Aren't they supposed to be ADDING stuff?

Today, I stumbled upon this list of features removed from Vista. Some of them are understandable (like the deprecation of gopher support... since nobody actually uses that anymore), but others are utterly bewildering.

Some highlights:

• "Although it is possible to customize the action Windows will take when the hardware Power button is pressed, it is no longer possible to set power options to ask the user every time what action to take upon pressing it. Therefore, selecting a different power action in each case is not possible."
  I hear the next version will randomly choose which action to take.
  
  
• "It is not possible to back up and restore licenses in Windows Media Player 11."
  Sweet, another reason to re-buy content you already own. Again. (Or maybe another reason to steer clear of DRM'd stuff in the first place)
  
  
• "In the Windows Vista version of the Backup application, it is not possible to specify what files and folders to back up and what files and folders are to be excluded. Users can select only document categories to back up. Files from a specific path or over the network also cannot be backed up due to this reason. Backup also does not present a list of files that will be backed up."
  No wonder Vista took so long, they were too busy replacing previously functional components with dog shit.
  
  
• "It is not possible to override AutoPlay by pressing the SHIFT key as was possible in Windows XP, though it can still be disabled through Control Panel."
  Well, hopefully this will convince people to disable AutoPlay once and for all, since it's one of the stupidest things to do security-wise... (Wouldn't a great prank be to burn a picture CD for a friend with an autorun script that deletes all their files? And if they use Vista, they wouldn't have a backup because the backup utility is useless...)
  
  
• "The user interface for advanced file type functionality (such as manually defining a new file extension, defining/editing custom secondary actions for file types, showing extensions only for specific file types, or customizing the icon for file types) has been removed. Windows Vista-compatible applications are expected to use the new Default Programs API which allows per-user file type associations for applications."
  I guess the per-user thing is nice (though shouldn't all such settings be per user anyway? I have no clue if they were like that before or not.) Another plus is that it prevents your roommate from changing your 'My Computer' icon to goatse... in fact that's the only reason I can think of why they might have done this...
  
  
• "The graphical representation and progress indicator of the defragmentation process have been removed from Windows Disk Defragmenter. It is also not possible in the RTM release to manually specify which drives to defragment from the GUI without using the command line defrag.exe utility. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 includes the ability to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on."
  Actually, this is a feature in disguise. The more familiar people become with the command line, the more likely they are to move to Linux. At last, Microsoft puts their users' interests in front of their own...
  
  
• "Sound Recorder in Windows Vista can no longer open audio files. Moreover, it cannot save in lossless (uncompressed) WAV format when run without using any switches; instead, it saves in lossy 96 kbit/s WMA format. Only the version of Sound Recorder from the N editions of Windows Vista saves audio in WAV format by default. Also, all the basic audio processing features such as format conversion, sample rate conversion, adding echo, reversing the audio, changing volume and playback speed, splitting, inserting and mixing audio have been removed, as has the graphical viewing of the sound wave spectrum."
  Sound Recorder used to be the shittiest audio program around. Amazingly, they've managed to make it even shittier. I'm impressed.
  
  
• "Support for reading Microsoft Office Word documents (*.DOC) has been removed from WordPad."
  Somewhat understandable, because they probably didn't want to update WordPad to read newer Office formats, but worth mentioning nonetheless..
  
  
• "The Pinball game has been removed."
  Sadly, that was the best game they had...
  

Fortunately for me, I've switched to an operating system that's constantly gaining features instead of losing them...