Wow - refreshing. I actually share your sentiments. I have a home office and in it several windows and linux machines. They have their purpose for sure, but I don't get nearly as excited about all of this as I once did. »

if funding is the only reason why would MS be in the top 20? »

I work for a software company that develops products that enable interoperability between Windows and Linux. Our servers are Linux - our Office components (obviously) install on Windows desktops. Windows compatibility is one of the most difficult parts of our existence. As soon as we figure out how they do something - they change it with the next version. It is the name of the game. Vista is arguably the most difficult platform we've ever tried to develop for. After working around it I have decided to stay away from it on any of my home systems - at least for another year. Do you remember when XP came out - when it first came out? It was horrible. I delayed - stayed with W2K Pro for any Windows-based system until XP SP2 came out. What was that - two years later? XP SP2, IMHO - is stable and usable. It required a whole lot more to run it than did W2K - but I eventually migrated all of my desktops to it - no regrets. As a closer - I just wanted to share this - my Linux test server (CentOS 4) is an old Intel P3 550 Coppermine - 384MB of RAM - running day in and day out. I build on it - pound on it, etc - keeps on running. Strange - isn't it? »