club to beat the card-builders over the head with, how long before you can't buy a SoundBlaster that isn't hard-wired for MicroSoft DRM?

Maybe that's all so much conspiracy-spinning, but the implications and conclusions look pretty obvious to me.

--Dave

Re:With Good Reason

[e2d2]

Or maybe they are tired of getting returned merchandise that doesn't work on WinXP. I'd save the conspiracy theories. It might have been a decision to cut costs simply because they were getting too many returns on "10000 pieces of clipart!" and "5000 applications for your PDA!" (only 10.99!)

Besides does anyone really give two shits about Office Depot and there virtual cornucopia of over priced software and $30 ink refills that make you into a felon if you try to open them?

Open mouth, yawn, repeat....

This is GOOD!

[freeze128]

This means that all of their existing products that do not meet the XP logo requirements will be found at a discount in the clearance bins....

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[binner1]

Personally, I always found that each app having its own folder full of links was a) unnecessary for a power user (put links in your help menu), and b) confusing for non-power users.

A start menu divided by Program Type (graphics, sounds, internet, etc) and then containing just individual programs makes much more sense. The Windows start menu gets out of control too easily...which may have been part of the reasoning behind the rethink that is XP's default?

To each their own!

-Ben

BS, MS has a BIG obligation for certification

[MmmmAqua]

MS has no obligation to approve a product. They can deny it for any reason. They could deny a product a certification purely because it is a product that competes with their own. Also, when Office Depot says, "We only will sell XP-approved software", without the qualifier, "when said software is for Windows", they are also cutting out Linux and Mac. Granted, it's entirely possible that bad journalism is at work here, and we are looking at a misrepresentation of what Office Depot's real policy is.

Whoever modded this 'Insightful' obviously did not bother to do any research beforehand. Maybe if anyone had bothered to look here [microsoft.com] before spouting off with misinformed bullsh*t, Slashdot might be a better place.

Follow the guidelines, pass all the test cases, make sure your VeriSign account is valid, and guess what - you get an XP Logo certified product. Microsoft has a huge obligation to approve a product for logo certification once it's met the criteria; a two-fold obligation to both hardware and software vendors, and users. Microsoft would be taking an enormous credibility hit (which they really can't afford) if it turned out that the logo process was completely arbitrary. And talk about antitrust implications if that were the case.

Microsoft may be the evil empire, but they aren't stupid, and not everything Microsoft does is for the sole purpose of f*cking a competitor in the Windows space, Apple, or Linux. Jesus, I'm no MS fan (this post brought to you by my Al PowerBook), but get a fucking clue...

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Re:Mac Hardware?

[Have Blue]

They don't even need to slap up the driver. 99% of USB devices work with a Mac out of the box, OS X has built-in generic drivers.

I don't like this article...

[Eric Damron]

"A SCHEME BEING IMPLEMENTED by Office Depot - almost certainly at Microsoft's behest"

"Almost certainly" means that they're not sure. The article really pushes my anger buttons and I don't like it. Before the INQUIRERER pushes my rage button I would like to be sure that they know what it is that they are talking about so that I don't go off and make an ass out of my self.

This may be a dark plot by Microsoft, it wouldn't be the first time but it also could be a decision made completely by Office Depot. Please don't push my buttons if you're not sure.

Re:Monopolistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Having read the memo it looks to be some boilerplate from Microsoft. Sure it has Office Depot's name on it, but it could easily say it was Best Buy or Circuit City. Even if Office Depot wrote it, they'd only be doing it if Microsoft was offering something in return. Places like this expect to get "bribes" from vendors to ensure in store placement (end cap, shelf space, position etc.), and to get pictures into the Sunday flyers.

Strong arm or blackmail, I don't know, but these kind of tactics got Microsoft in trouble last time.

If a product doesn't work (or the customer doesn't think it does, or just doesn't like the color) they don't ask many questions and ship it back to the vendor.

Re:Or..

[Noksagt]

It bugs me when people accuse others of actually giving a shit about karma. I don't think he was whoring-the post was funny. I use XP. It is pretty nice and much better than the rest of the Windows family. It is nice and needed to introduce some more usability into the stability of Windows 2000. That being said, I've seen more BSODs on XP than 2000. Most of our more critical machines use 2000 for that reason alone.

XP isn't perfect & does "almost" work--just happens to be a lot closer than many other attempts.

Who Looks At The Cert Logo?

[istartedi]

You *have* to look at the system requirement anyway, and you don't need to be "certified" to say that your software runs on Windows.

For that matter, who makes major software purchases at Office Depot anyway? Getting the best price is so much easier online, and unless you woke up and suddenly decided that your office had to use the next version or you were all going to die, the wait for delivery is no problem. I mean, it's one thing when a monitor goes out and you have to have it right now, but I can't conceive of any situation where you would suddenly have to go to OD and buy a shrink-wrapped title.

At any rate, I wager that this is no harm to OD because most of the software they sell is probably "big name brand" stuff. Smaller vendors that don't cert will just keep selling online and through other outlets.

How Do We Know Inquirer Isn't Lieing?

[reallocate]

The Inquirer piece abruptly concludes with an alleged Office Depot memo to suppliers. The Inquirer neither explains the circumstance by which they came into possession of this alleged memo nor does it even bother to asert that the "journalist" whose name bylines the story made an attempt to contact Office Depot to verify it's veracity and authenticity.

So much for journalistic credibility. Slashdot has neither the interest or the ethics to verify facts (hiding behind their "we just post other peoples' stuff" alibi), but I guess we can now add another source to the list of online rubbish vendors.

pain in the ass to conform to platform standards

[GunFodder]

I'm glad someone is taking a stand for lazy coding. I wish every application had its own unique look and feel. I love spending half an hour trying to figure out where all the menus are, or where the exit option is. I can't wait until uninstallers are spread throughout the system so I can spend 10 minutes trying to get rid of a piece of software. I wish that all help documents were either 8 billion line plain text files or embedded in a custom help browser.

And I am so glad that most programs are installed in subfolders named after the fucking publisher, because the first thing that jumps in my head when I think of Nero is "Ahead", and Neverwinter Nights always makes me think "Bioware".

Re:Or..

[ONOIML8]

And THAT is why I don't sell ANY Microsoft products or products that operate on Microsoft operating systems.

If you are right it could be that Office Depot is getting as frustrated as I was. If so they may take the same course of action that I did and go exclusivly to Linux/Unix solutions to offer customers or get out of the software business all together.

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[Loki_1929]

"Why the hell would you have a link to the uninstall in the start menu? How often do you have to run the uninstaller? Can't you spend all the three seconds to go to the add/remove applet, and have a cleaner menu. Whenever I write an installer, I just put one icon - a shortcut to the main program - at in the Start/Programs folder - so subfolder, so uninstaller. Just the shortcut. I can't see why anything else is nessecary."

That's why I like purchasing your software, I don't have to think for myself.

Personally, I want the uninstall in the start menu. You asked why; I ask, "why do you care?". There's a point at which you have to decide for whom you're writing the software. If you're writing it for yourself, don't expect to sell it. If you're writing it for your customers, write it how they want it. Your product may have all the lovely little flashy certifications and logos in the world, but if it's garbage, that's what I'm going to tell my customers when they ask about it, and most of my customers trust my judgement.

In principle, this is a Good Thing

[devnull17]

I don't see why everyone's so up in arms about this. Windows is a proprietary platform, and should by all means take advantage of one of the strongest advantages of its nature: centralized quality control.

Say what you will about Microsoft OSes; they've become stable enough that most crashes IO see are the fault of either hardware, drivers or third-party applications. Having a seal of approval makes a lot of sense in the consumer market: it increases accountability for the platform vendor and tends to raise software quality overall--at least when properly implemented. All game console manufacturers have been doing it since forever, and it's had very few side-effects.

As long as development tools are available to anyone and the testing process is inexpensive and fair, I don't see any problems with this, and I certainly can't draw a straight line from software quality control to tighter DRM, as many of the more paranoid among us seem to be eager to do.

Re:Might not be as bad as it's made out to be here

[Weirsbaski]

It is a first step... once that goes through, other things will follow. Do you really think that Microsoft wouldn't consider requiring registration of all software products?

The original title of the article:
Microsoft: Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[pod]

It's not just help links (though what about when you need help and troubleshooting info and your app won't start?). What about Revert to Defaults, when settings get messed up beyond easy user repair? Games have that option often. Sure, it's just a command-line switch, but deserves its own Start Menu entry. There could be various post-install readmes, registration links, survey/merketing links, etc.

Also, I hate having icons in my root start menu, they should be in folders. Most icons are so butt ugly (and are GUARANTEED to clash with other icons) that it just doesn't look good. Instead, organize your start menu folders into groups, like Apps, Internet, Graphics, Video, Sound, P2P, etc. After this, you might as well break em out, and put them in the quick start area.

Re:Well...

[WWWWolf]

I don't think Office Depot considers Red Hat or OO to be Windows XP apps.

Red Hat maybe not, but OpenOffice.org sure runs on Windows too. (Or maybe my NWN design work was so coffee-powered that I thought I had installed it in Win98SE and wrote pages of stuff, when I in fact had done that in Linux instead... =)