Good post Jeff,
I think the Apple comparison is important here. Desktop search has been around for years on XP, through external apps. On Apple it’s there by default. FlyAKite OS makes Windows XP look really nice. Apple OSX looks good by default. eXpose clones exist for XP, on OSX it’s there by default.
I have a friend who constantly slags Apple users saying “They’re so impressed about $feature, I downloaded a program years ago that does that.” Much as my Linux friends say “The Windows guys are obsessed with $feature, you can download the tarball of blah, and if/when it compiles it implements a command line version of it”.
If it isn’t shit hot by default, then it isn’t shit hot. It’s shit that you’re asking the user to microwave for you.
Des