InfoTech: Windows - it's English but not as we know it.

The Beta test version of Windows 7 (the successor to 2000, XP and Vista, but not in the same development line as 3, 3.11, 95 or 98) includes seven "wallpapers" specifically for the UK market, demonstrating that Microsoft does pay attention to where its product is sold.

But it still defaults to US spelling, the menus are in American and the services menus are still headed with "xx CENTER." And it the menus still show "Favorites." How crass is that? It's bad enough that morons in burger bars convert "fish and chips" to "fillet and fries" when you order, but at least you can laugh at them for being minimum-wage no-hopers (1): not a charge that can be laid at the door of Microsoft.

Nice try but, really, they should be able to spell for the UK market by now, surely, and if we are expected to pay more than many other countries for our software (as we are) and as we are not supposed to buy "grey imports" (as we are not) then surely someone would think that the default spelling set up should be ready for the UK?

We are now seeing a generation of semi-literate people schooled on Microsoft product such as Word where the spell-checks have never been set up properly, where they spell words that appear in error messages in American (they see them a lot) and where they think dates are jumbled around so as to make sorting them into any effective order impossible.

Pretty pictures are nice - but making an English product (and making it the standard in English speaking countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India and many more) would be a much better use of resources.

Creating a localised version of the operating system (and allowing it to be used outside that country - we are, of course, globalised - where the operating system sets the defaults for the programs installed over it would be a really useful feature - and help with both comprehension and literacy.

Unless, of course, Microsoft wants everyone to read and write American. Now that's imperialistic.

(1) Irony: most of them do have hopes - but few chances. That's not a cause for ridicule, and we don't intend it as such.