My humble opinion the thing is, if you don't do any stunts with windows you won't need to mess with DOS or to boot from a disk.

I tried to substitute windows for Linux, I couldn't I kept running against numerous problems I just could not solve.

Until a Linux based OS comes that is as usable as windows and that does not require the *nix knowlige that Linux does no entreprise here in Portugal will ever even considere using it.

Imagine explaining a secretary that if this or that happends she will have to log out, go in as root and the rd and edit and use vi and... etc. etc. and also targz this and that to install her wonderfull aplications, nope, it wont work.

Windows 2000 is ok I guess although its heavy as my ex-girl friend and it makes a lot of rumbling and takes a long time to boot and start up. It also needs some 200Mb of service packs once in a while, but then, is that not to make it safe, as the kernell patches for linux are?

I installed IE 6.0 and had to reinstall Windows2000, I can't imagine what went wrong but something did, big time.

Windos 98 SE, it's ok. It crashes once in a while, you have to firewall it to go to IRC and thats it, I think it's ok.

Thanks for reading,

pipas_ can be found @ #hackers.pt @ DalNet