I agree that Microsoft does have an unfair advantage in this sense, but anyone who is at all tech-savvy can uninstall windows and replace it with whatever they like. You make the assumption that given the choice, people would choose Linux and probably Ubuntu 9 times out of 10. I don't think this is at all the case. Everyone has a go at Microsoft for every little thing that's wrong with their operating system (and there are a lot) but the fact remains that many people genuinely *choose* to use it. I consider myself to be an extremely tech-savvy user. I am a computer science graduate and have been a developer for 3 years, I am very comfortable with using Unix, but I uninstalled Hardy just a few months after installing it because I found it had just too many bugs to cope with. And I have ended up using Vista. I know, I know it has a worse security model, it's stupidly resource heavy, and shamelessly subscribes to DRM, and believe me I'm a principled guy, but at the end of the day it's still so much nicer to use than Ubuntu! Trust me, I really believe in open source. I hate what Microsoft has made the software world into, and I feel that all software should be community-based to help speed the development of all software. But despite this I still don't feel there is actually an open-source operating system good enough for me to use at the moment. Sure, take away any unfair advantage of Microsoft's that you can, but at the end of the day Ubuntu, above all, needs to be easy to use. That is what will win the war. Robin. 2008/7/8 »John«