Computers are finite systems, it is not about what they are like, it is about what they are.

Just because IE offers extensive functionality that is incorporated in what may be perceived as a sphegetti manner does not make it any more apart of the OS than any other application.

The main reason people believe it is part of the OS is because no alternatives exist for some of the functionality it offers... I guess things no one saw much profit in a third party microsoft help system... I guess the firefox developers are too lazy to read MSDN to figure out how to enable it to respond to url requests from explorer... neither of these points change IE's relationship to Windows.

This is a very arrogant approach too... just because you don't understand the full breadth of IE's functionality it must just be part of the OS. What an easy answer... rather than expanding tools like firefox to offer the same functionality, it is easier and cheaper to just blame MS for making it impossible to remove IE effectively.

Opera does the same thing... they make up excuses like how ActiveX is insecure so that users don't mind giving up functionality... in the end the users are either duped or required to use two browsers... all because Opera is too lazy or stupid to realize that the failing is on their part. (or maybe they do realize and are just lying to their clients?)

Your other thread has a laundry list of stuff that breaks when IE goes away... well yeah, that is what happens when you remove an application and don't replace it with anything. IE is so much more than just a web browser and many other components feed into it (in an entirely black-boxed manner mind you, which makes the competition's inablity to replace it all the more pathetic). Again, this doesn't make IE embedded.

cheers,

catch