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"Apart from Windows 95, when have people ever lined up to buy a new release of Windows? Windows 98? Windows 2K? Windows Me (ugh!)? I don't remember anyone being excited over a new Windows release post '95."

95 was notable, in my alleged mind, becaused I remember the media coverage it got - but my recollections of even 98 was that it was quite popular among the faithful. And yes, I even purchased that upgrade because those among the faithful were still giving me the 'oh, no, really, _this_ is the one. As I mentioned at the end of my post, I have avoided MS OSes for about the last 10 years entirely on my own machines - frankly, when 98 turned out to be business as usual, I convinced myself to even ignore folks I would have, until then, at least given _some_ credence to.

The various NT versions, in my recollection, got all sorts of favourable reviews, and certainly was highly touted among the faithful I knew. ME is a conundrum to me. It disappeared so quickly - replaced by XP in about a year! - and I, even after all these years, can only recall one person who claimed to actually have it on a machine.... not to mention how out of sequence it was 3.1 in 92, 95, 98 (burp) XP in 2001. 8-)

So for someone who was no longer nose to the grindstone in Windows on a day to day basis - XP is arguably the replacement for 98. And in the sequence of 2.x, 3.x, 95 and 98 - remember, no 'fixes' in the early years, you jumped at the upgrade, hoping that some of the worst problems were being addressed.

"I think you're greatly exaggerating the hardware requirements to run XP, in the same way people exaggerate the hardware requirements for Vista."

Again, I never bothered with XP, so I am not making any claims, per se. I am saying there was a lot of pushback based on performance. I am saying people balked at upgrading because they said it took significant hardware upgrades to maintain their perceived performance thay had with previous versions. You already agree with this; it was in your opening statement.

Now, Vista, as I mentioned, I have _some_ experience with. Dual booting Linux gives me some 'side by side' data, and it is quite pathetic. Building the same code with gcc is right at 3 times slower. Given, that is not 'native' code, so I try something like a 'backup'. Hours to write a couple of DVD/s? It is not like I have to exaggerate anything ....

And of course the famed Windows user experience out of the box .. ' you just downloaded this, sure you want to touch it? I take no responsibility if you touch this. I am not touching this without you admitting anything that happens is your fault. '

Yeah, the hardware overhead is a little different concept there. It is replacement for what you throw against the wall.......8-)

I might accept what you say about XP, given I don't have the direct experience. But if you are going to say Vista 'runs fine' and doesn't have considerable hardware requirements, I'd really have to ask if your are doing anything more than booting the box ...