i am not a great critic of microsoft, but hey, i really do love netscape, and apple, too~ they used to be part of my life, until microsoft came along and wiped them out. true, microsoft has made so many things much easier for me. it simplifies my life. it simplifies everyone's life. i'm not going to lie and say i hate their products, i'm not going to say ms sucks, but charging a loyal user every time for upgrading to a new product that is "X times better" than it's predecessor is just to much. i have always upgraded to newer versions of windows when they come out. i have used win 3.1 95 98 me and now i'm still eagerly awaiting xp (even though i'm getting tired of all this money laundering scheme). i know that i'm going to buy xp when it comes out, but hey, that's just coz i feel there is a little hope that this product might really be better. and if it is? why did they charge us so much for a product that is "x times WORSE"? and if it's not? why did they charge us to buy the upgrade? piracy? i think that's microsoft's own fault. They took it on themselves. i mean, have you ever hear of illegal linux?

maybe MS should release the kernel source freely(like linux) after all they still have their office suite that a lot of people use. and who knows if they were to do that then maybe windows would be more stable and more customiseable and more user friendly. Then there would even be more versions of windows out there, more variety in an OS has to be good....

shuddup ! pimple pete

micorosoft cares much more about antipiracy than about functionality of their products Regards Miro

I believe that they should at least let use have the upgrades for free. But I believe that they should only give it to people if they have Windows 98 and have registered it with Microsoft to prove that they didn't illegaly get it.

MS loses less to piracy then bill gates makes in intrest alone.they should be concentrating on the quality of their products, but hey is long as they've got your money i suppose they dont really care

I don't really think they get "x times better". Of cause, they make life easier with more fancy desktop and menu bar. But for functionality, you can see the trend. Compatibility always goes opposite to stability. NT is the most stable one as it is not compatible with lots of software. And who said that Windows 2000 is solid rock stable? It still is on the first day when there is no software in it. So they're not really "x times better", they did nothing other than making it fancy and nice looking, and claim that it's better. For XP, how can it be incompatible with both the 9x version and NT version of Norton Anti-Virus. I would expect that it can be compatible with one of the two. Does that means that all the software company has to build new software again and again to match up their Windows?