This past weekend I had another desultory encounter with what some still believe is Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) interest in the "content" business. While trying to hook up to the Net a friend's ultralite laptop running Windows XP Professional, and bereft of the ubiquitous AOL (NYSE: AOL) software, I was taken on a tour of frustration as the preloaded Microsoft Network tried first to use a username it hijacked from another dial-up connection, then led me on a tedious and insanely slow walk through utterly irrelevant shopping and news links, none of which had anything to do with the Internet. I ultimately toasted the MSN connection and set up a third-party ISP account I had in my back pocket.
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