Yeah, the registry is great. It would be much better though if the data was stored in application specific data files. They could still provide a unifying API but make it really easy to remove an application.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it wouldn't really be a registry then, would it?
Depends on what your definition of registry is. If the current registry is stored in two non consecutive disk blocks (due to fragmentation), is that still a registry? Think of per application files as disk blocks, with the registry API caching those into memory and operating as if it was a single database.