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The thing that drives me crazy about XP, as a Systems admin, is that there is not a stripped down version available for business computers.

Honestly, there is absolutely no reason for MSN Messenger to load by default when one is setting up XP Pro.

I like the remote desktop capabilities of XP and the stability, but so much of the other crap is just that, crap.

Here here! However, I suppose that if they stripped out all the crap that most businesses don't need in a Pro version (Messenger, WMP, MSN Explorer, Outlook Express), they couldn't justify charging lots o' cash for an upgrade.

This reminds me of a complaint my uncle (he's a network consultant) and I (I'm a sysadmin / do consulting on the side) have had about business computers in general: if I'm buying an Optiplex workstation for a company that has spent thousands on a SAN or NAS, why do network-geared PCs like the Optiplex come with a 40 or 80gb hard drive?

Whatever happened to 10 - 15gb hard drives for a workstation? All the damn thing needs is something to boot the OS and some apps on - if your users are maxing out an 80gb hard drive on their workstation, something is seriously wrong...

Well, I think part of it has to do with document storage. A lot of small businesses are running peer to peer networks, and don't necessarily have a pure file server that can be mapped to for centralized storage. (we won't discuss the problems with such an arrangement, especially from a catastropic failure standpoint) Plus, since hardware is cheap, no reason not to put enormous drives in the pc's. I agree, no need for this size drive, but they've become standard so, what the hey?