>Not a statement of fact, just a gut feeling. Would you do the same?

I think its a pretty big jump. VS comes with a lot of little tools that let you spy on what is going on inside windows, and what system resources an application is using. It wouldn't be that hard for somebody who knew what to look for to see what MS was doing, if they were doing anything. Doing something like that would be too hard to hide, and besides, MS apps don't seem faster than other vendors apps to me.

I personally think that your statement is completely unfounded, but that, too, is just opinion.