I think it's about time that operators gave their customers a more flexible, customisable interface, rather than the rigid corporate front you do get, especially from Orange! I want to be able to set up my home screen the way I want, not the way they want it to be!

"Microsoft's major innovations..."

That'll be a first then. Get real, "major innovation" is something like the multi-touch interface of the iPhone/iPod Touch (or, if you can wait, MS "Surface"). Oh, and I don't own a single Apple product, it was just an example.

For Windows, MS need to thank Xerox. For Vista, the need to thank Apple. For Excel, Lotus 123.... etc. etc. OneNote perhaps is their innovation ? What have they done that is a "major innovation" ?

Great, so it'll be like a Windows PC (e.g. from Sony) where there's a whole heap of sh*t (usually 30-day trial versions) pre-installed that you don't want, and that's really hard to get rid of, just because Orange gets a back-hander from the vendor.

"I want to be able to set up my home screen the way I want, not the way they want it to be!"

FWIW I could reconfigure my homescreen on my SPV C500 quite easily. Since then I've used only PalmOS Treo devices, which I religiously flash back to the ROW firmware.

their innovative use of the word innovation perhaps?

"I want to be able to set up my home screen the way I want, not the way they want it to be!"

You and about 5% of the rest of the mobile user base. The other 95% will just use whatever comes with the phone which is unfortunately why the operators matter now and will continue to matter for the next 5 years. No operator (or MS) apologist me, but I get irritated with the idea that the mobile industry should align itself with the handful of early adopters who can be bothered to configure anything on a phone. Its precisley the attitude that encourages the appalling interfaces and design that pass for cutting edge on todays mobile phones.

"I want to be able to set up my home screen the way I want, not the way they want it to be!"

You and about 5% of the rest of the mobile user base. The other 95% will just use whatever comes with the phone which is unfortunately why the operators matter now and will continue to matter for the next 5 years. No operator (or MS) apologist me, but I get irritated with the idea that the mobile industry should align itself with the handful of early adopters who can be bothered to configure anything on a phone. Its precisley the attitude that encourages the appalling interfaces and design that pass for cutting edge on todays mobile phones.

> What have they [MS] done that is a "major innovation" ?

Created a novel method of printing money by selling the same uniquely flawed OS to the gullible - year in, year out. That's about it.

Not because I am an early adopter (I am) but because of what Orange end up doing to a perfectly good handset. That the bulk of Orange's customers care not that the handset is loaded up with their crippleware is irrelevant. But it is quite telling to the Orange victim when you pull out the same handset of theirs, do something and hear them say "Ooooh, my handset doesn't do that, how come yours does?".

Generally, the intense branding that Orange applies reduces rather than enhances the experience for the customer. That they don't realise it is, again irrelevant. If they don't now, then they will in the future.

"... the operators matter ...." Only to deliver the network and reasonable tariffs for voice, text and data - nothing else. Orange are notorious for not doing any of those - they are last in the delivery of reasonable data tariffs. They even charge for the customer to access the Orange portal! So as the notion of using a handset for data grows into the user's psyche their discrimination against the likes of Orange will grow also.

As handsets become more like mobile computers, particularly for the basics, the resistance to branding will occur. How many of us, for example, would accept an Orange-branded personal computer? Yet we all manage quite nicely thank you without the "assistance" of our network provider. Expect the same in the mobile world.

Orange are becoming an increasingly irrelevant bit player.

Pirate flag - beware any mobile operator who hijacks your handset