Bill writes: : I get around the pre-installed Windows issue that by assembling my own PC. When I have to buy an off-the-shelf unit, the first thing I do is wipe the hard drive, re-format it and install a clean install of W2K or XP. All the software I have works well with W2K, and it is just as stable or more so than XP. yup, win 98SE and win2k are great for me too! :) I've never bought a new machine as they rarely include good 2D cards, understandable since so few people would actually want a dedicated photo editing machine ..and the gamerz are the driving force behind PC development. Building the many I have scattered around the house lets me tailor them with stripped OS's, win98SE can boot in under 5 seconds and runs lightning fast on new hardware! There's also software that won't run under XP that I need, and hardware - I have a stunning A3 film scanner that can't be driven on anything other than 98/NT. It's not that I'm reluctant to accept change, I moved from 3.1 to 95 to 98 as quick as a flash - took me a number of years after 2k was introduced and the bugs ironed out before I moved a few more machines to that OS, but XP is to insideous - and vista .. (!!!) not likely! I'm certainly not looking forward to repairing Vista equipped PC's in the future but then you never know - I have had three people this week who's computers are to be stripped of XP and rolled back to earlier OS's as the owners are entirely sick and tired of XP. k
