I've heard from Steven Sinofsky and Gloria Boyer about the different spellings of HomeGroup in Windows 7. It's all part of the plan, it seems. :) Here's what I was told:
The (trademarked*) feature name is HomeGroup.
The generic 'thing" created by the feature is a homegroup.
If the word "homegroup" happens to occur in a place where it should be initial-capped, such as a title, it is Homegroup.
(* To preserve a trademark you have to use it consistently)
Interesting. Given this, we can look at my previous example in a new light. I guess.
So, that's good. I'm not surprised to find out that Microsoft is working very hard on the consistency stuff. There's still a lot of work to do there, of course, much of it necessitated by a decision to remove capitalization all over the OS, compared to Vista, where everything was capitalized. (For example: Menu item and toolbar button names in Vista appeared as "Large Icons" and "Auto Arrange Icons" whereas in 7 they are, respectively, "Large icons" and "Auto arrange icons.") The big OS inconsistencies--like the taskbar/notification area stuff--are, of course, by design, and won't be changing. But this is an ongoing process.
Again, let's not misconstrue the criticisms here. Windows 7 is so good we can be picky. That's a good sign.