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If it's a "Downgrade", shouldn't it be *CHEAPER*?????

It's a "downgrade" only because Microsoft wants to preserve the illusion that Vista is better, and the pricing is set to discourage people from buying it.

But, yes... a significant share of the consumer market, and practically *all* of the informed market, consider XP a vastly improved upgrade over Vista.

I've been using Microsoft OSes since MS-DOS 3.2 (circa 1988), and I've never been nearly as frustrated, disappointed, and often outraged by an OS as I am with Vista. I've been using it for two months, and it's horrid in many, many aspects.

I have been making a list of irritations that are novel to Vista. Every time I run across some new irritant, I pop open this text file and add a line to it. I am also making a list of Vista features that I have turned off because they are buggy, poorly implemented, resource hogs, unsecure, frustrating to use, etc., etc. They are both very long lists, and they continue to grow.

Here's a review a guy did on upgrading to the best version of windows:
http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx

And just in case you didn't get your quota of funny today:
http://ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoA8pi9Rmk

It gave me the confidence I needed to make the switch, and I think it'll do the same for you...

Upgrading to Windows XP will solve the problem.

"Who said anything about DRM?"

The article.

That's uh, what it's about:
"Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format," the complaint states. "Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as 'crippling' a product, and software that does this is known as 'crippleware.' "

Some side notes:

1. This was known: http://dotnet.org.za/matt/archive/2004/02/20/460.aspx
2. The wma format itself is a non issue if you use the included iTunes software that ships with every ipod: http://www.apple.com/itunes/jukebox/importing.html
      Quote "iTunes also converts unprotected WMA files to AAC."
3. If you have the rights to play it on your PC then you can convert wma files to your ipod without quality loss since it uses lossless conversion.
4. Apple created and supports a free program specifically designed to allow you to convert from wma as well as asf, wmv, wav, and ogg for the ipod: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/easywma.html

It looks to me like they just didn't want to pay to license a format that, by the complaints own addmission, isn't popular enough to hold on to 20% of the online music sales and is likely to be going down since the article even points out that DRM free Mp3 download services are gaining ground.

The second part of the monopoly isue is going to take some proving since the apple ceo posted this on the apple website:
Feb 6 2007
"Today's most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It's hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music."

Since the ipod is left with 97% open format playback it's just a matter of deduction to see that the other cheaper players do support these open formats and some include protected wma (Zune) and could be easily puchased instead to use protected wma files directly if the consumer wanted. Free market and all that. If the feature was so desired then the players that support it would have more that a piddling share of the sales of music players.
Last note: Napster, Musicmatch, Walmart, Best Buy and Yahoo all adopted the protected WMA music format even though apple is supposed to have a monopoly on the online music industry, interesting. I would have thought that to sell more music they would have licensed formats that easily played back on the most popular music device, the ipod. You know, to make money.

People be all acting like Vista is the worst thing ever. It is not. It is not even the worst thing released this year.

Now there's a glowing recommendation, truly it's a gold standard to be judged by. Thankfully however there is already a Vista upgrade available.

It does nothing better than the product it replaces, and many things considerably worse.

Yes , X supports any number of mice buttons , you just have to configure them which is a bit of a pain in the arse but you only ever need to do it once
http://dotnet.org.za/matt/articles/39097.aspx for example
there are plenty more examples you can find on google if you want to have a look.
Its not really linux's job too do that , though i am amazed that all Desktop distros (I have tried , which is most of them for evaluation purposes ) are lacking a quick easy GUI config tool for the purpose as it would not be that hard to make.