Harry Marks:

Windows is not a mobile operating system and should not be branded as such. Microsoft should abandon the Windows brand on the mobile side to show that it is capable of growing and adapting to the shifting tech landscape. This isn’t about “staleness” vs. “freshness”, this is about what’s best for the brand and Windows isn’t a good brand for mobile.

I agree with this entirely. The worst thing about Windows Phone 7 is the sodding name. It’s clunky and unwieldy; worse, it links something new, fresh and genuinely exciting with something old and creaky. And it means you can’t bung it on a tablet without it suddenly sounding utterly stupid. Well, even more utterly stupid. Imagine:

Hi, here’s my new Windows Phone 7 tablet!

Sorry, have you gone mental?

Of course, Ballmer’s WINDOWS IS THE BEST mentality means the company’s attempting to weld bits of Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8, in order to create something that’s both shit for touch and pointless for PC use, so we’re not going to see a Windows Phone 7 tablet anyway. If we did, Marks has a good idea about naming:

Rename Windows Phone 7 to “Metro”, based on the UI name. This would make it much more versatile for other mobile devices, like tablets.

He adds that this would stop people avoiding Windows Phone 7 because of the ‘Windows’ part and also get engineers excited about it being a new frontier for Microsoft. Instead, Ballmer’s reached the frontier and erected a fucking great wooden Windows billboard, while Apple, Google, HP and others happily show off their super-futurisitic Direct Into Your Brain™ adverts.