With the New and up and coming O/S from M$ we now hard a PCIE Video card to support the new operating system.

Who is dictating the development and creation of all the New Hardware specs ? Certainly not the hardware companies ? they get told what is required and what we must purchase.

For me ? I gave up on the still DOS based MS operating systems which are still using the appalling memory management problems but hide them from our view.

If you have any legacy programs and have had to create alternative config.sys files ? yes they will over right the default one if you create one ? any you use up too much conventional memory in you drivers ? Windows ? Vista ? Longhorn will NOT load and you blue install screen will report ? NOT ENOUGH CONVENTIONAL MEMORY. For the new people to this game that RAM below 640K ? that's where everything happens.

The O/S needs re-writing from the ground up ? not put more eye kandy on display to keep the eye happening.

Once upon a time we only changed our O/S with a promise of increased productivity from our staff ? have we all forgotten that automation and the dollars we spend we all to provide better productivity outcomes.

Over 1 year ago I made the decision to change to Linux ? and yes there are a few bugs ? but they do get fixed and yes I have had to employ 1 Linux ADMIN ? who was not cheap ? HOWEVER the hardware I had a year ago mostly P4 HT's with varying RAM from 500MG to 1.5 GIG for hight demand users who needed it ? Well they are ALL running faster than they ever have and occasionally some of the staff will boot M$ Windows and they ALL without prompting exclaim how clunky, slow and how much time they were wasting for things to happen.

With current GUI interfaces it is only very occasionally that the ADMIN will revert to a command prompt.

I am safer, I have NO virus problems, NO malware problems and in an office environment I elected the Open source version so I purchase 1 copy of the next release ? there are about at least 1 a year for USD 65.00 and I load it all onto 40 workstations with NO driver problems NOR Printer Problems and my Web Site runs like dream.

At that saving I was more than happy to hire a Linux admin permanently and the cost savings not only in NOT needing new hardware and increased productivity have seen all my staff love it ? It just took them a few days to stop them playing with transparent Windows and enough options in eye Kandy to keep them amused for years to come.

Think about where you are headed ? DO you want to have to keep upgrading you hardware forever for the new M$ O/S and do you get a productivity increase that compensates you for the mass dollars you have spent.

Take a look at where you want to be in 3 years from now!