I hate to be so blunt, but if I were to add up the cost of Windows and all the software I need just to work, I would be out several thousand dollars, and that's a price that would cycle every couple of years, considering that 98 and ME are already out of the loop.

When I can buy a really fast $400 computer and for some reason, I'm willing to bet that it will do more than the latest Windows OS version gives on top but is a matter of support, and I can choose between spending $300 on the copy of windows (which is close to the retail price) that I need to do what I do, or $300 on another piece of software that actually solves the problem, but only runs on the latest version of Windows.... It's not an issue of "edginess" at all.

Partition Magic costs $70 and upgrades are $30. Do you think $70 really justifies the cost of something that does what it does? Likewise, I don't need Windows Media Player, outlook express and IE, and I would really prefer not to pay for them - and I don't think I'm alone here, but I know that factors into the cost of Windows. Where's the "Windows with all the networking but none of the apps" version? I wonder why it doesn't exist?

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