A long time ago, you had two choices: 1) One hell of a competent and wonderful machine, but it was very expensive and you couldn't do all that much with it in the way of modification. You also could not write and sell apps for it without the manufacturer's blessing. Coem to think of it, you couldn't do jack on iot without the manufacturer's blessing. The CEO was getting more and more egotistical by the day, and at his zenith had an attitude that made Bill Gates' arrogance look like that of a timid Girl Scout. ...or, you could get hold of: 2) An insanely cheap machine that you could buy a zillion parts for from anybody! - sure, there were bugs and there was the occasional hardware hiccough, but damn the options were endless! AAnd, it was all backed up by the biggest and most respected name in the computer industry, even though IBM sold relatively few of "IBM Compatible" machines themselves. The headaches were legion, but the flexibility was ungodly, and best of all it was CHEAP! This is why "IBM Compatibles" blew Apple right out of the water. Apples were (and in many cases still are) vastly superior machines. However, especailly nowadays, I can get a LOT more performance for a LOT less money. Problem is, if I'm Joe Sixpack I have to kowtow to the gawds of Microsoft. (fortunately, I can play double agent and dual-boot with Linux :) ) The Amiga rocked. If Commodore came out with it (and the Geos GUI) two years earlier, we would all be here seeing the tiny minority of Microsofties asking when Curious Labs would come out with a Windows edition, and would get the answer: "As soon as the Amiga and Mac Editions are done!" However, Commodore missed the boat, at a time when it didn;t pay to do so. If there were, in 1995, still competition between the three companies, then whichever one got TCP/IP natively first would win... and Microsoft damned near missed the boat on that count. Fortunately for M$, they were top dog by then, so it didn't damage them too harshly. /P