Thanks for your entertaining and informative account of the "Big Switch." My first PC was the famous Gateway 386/20, and I had a GW 486/66 later on - both good machines, especially the 486, which ran Win 3.1 - remember Program Manager?

When Win 95 first appeared, I spent the better part of two weeks on the horn with MS trying to get the new os installed on overclocked 486/60s our MIS dept had been wise enough to buy, and which I had to contend with for a couple years until the company bought me a Gateway 166, which seemed so powerful at the time that I named it Thor, this after hanging the Achilles tag on the flaky, odd-ball 486/60's My Computer slot.

I'm still hanging in the air with the MT6705. The low cost, bright display, good keyboard, light weight, low battery consumption, adequate power for all but cutting-edge gaming, and generally cool appearance add to the machine's appeal, and if I could be 99 and 44/100ths % sure of getting XP aboard with all the required drivers available, I'd be inclined to keep it.

However, after reading most of Peter Gutman's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protect

By Peter Gutman, I'm inclined to avoid as much of Vista as possible, including having it networked with my other machines. Your suggestion has merit and I've already done a little poking around in that direction. Thank goodness there are talanted people contributing their talent to outwitting the bricklayers and lockmeisters at MS.

Thanks again for recounting your adventures getting that last XP box in N America - seriously, GW has a few refurbished XP boxes available. Dell's XP offerings were disappointing.

A boxed retail version of XP pro is probably a good investment about now, and I'm also forced to rethink my decision to move away from desktops, since it will be easier to keep a desktop going than a laptop.

I expect sales for boxed XP to be brisk once people wise up to Vista's underpinnings.

Cheers,
S