Geep, I'm a closet "mac bigot" :) Whichever way you look at it, Apple simply build computers for creative types, if they didn't they would have all migrated by now. Besides which, you've already got the Mac version of poser anyway... Apparently XP doesn't play that nice with the SB live and Geforce2 cards unless you download the latest version for the unified drivers from creative and invidia, a colleage was having stability problems this week because of that. It should be mentioned that neither set of drivers, even from such industry heavyweights as these, are digitally signed by MS, so you'll have to click through the "stability" warning to install them... As for the release of XP, it all comes down to cold hard cash and rationalising your product line, you can grow your dominance far more easily if you have a single platform, (as opposed to two, Me & W2K...) MS is not known for, nor has it built a monopoly from, being altruistic. later jb