Many of us here use Windows XP.
As XP became increasingly popular more and more weaknesses have been exposed.
XP Home has turned into a permanently sick kid you need to have anti virus anti spy ware tools and no doubt we will need more anti stuff to keep it well in the future. With XP you need third party decoding to play something as common as a DVD.

I loved XP but it is now looking past it’s sell by date. I know Longthorn is due but feel the anti Microsoft camp may make it just as bad by enforcing stupid regulations on what Microsoft can include.

A market has been seen by the guys at Apple with the Apple Mac mini .Put a DVD in that and it plays. It comes with Appleworks(word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations and both vector and bitmap drawing) It comes with iLife(Consisting of iTunes, iPhoto ,iMovie iDVD and garageband) OK its sold as a product but how can Microsoft compete with that?

I want Microsoft to do the same sort of thing with the next X-box .Only then would it be a fair Market. The EU made a ruling about an integrated media player but didn’t moan when they through in a basic firewall and security did they? Ok I know the quality of the stuff on SP2 was basic but it must also have hit sales of third party products. Remember these holes are being exposed by people trying to cause trouble or faults. Yes car companies have improved car locks but at the end of the day it’s the car thief that is the Criminal.

I have been using Mozilla firefox because Java stopped working on IE how I cursed Bill!
Even with all these problems I know XP was a major jump in performance to what I had in the past.
Microsoft has made mistakes but I don’t think the computer market would be anywhere as big without the good products it has made.

If the ruling bodies make one company have all the advantages we are back to a monopoly
And that can’t be good for consumers can it?