[snip]
... re-configure all apps every couple of months ... generally hate the computer ... live nightmares taming the computer if, lord forbit, they have a driver problem
Or they can spend a few hundred bucks extra at the start.
And people will still just buy the Windows box.
I have become pretty uncompromising in that regard: I do not debug non-trivial Windows problems. It's wasted time -- you rarely learn anything valuable during the process and there is almost never a way to ensure the problem is fixed once and for all. You get nothing in return for your investment.
I find Windows is incredibly arcane when you leave the boundary of the GUI. You have to use weird command line utils that aren't installed by default, and edit strange registry or policy settings. Not too long ago I fixed an issue with a System policy on a W2K server I setup. I found an answer to the problem in MSDN but by god the hoops I had to jump through to find and solve the problem. And this was a simple fix. I hate to imagine what more complex tasks entail. Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com