[johniegrad]

Pirating XP? Why? I've never worked with such a miserable operating system. Perhaps this money and energy could have been put to better use improving the product.

[newcats]

I've been around computers longer than a lot of people here have walked the earth, and IMHO, Bill got things right (finally) with XP.
I have had one machine running for almost two years straight in XP, and never had a problem with it.
Yea, it is a memory hog, but with RAM still a great bargain, just upgrade.
Donning my flame- retardant suit for the influx of Apple and Linux geeks. :)

[EagleUSA]

It is hard to put reason into business planning when you are the defacto monopoly righ out of the chute in this, or any other industry. MS is still blinded by arrogance and greed, and it shows in their predatory marketing, which has become more important than trying to erase their image of putting out half-baked software to keep stockholders happy, while putting the consumer through "service pack hell".

It is standard MS. I still do not understand why someone has not made a competitive OS for the computer user/consumer (no not Linux) and taken a large share of MS's market. It is there for the taking.

[capt. norm]

I've never worked with such a miserable operating system.

What...you've never worked with Windows 95?

[Petronski]

Why? I've never worked with such a miserable operating system.

Exactly. To get something workable, one has to go through and turn off all the crap that runs and/or reports home in the background (auto update, that auto backup thingy, the playskool interface, win messenger, that layer of dumbing-down drek between user and file manager, and so on and so on).

Do all that and what one is left with is Win2k.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I've never worked with such a miserable operating system

Appearently, you haven't worked with much.

XP blows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, and 2000 (in certain situations) away.  Not to mention a host of other OS's.