Hi! I briefly tested Win2000 when it was still in beta. I was using Win98 at the time. I noticed that while in 98 I couldn't open many windows before I ran out of "resources", I could open many, many in 2000. When WinXP came out I understood that it had the same capabilities but I have been suffering for 5 years now, not being able to run more than a few things at a time. So I tested a clean install and discovered that I can only open 37 IE windows (google page) and 16 Explorer Windows before the thing craps out. (256 MB machine, and no, the swap file didn't increase from the 352 MB default--so the limit was not due to RAM). What I am asking is for someone who has access to a Win2000 or Win2003 server to try on a pretty clean, rebooted machine, to load as many IE (google page) or explorer windows to see what the limitations are in multitasking.

Is there any real point to this excerise...? Is there any realistic situation where one would have so many "windows" open???

trvlr, this is not a test to see how many windows can be opened but to test the resources. The limit means that you can only open say, photoshop and Illustrator and those two would be equivalent to say, 30 IE windows. Just a consistent way of comparing the OS. BTW, at the moment I have 12 IE windows minimized and 8 Explorer windows, 1 Firefox window, 3 notepads, 1 Ultraedit, 2 IM windows, Realplayer, and RealVNC and I'm close to the "resource" limit in WinXP. Not pleasant to say the least...

OK... understand... My colleagues who have used either/both those two items really emphasise the need to have a large ("humungous") amount of RAM installed...?

This has nothing to do with RAM. This is a limit in the stack in Windows98 and it appears XP too. Supposedly XP doesn't have the limit but it does according to testing. Please read this here: http://www.apptools.com/rants/resources.php