Ever wish you could speak your mind on some blog, but the jerk running it has the commenting system turned off? Well Google has good news for you: A new feature coming to the ubiquitous Google Toolbar will add a discussion system to every web page on earth. Just pop open the so-called Sidewiki window, speak your mind, and every other Google Toolbar user in the world will be able to see your thoughts when they access that page and click the “comments” button.

Google is hardly the first company to try such a feature, but it may be the first that’ finds success with it. I remember vividly a similar plan from a company (the name of which is now lost to the web) that let users leave Post-It style notes on any web page they visited, a sort of digital graffiti that let them tag pages, telling the proprietor and others exactly what they thought of the content.

It wasn’t a hit. At the time — circa 2000 — the software faced an immense backlash from observers who felt that the software was devaluing the appearance of the web (at best) and infringed on other people’s copyrights (at worst). Some felt it was the equivalent of picketing in front of a retail store.

Of course, back then we didn’t have the comment culture that we have in the late 2000s. Today, commenting systems are all the rage from blogs to news sites to video portals, and people actively encourage readers to “join the conversation” every chance they get. But that’s likely to generate flack from website operators who already operate their own comment systems. Now they have another company to compete with for comments on their own domain… and that company is Google, no one’s idea of an easy nemesis.

How it will ultimately shake out is anyone’s guess.

There’s good news at least in the way Sidewiki works: Google says it will rank comments for appropriateness, and comments will be linked to Google user names — no anonymous blather allowed.

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Windows 7 arrives on October 22.

But waiting for the doors to open? That’s for suckers only.

Want to get a jump on the crowds and get Windows 7 ahead of time? You really don’t need anything special: All you have to do is buy a new PC. Microsoft is giving vendors the OK to start preloading Windows 7 on PCs as soon as they receive their allotment of product keys.

That should happen as early as October 12, over a week before shrinkwrapped copies of the software show up on store shelves. Now you’ll never know exactly which computers have Windows 7 on them unless you drop by a retail outlet or configure a computer for yourself online — but if you just can’t wait to get Windows 7 going on your machine, it should be a relatively foolproof way to get it early.

The other option: Preorder a configure-it-yourself system with Windows 7 on it. The holdup isn’t testing to make sure the OS works on the hardware. Vendors already have the software they need and are simply waiting for the product keys to arrive in order to finalize the software installations. (Without them, Microsoft wouldn’t be able to validate the software as legitimate and would eventually cease to function.)

PC makers are of course ecstatic about all of this — every day Vista has to be sold on a PC instead of Windows 7 is another sale that’s probably lost. Plus, the ability to jump the gun on packaged-copy sales by 10 days gives them an advantage, an opportunity to entice would-be upgraders not only to get Windows 7 early, but to get a brand new machine in the process and completely avoid the hassle of having to install the upgrade themselves.

Don’t worry, it may sound shady, but everything’s on the up and up here, and no one is breaking any rules. Microsoft is even positioning the ability for vendors to sell preloaded PCs as a “competitive advantage.”

If you buy a machine early, let us know in the comments!

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