I'm an MS hater, but, I must say that 32 bit OS improves the hell out of networking with older programs. There are software areas where a GUI is just unsuitable for data entry, and until another level for that data entry is reached, the fastest networking and user entry is on Win9x with a character based programming. And customers can still have pretty graphical printouts and graphs through the "OS".
Course XP blows that away.
"There are software areas where a GUI is just unsuitable for data entry, and until another level for that data entry is reached, the fastest networking and user entry is on Win9x with a character based programming." Two things: one, there's nothing preventing you from deploying character-mode apps to an NT/2K/XP platform, and two, if a GUI-based data entry app has worse usability than a character-mode counterpart, it's the programmer's fault, not the GUI's. Granted, too may people do little more than drag and drop textboxes and then bind them to fields, but that's their fault. I can drive my car into a brick wall. If I do, that's not an indictment of Toyota.