1300 Setting in IE8 - not enough!

Our customers often feel abused and tormented by technology...it's just another rock in their backpack. So it was not surprising that I discovered today that Microsoft has built in over 1300 options in Internet Explorer.

In their own words:

There are approximately 1300 Group Policies for managing Windows® Internet Explorer® 8. Configuring these for the first time may seem like a daunting task.

How could a browser have 1300 options? OMG! What design purpose could be served by such complexity? Does the user want these options?

I spent over an hour finding and adjusting one of these 1300 options to allow QuickBooks to run for a customer logging into a session on a Windows 2008 Terminal Server. The default settings for Internet Zone security properties wouldn't allow QuickBooks to operate. OMG! Why does a bookkeeping program care about Internet properties? Can't I just use it to write checks and print bills? Obviously not in today's connected world.

Wake me up when the Windows 2008 nightmare is over. Can we just have DOS back?