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The world's largest software maker is betting that users will be ready to upgrade within the next couple of years as personal computers become more powerful, faster and affordable.

That's a damn stupid bet given that we've already reached the point where most users simply don't need the extra power, and certainly won't pay more to get it ... and the "faster" computers will of course remain more expensive. Only about 50-60% of the people I know ever even upgraded to XP. Why would they jump to Longhorn? Especially when the biggest "benefit" will be eye candy? Translucent windows! Whee! I know that's why I upgraded to Mac OS X, so I could play with the opacity of the windows.

And all these points are nothing when compared to Palladium, the Mother of All Privacy Violators. Once the public gets wind of that, MS is going to have a PR nightmare on its hands.

As always, games will drive the hardware to its limits.

That's a damn stupid bet given that we've already reached the point where most users simply don't need the extra power, and certainly won't pay more to get it ... and the "faster" computers will of course remain more expensive. Only about 50-60% of the people I know ever even upgraded to XP. Why would they jump to Longhorn? Especially when the biggest "benefit" will be eye candy? Translucent windows! Whee! I know that's why I upgraded to Mac OS X, so I could play with the opacity of the windows.

The issue is within the business community. Most larger corporations lease their computers w/ 3 year leases, and rarely, if ever, buy out the lease. So every 3 years, they get new computers. When MS phases out Win2K, like they did with Win9x, there simply won't be a choice. They'll be forced into either XP or the later versions, just like now, they're offering Win2K on business machines as a special order.

Mark