What amazes me most about the anti-windows folks here is they are mostly complaining about Windows 98, which hasn't been a current windows product for Five years now. Upgrade your hardware and software, it's a different world today folks..
Get with the ball game folks, Windows 98 and ME are built-on MS-DOS but windows XP is built on windows NT (and is the next generation of NT).
It has a full multi-tasking kernal with much more memory protection and virtual protection than DOS/Windows ever did..
You can't have a perfect "it just works" with any thing you throw at it ever computer. Same goes for Apple Macintosh OS X etc.
Windows works and intel hardware works, but you have to take a little time to get training and knowledge on how to support your own useage like any system.
Windows considering it has to work with "EVERYTHING" in the world that Microsoft doesn't even make themselves does a good job. Microsoft provides hardware driver certification for every product that Windows works with.
Windows is more complex than an Amiga but it also has a lot more responsibilities, there are things I can't do on an Amiga that I can do on a PC and vice versa..
Also Windows is supported and a heck of a lot more hardware integrated than Linux is, and at least i can walk to a store and buy a piece of software and it runs out of box. I also don't have to compile a device driver to make it work either (or not work as I find more common with Linux, or it's missing some major feature because the info isn't available to the open source community).
Learn your OS or call tech support before complaining and if you "roll your own hardware" do you really expect the same support as a Dell or Gateway could be..
I would also make a comment about XP, yes it takes a while to boot up from a cold boot.. Suspend and resume works great for me and saves where I was.. All modern PCs support that (which is close to instant ON as you can get).
Windows users used to complain about how fast the windows desktop would appear. To answer that criticism Microsoft shows you the desktop, while it still takes a while to load after you see that or can access the desktop. Get over it, or use hibernate/suspend/resume (they work great)..
For users that don't understand the differences between win98/ME and Windows 2000 and XP, 98/ME contains partial 16bit support making things like VXDs (Virtual device drivers) necessary. There is such a performance jump because 2000 and above is completely 32bit..
As for the VXD comment.. Why anyone would wanna throttle down a device driver on NT/2000/XP by requiring it to work with 16-bit code is beyond me (VXDs were used in a lot of older VGA cards crappy drivers).. You have to draw the line and go to a more high performance system at some point and get a real multi-tasking kernal that isn't loaded from DOS and removes the leash being put on performance..
