You admitted that you only "skimmed" through the discussion. You have not read every single one of Vuclierl's attacks against me. You jumped in the middle of it, sided with Vculierel, and now I'm the bad guy for assuming that you know the whole story. I guess I shouldn't have made that assumption, but then again, you probably shouldn't have jumped in and sided with him without making it more clear that you didn't know the whole story.

I don't have the exact quote, and I'm not going to go through this entire thread to find it, but in one of Vucliriel's posts, he said MS should sell only sell an OS that is just a OS. He said it should be up to the user to pick the UI they want. His comment was to the effect that "MS shouldn't force a UI on users."

I'm not sure where I have attacked you directly. Perhaps after you joined in with Vucliriel and started criticizing me? Perhaps you just feel I am attacking you indirectly, because many of my other posts show that I am not sympathetic towards people who want to run old OSes, but then complain that the hardware and software vendors of the world won't dedicate resources towards making it easy to keep the old OSes running. I don't believe I have actually attacked anyone for prefering older versions of Windows. Quite the opposite, I have said over and over that anyone can use any version of Windows they want. I have also said they can use a Mac or Linux or any other OS as well. I just don't have any sympathy for people, like Vuciriel, who complain that they can no longer buy hardware that works with Windows 3.1 or 95, and make claims that Microsoft has somehow forced vendors to stop making such antique hardware.

If you read all of my posts here, you will see there is another post where I mentioned that I have many antique machines here that I often struggle to keep running (reel to reel tape decks, cassette decks, 8mm and 16mm film projectors, etc.). So I do understand the frustration. I also understand that vendors aren't going to keep making parts for ancient machines that very few people use anymore. The reel to reel forums I visit all have a handful of people who think vendors should still support these old machines. And, in fact, there are a handful of vendors who custom make parts for these old machines. However, many of the people who expect vendors to support their old machines also have fits when they hear how much it costs to have a part custom made to fit an old machine. The bottom line, of course, is that everyone needs to be realistic in their expectations.

If you felt you were being attacked by something I said, I am sorry. Again, I feel there is this incredible double standard where certain groups of people are free to attack and insult those of us who like learning new things and who like taking advantage of newer technology, but, on the other hand, if we respond with unfavorable remarks about those who prefer to be stuck in the past, then we are accused of being the bad guys who are making all the personal attacks.

Yes, I do find it very strange that there are so many people in the forum who are supposedly IT people and who seem so fearful of new technology. I do think that is something to be embarrased and ashamed of. I do think that has a lot to do with why companies are sending IT jobs off to India and China and other places. If the American/European workers aren't keeping up their skills and moving forward with technology, why pay them more?

Rick