The geek crowd are indeed a miniscule segment of MSs business. Most of the geeks I know despise the shit they pass off as an OS due to the unnecessary bloat of background crap, DRM BS and the security concerns runnin it will assure the average at home surfer/user.

I don't run MS products and quite honestly doubt I ever will again. Power to the penguin is my motto, which is really here nor there in all this. My point really is only as that of an outsider lookin in to this discussion, and as such, adding in things from a puerly customer service/business sense perspective.

The point for myself in this discussion is that MS is doin a bang up job of tryin to shove an OS (Vista) down their customers throats and it just doesn't seem like the most reasonable course of action for them to persue at this juncture.

Personally, I couldn't care less about whether MS supports any of their older platforms. It just seems like they're cuttin off their nose with their planned drop dead date for XP support to justify their investment in Vista which only points up exactly how greedy they are corporate wise (past the point of just makin $$, which we all have to understand is their goal) and how little their customer base's concerns seem to be to them.

Anyone in business who feels they know better than their customers what they may actually need is usually the sign of a company who has lost their focus, and if not corrected, will likely head down the downwardly spiraling path toward corporate oblivion