XP has died on me twice, it's more memory efficient than 9x versions of windows, but that's about it. Try tweaking under the hood, or installing the wrong software at the wrong time and it still dies for no reason. In place of a decent working system they have simply added a new face and lots of popup boxes telling you that what you're about to do will make your OS unstable. "Do you want to continue? (y/n)" Some may see this as an advance, I don't. I installed some new DVD software, it killed my machine, I tried to roll back only to find that it had switched off the backups without asking me to save space, becuase the OS alone had run the 2Gb boot partition I gave it out of space... I consulted the MS press book "XP for sysadmins" it told me that in situations where drive space was tight, it would switch of rollback archiving. went into the technicalities of how to switch it back on, and how to save space, etc. it refered me to another page. There It told me that if I couldn't roll back, I could attempt to rebuild by building an identical external system, and copying part of it across, (but a full explanation of this was "out of scope") or I re-install, or "consult a professional" In comparison, the worst I've ever had to do with a Mac is re-jig the order in which system components (drivers) load. I've extensivly tweaked them to make them do things they were never designed to do. (budgets are short in UK universities :) and even with the abuse that computer illiterate students give them, I still never had a problem with them except for obscure things like the NV-RAM battery dying. Admitedly, PC users coming to a mac, may find it harder, because the two OS'es operate in different ways. But I can tell you from experience, that users with no computing knowledge always find macs easier to use, if only becuase of the consistent "look & feel" and the single mouse button. It's sad that Mac users have to wait, but not unexpected, especially given the numbers involved. later jb