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Jessica Rabbit and "mindless regurgitation" of "anti-Microsoft rants"

Twice in the last month, I've had commissions to write stuff about Microsoft. Much to my own surprise, both pieces were strongly approving of Microsoft software. I was obliged to praise both Windows Mobile (smartphone) software, and OneNote.

The smartphone piece praised Pocket Outlook, and compared Vista's new search features (derived from PO, and good) with the clumsiness of XP. The One Note piece basically says that it's an ideal podcasting package. Not only can you record your podcast on it, but you can index the audio really nicely at the same time.

Jessica Rabbit is just female interest. The point is that podcasts need indexing.

The problem (I told Register readers) - there's a copy of the piece here on Newswireless too - is simple. OneNote is like a camera which takes pictures - very good pictures! - which unfortunately can only be viewed on an identical camera.

Unless you actually have a copy of OneNote, purchased (not exactly cheap, either!) from Microsoft, you can't read Notes. So (I wrote) surely Microsoft could take advantage of this technical advantage it has, and generate more OneNote sales if it imitated Adobe? Adobe, if you remember, sells Acrobat Pro for real money, but allows anybody to download the Acrobat reader for nothing.

All we want (I pleaded) was a free OneNote note reader - along the lines of Microsoft's own PowerPoint reader.

Instant hate mail from the knee-jerk planet:

I'm all for Microsoft-bashing when they deserve it, and they frequently do, but if El Reg is going to start regurgitating this sort of mindless comment, I'll go elsewhere. More news, less 'comment' please.

It's like an old-fashioned "rwars" response. What was actually written, was pretty unstinting praise for an innovative product, showing that it has potential to be very successful in an area where it hasn't yet been used. What was read, was  a hostile comment suggesting that Microsoft should do something it hasn't done. "Mindless Microsoft bashing" is the diagnosis...

At least the letter writer got one thing right:

I didn't really get the point of your article...

 No shit...