-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 A footnote to software which is available only tied to the software manufacturer's hardware: in industrial-strength networks and data centers, this is quite common. No one expects to buy a cheapo router from Wallmart and run Cisco's or HP's or Alcatel's OS on it. Binding software to hardware is a very effective means of ensuring quality control (no Cisco router or HP switch ever complains about a missing DLL or driver). Same goes for firewalls and SAN-servers and any number of other professional computing/networking devices. Apple came out of that professional/industrial environment. MS didn't; they started out as a home gamers' platform (with lots of support for third-party graphics cards and sound cards). Open-source platform-independent (i.e., Linux) makes perfectly good sense. Proprietary software linked to proprietary hardware makes perfectly good sense. It is Microsoft which is out of step, in my opinion, offering a proprietary OS which is (supposedly) platform independent (with all that that entails: missing DLLs, no drivers for your particular combination of printer/grasphics/sound cards etc. etc.); not quite the one and not quite the other. Practically speaking, three boxes ought to be enough for me, too. The fourth box is an NT4 file-server--no GUI, just a fastethernet link to the LAN-switch and no access to/from the Internet. Oh, I forgot to mention the bridge which links my MacPro to the stereo. The purr of many little fans... <MD FL> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkujyEwACgkQHrcIRRZeloGjvgCeOLhFEUdnfQeTa5gkAf49s10C cnoAnAtsXdD2GP+/0hlzNFUWV5vlBNBW =wRyi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----