[TopQuark]

I have an answer and a question, please.

Charlotte is saying that the OS should provide ONLY a hardware interface, and TopQuark is saying that would cost millions, since they'd have to strip out all the applications MS currently piles on top.

In estimating costs, you are production-oriented and think only of what it would take to produce something, in this case a piece of code. This is a small portion of the cost, probably the smallest. When computing the price, one has to divide the total cost + proofit target by the customer base. What I said was that, the more specialized preferences are --- Charlotte's or someone else's --- the smaller the customer base and the higher the price.

Qeestion: What, are the "the applications MS currently piles on top?"

[ShadowAce]

What I said was that, the more specialized preferences are --- Charlotte's or someone else's --- the smaller the customer base and the higher the price.

Question: What, are the "the applications MS currently piles on top?"

OK. I can live with your answer. I'm not sure I'd agree with it, but I understand your point of view.

The applications are virtually everything--IE, Windows Explorer, Disk defragmenter, calculator, the GUI itself, every program in the "programs" folder when you click the start button. Essentially, the applications that make it user-friendly. Those are applications--not OS.

To be fair, just about every "OS" piles applications on top of their product. But they are still applications. And they are still disparate from the OS itself.

[Charlotte Corday]

What I was really getting at is the nightmare of the registry and conflicting DLLs, none of which would be necessary if Windows just performed the core OS functions well and let each app run in its own space. As far as a higher price is concerned, I would be happy to pay, say $500, for a clean, fast, bulletproof GUI OS which would be updated only as needed to fix bugs, and which would not have its internal workings twiddled with by every app I install. And yes, I know I can just about get that with Linux, but the apps base is not quite there yet.