[JoJo Gunn]

Now why would we want to dump such a "piece of work" just to have the dubious honor of shelling out hard earned cash for the latest supposedly stable yet without question no safer OS, and to suffer insult to injury need authorization to use it given by some zit cragged former fry cook?

[Cold Heat]

The most recent computer I bought with XP, about two months ago, already had the license key set. I did not like the setup however and reloaded the program. Again, it did not ask.

I don't think they are even using that anymore, except for upgrades. I do not recommend upgrading ME to anything. Just dump it. Been there and done that. Do the clean install option.

The programs are now coded to the machine it is sold with and cannot be used on anything else.

Mission accomplished.

They wanted to stop unlicensed programs from being distributed, and It looks like they did, at least for the masses. Some of us geeks can make them work, but frankly a machine without a backup OS disk is practically useless in this virus and hook loaded Internet.

XP is OK, I like it as much as the 98se, now that most of the bugs are out. The new firewall is effortless and it works, and the browser is not something I have ever had a problem with.

I tried mozilla, and still have it, but it does not like my laptop. It runs ok on the desktop, but composing on Mozilla is difficult due to cursor misalignment problems that I cannot seem to overcome.