I have never seen a Windows machine that runs for any length of time without needing the intervention of an expert.
<sigh> this is where you're rubbing people up the wrong way. Your use of absolutes.... What if I said I'd never seen a competent IT department (sorry Neil and other IT pros, bear with me)?
My last but one laptop was built (we have a corporate "build" of software which gets installed on this weeks current "corporate laptop") by the IT department. Not only did it come with no anti-virus, it actually came complete with 3 viruses installed!! Does that make ALL IT departments incompetent? No. Just some individuals that work for them are. Just as in all aspects of life, some people are more competent than others.
Some windows machines need more maintenance than others, but that's generally down to commercial machines coming with a lot of "value add" software that is plain rubbish and individual users being incompetent and just clicking yes when software wants to install itself. Windows doesn't automagically run software that does things to itself just to frustrate the user you know....
We have 5 Windows machines (6 if you include the works laptop plus 3 linux and 2 FreeBSD, but that's another discussion) here - 4 are laptops that only ever get rebooted when they need to from being updated - they never crash, they don't need me to drop into the registry to fix problems, they all suspend/resume properly etc.... One of them is even 6+ years old and apart from the battery not holding charge, runs just as well as it did on day 1. Why? because the users (there are 3, me, MS arad85 and an 11 year old) know not to just install whatever is suggested by the web.
Does that make ALL windows machines perfect? Nope, but it does completely invalidate your sweeping statement that
all need the intervention of an expert (I can't remember the last time I had to "maintain" any machine here in the way you suggest)....
I could equally point to the lots of threads in this sub-forum where people are saying "I have problem x with my Mac" and make the completely inaccurate sweeping statement that all Macs need expert intervention - but I wouldn't do that as I'd be wrong.
I have given you my latest problem which can only be fixed by delving very deep.
Well, you've given an overview of a problem which a VERY quick google search leads to:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/messages-are-double-spaced/
which describes why there is a problem and offers 6 solutions. A few are of the "ignore it" style, but one jumps out as a permanent solution:
Edit the email template to add '12 points after' in the Normal style.
Seems fairly straightforward to me... Of course, the problem that is explained in that post may not be the one you describe, but then that's my interpretation of what you say is your problem.
I agree that if you want to argue, we definitely don't need it and as I say count me out.
This isn't an argument? Really? Could have fooled me.
The best definition I've come across of argument vs discussion is this one:
An argument throws heat; a discussion throws light.
It's nice and warm but terribly dark here....