Not defending MS in anyway, because i know they have their share of flaws/problems. But you do realize that MS has stock in Apple, and its my understanding that part of the agreement is that MS can use (take) 'features/programs' (ie the crazy application switching thing that Mac has). Now i dont know the specifics of it, and im sure that its slightly more complicated than we want this so we'll use it (and ill give you that even when they take that stuff MS doesnt always implement it as well) but that said, i dont think its fair to say MS 'rips off' apple when there is an agreement (technology sharing agreement would be the best term i think, but not sure how much sharing it is) between the two.

with that said, I remember the days when people with a mac had to pull the light and mirror show to be able to connect to windows file shares. maybe this has changed in recent years, but the point is you cant forget that even if it is better now (and once i disable 'idiot' (simple) file sharing on xp i generally have no connection problems unless its with someone using idiot file sharing or windows me) it wasnt always that. The simple file sharing in windows is one of the prime examples of MS trying to 'dumb' things down for the average user that doesnt know anything and making it harder on those of use who actually know what we are doing (which seems to be most people on this board, and probably everyone in this thread)

Please dont take any of this the wrong way, but I feel (and this is a generalization) that mac users tend to overlook any imperfections with the mac and point out all those (perceived and real) with the pc. Mind you most pc users do this too. The guy who works for me uses both on a regular basis and he probably is the most impartial opinion i've ever heard. he has pros and cons of both.

part of the problem microsoft has is that since they are so mainstream, and the compatibility is a big part of their appeal, when the release a new OS its excpected to be backwards compatible. So if they do a complete rewrite, starting from the ground up, and working on all the 'security issues' and other problems then they will loose that compatibility with previous versions of software (i read some article detailing this). I personally think they should bite the bullet and start fresh (keep it simple, and not put all this bloatware in) and it would help the product in the long run, making it much faster and reliable.

i could probably go on with more specifics, but ill say just 2 final things. Windows ME was NOT a predecessor to Windows XP (as someone seemed to imply in an earlier post). ME came out at the same time as XP and pretty sure it was more of an upgrade to 98, sort of a middle ground from going direct to XP. Also it was a total failure and from my few experiences with it had trouble with everything, I'm pretty sure microsoft stopped supporting it.

finally, i find it totally ironic that in order to get your product certified or tested with MS XP (whichever the lowest 'certification' is) you need to not have unnecessary reboots, yet nearly everything that MS itself puts out requires a reboot.

-Darth Simon

ps. I agree Win2K is a fine peice of software.

pps. sorry for the long post