Given that the 'readers' for all of the Office file formats are readily available on the web, why aren't they included as standard with Windows 7 ?Would make very little difference to the size of the OS - but WOULD improve the 'out of box experience'......and - potentially - reduce the need forpeople to use other 'viewers' like OpenOffice 3

I'll grant you that's probably true... It would make life easier for most of us. BUT... (there's always a BUT...) The problem, you see, would be twofold. 1.) If Microsoft included "viewers", they could be accused of all manner of misdeeds by pretty much anybody and everybody who's in competition with Microsoft. The DOJ would have to step in and there'd be yet another lengthy trial and well... Microsoft doesn't want to go there. You get the picture.2.) Windows is, as it is, already fairly expensive. Office document viewers for most people are pretty much useless. Ok.. So you can view a DOCX file. Great. Next you'll be wanting to modify it. Well... You can't. You need to buy Office or another Office alternative - like OpenOffice. So what would happen if Microsoft bundled Office with Windows? Well.. The price would have to roughly double. Not everyone would be willing to pay that - even though they may do so. It's one thing to buy Windows and have an essential component bundled in with it - like IE, but to throw in Office as well...It ain't gonna happen.It would further encourage defections to other OS's where there's a perceived"choice".For the record, OpenOffice 3 is NOT a viewer. It's a full blown office suite - and while it does boast MS Office compatability, it really doesn't do a perfect job of rendering some more complex Word documents properly. I have one document I've been using for 12 odd years with minor modifications that looks identical regardless of the OS and Office version when opened in MS Office but get mangled horribly in OO. It's full of tables.

Hello,that would be great, but as said before probably MS will fall into some kind of trouble. I think that's the main reason why aren't included. It happened before with IE and WMP. And even happened with a "Save as PDF" complement to MS Office 2007. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure they will came in the box with W7.Anyway, MS Office viewers are there, easy to download and install Regards. W7 Beta running on an AMD Semprom 3200+ (1800Mhz) with 2 Gbs of RAM and a built-in Nvidia 6100 VGA, and mate, it runs like a charm! And now on my VAIO FE31M Laptop.