(Yeah, long posting gap. Switching to full time teleworking has consumed my professional attention since summer)

I attended OSCON again this year.  “Attended” means I was able to sneak away for a day to wander the exhibit hall.  Its always worth the price of gas and parking to see what is up in open source and collect lots of swag.  The best swag this year was from Microsoft in the form of an Internet of Things kit containing a Raspberry Pi.

At the Microsoft booth as in years past they set up something of a lab and encouraged you to do various activities.  Each activity was worth points, with prizes for different amounts. At 300 points you got the kit I mentioned, and I’m sad to say I was late meeting up with my wife and kids because I had to get one of the kits.
The kit was a simple cardboard box that contained the Pi in original packaging, a breadboard, power supply, HDMI cable Ethernet cable, Ethernet USB dongle, various wires, resistors, LEDs, a touch sensor, a couple buttons, and some chips. I am not an electrical engineer, so I still have not figured out the chips yet, but the Google tells me they are shift registers and i2c compatible.
I still don’t know why they included a Ethernet dongle, as the Pi has a port built in. Maybe some project that needs two nics?
One other included but was a micro SD card preloaded with the Windows IoT image.  I thought that was cool, and even took it to work to show my coworkers.  But I was disappointed on first boot.  It does nothing more than display a splash screen with the IP address.  No Power Shell interface, no simplified ui, nothing fun.
So I turned to the MS IoT web site (there was a card in the box with the URL). I found directions for a few projects, and some looked interesting.  But the getting started instructions said to first go download Windows 10, install the latest Visual Studio, then connect to the Pi. 
So I need a whole other freshly imaged PC just to program my Pi?  I think MS really missed the point. The Pi is a complete small computer, complete with its own video out and USB in, capable of running its own programming environment. Its not an Arduino device, which it didn’t look like was supported by Win IoT anyway.
So I bought another SD card and loaded NOOBs.  I’m much happier using Python directly on the device, even if I am just using IDLE. I may come back to the MS stuff eventually, whenever I get around to loading a Win 10 VM on my RHEL 7 box.