I really should have found a better place to rant. Unfortunately the computer industries have effectively made it impossible to communicate directly to the companies along the lines of: "Excuse me, I do not understand why you would xxx. This makes use of the software more difficult." I don't think this kind of posting was quite the intention behind AntiOnline and I appologize to all those for the nature of my initial comments.

I have found XP more confusing in comparison to my ability to learn on the fly with 3.1, 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, and 2000. That could just be me getting old. Also unfortunately, I work for a small company that does not have an actual budget to send one or more people to classes to learn the software. Today I evicted a lizard and in a few minutes have to call the air conditioning repairman. Last night I added a new user to the phone system (4 different tasks) and networking stuff (6 different places plus 4 different places in the database). I hope to close Accounts Payable for June, 2004 tomorrow night, and somewhere in there would like to do some database programming. All this makes me glad of a supportive community like Anti-Online, even if I have antagonized some people with... A USER PROBLEM!

I still say that in our environment, Win98 allows one of the salespeople to user any computer in the office with less than two minutes work that the user can handle. XP requires a technically savvy user to set things up for the new user who is borrowing the XP PC. Maybe there is a way to allow any user to operate XP and I have not come across it.

Yes - my biggest problem with XP is that I don't understand it. But I have found nothing to like that is new in XP. Unfortunately I am also too much jack of all trades, master of none.

And by the way (to actually make this somewhat to the point of Anti-Online), does anyone know how to make an XP boot with NumLock on?

Thank you all for your very good and valid points and lively discussion, as well as the offers of support.