CoffeeFiend

You're wrong. Given the same CPU core/family/IPC/cache/bus speeds and all that, actual speed is pretty much linear to the clock speed. IPC doesn't magically become lower at higher clock speeds (unless you're using some new core that's less efficient which is rarely the case with the exception of netburst), the actual speed is pretty much a direct multiplication of IPC by its clock speed. Given that going from a 1GHz to a 2GHz chip you just might be switching to a newer chip altogether (like a Pentium III Coppermine @ 1GHz to a P4 @ 2.0GHz which have higher IPCs, faster buses, often have bigger caches and also feature new instruction sets like SSE2 which speeds up many tasks), it would likely be *more* than twice as fast. Check any CPU benchmarks worth anything and you'll see. Hardly. It can't run most of the software I use nowadays, it's way below the minimum requirements of anything I use, and completely useless for many of today's tasks. P2's are 10 years old -- that's a very, very long time in the computing world. Heck, I wouldn't even have a use for a P3 anymore.

You're right. But the fact that a very large portion of the apps I use and need don't run on Win9x at all and the lack of features we've taken for granted for years sure is. I basically wrote off Win9x when Win2k came out. Tell that to my ex-wife's dad, who can't watch videos on the net with his P3 866 - it's just too choppy. So because your hardware can't keep up with flash, you chose to not go there anymore (even though the content is sometimes very good, or that sometimes you just need to access the site anyways) By itself, no, but it adds up quite nicely along with the flash and embedded video. Which I come across everyday (like this I was just reading -- 969kb for the html alone, plus 310kb of javascript, 50kb of CSS, plus images including the ads -- around 1.5MB) It's anything but uncommon. Open 10 of those pages in different tabs and that P2 of yours will be anything but "browsing the web fine". Yeah, Javascript is for amateurs and sites without contents. Unlike google maps, gmail, MS live maps, slashdot, and so many others. With the "web 2.0" and AJAX craze lately, there's more javascript than ever. And it's not going to change anytime soon... Expect even more coming. Nah. I'm sitting on a 10mbit line, and most web servers are plenty fast. It's the pages themselves which are heavy. Heavy pages, lots of flash, lots of javascript everywhere (not just the snowflakes atrocity), and all that. I think you're TOTALLY off here. As wrong as wrong can be. None of the "basic" work I do -- using the software I normally use, would work on anything near a P2. Development? You have obviously no idea what it takes. Good luck using VS2005 (along with countless other required apps, like CruiseCointrol.Net) or Eclipse, along with SQL Server (and other DBs) and other required server stuff (like IIS for web services, MSMQ for messenging, DTC for transactions and such), SCMs and everything else on 256MB, no matter how fast your CPU could be, it would be TOTALLY unbearable, even for "hello world"-scale projects. Games? Not that I play games, but look at the hw requirements of recent games, and again you'll see you're way off... Just going to EA's website to see (hah, it uses flash - no EA for you?), first title on their page is command & conquer 3. Minimum specs? XP (no Win9x - how unsurprising), 2GHz. That's an absolute minimum, not the recommended specs if you want good performance. If one wants to play today's games (and preferably those that will come out within 6 months to a year), it would take at least a CPU twice as fast and twice as much RAM as you say. I'm hardly spoiled by fast CPUs. It's been many years since I've seen a P2 box. I can even count the P3 boxes I've seen in the last couple years on the fingers of one hand. P2's are very old stuff, and most people did write those off quite a while ago.

Well, HDs have pretty much always been sold like that. This isn't anything new. Disagree. It's just a basic computer knowledge question. If we make stickies for that, we'll also be making some on how to burn CDs and ISOs, and all the other countless n00b questions (no offense). There would be hundreds of stickies, kind of negating the point of having stickies in the first place.

Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, in all honesty, if web browsing and email (and perhaps playing mp3s) is all I'd do with a PC, it likely wouldn't even run windows in the first place (much less Win9x) Mind you, no matter what the OS is, there's no way I'd keep something even remotely as ancient as a P2. I've gotten rid of anything under 2GHz (and 1GB RAM) like a couple years ago. I don't need a high-end overclocked Core 2 Duo or Quad Xeon (gimme a P4 or Athlon XP anyday), but a P2 is quite the other extreme.

So you solve a security problem not by looking at what you were doing wrong (not patching? using IE? opening all the nekkidpics.jpg.exe in your email? no firewall? running every .exe right off P2P and crack sites?) but by switching to an OS that doesn't run the apps you need. It's not like linux is perfect and doesn't have problems either. All you're doing is moving to a different set of problems and issues, and losing compatibility with countless windows-only apps in the process. You've already been answered: call 'em up. You make it sound like it's a big problem to spend 5 minutes on the phone once... And no, there are no legit ways to bypass activation. Once you activate it, then backup your activation for the next time (will work on same hardware/specs).

I don't know. Talk to them. I've activated XP inside vmware before without any problems of any kind. MS and Symantec are hardly friends. Symantec spreads a lot of FUD and lies lately (to try and protect their dying market), and competes against MS in many areas. If you use Norton junk, you only have yourself to blame...

So you have a ~101GB primary partition and a 10GB recovery partition. That's 111GB. A 120GB HD is not 120GiB. in HD-manufacturer-speak, that's more like 120 000 000 000 bytes, or ~111 GiB. Nothing's missing.

By using basic security measures and common sense. Haven't seen any big virus problem since the blaster days. FUD just like you'd expect it coming from a linux fanboy. First, you haven't bothered reading the forum rules. This isn't a warez forum. You won't find any info on cracking windows activation here. Secondly, your presence here also seems to be about spreading lies and FUD, trolling, as well as insulting people. Coming from someone using Windows in VirtualBox. Bitter sweet irony! You're basically asking the user community you just called idiots a second ago (along with like 95% of the world population) to help you? "You're all idiots! Every single one of you! Oh, please help me?" -- what's wrong with that picture? Nevermind it's also illegal and against forum rules? nmX.Memnoch: why do I see one coming up too?

That was obvious. What would an rabid linux fanboy use on his server? And his couple friends (likely friends from a linux community)? What you and a couple friends use has no real significance. You know, if someone came here, who has only been exposed to a niche environment, and said "I've only ever seen Macs", it doesn't actually mean the whole world uses Macs exclusively and nothing else. On the other hand, I've seen several thousand Windows servers, and routinely see hundreds of them across many sites, and very, very few linux boxes. That's been the case for pretty much any place where I've worked (as a regular employee or contracting) over a long time. Windows server sales are very strong. Having never seen a windows server box is basically admitting never having worked in IT in the last 12 years or so (before that, one would have seen a lot of Novell servers instead). If you exclude the cheap LAMP hosting boxes (for all them php forums and blogs), linux is likely outnumbered 1000:1 or more. MS uses Windows basically everywhere.

Which is sad, as most people just surf the web and send e-mail, which Win9x machines of that calibre are perfectly capable to do well. I disagree for 2 main reasons: 1) I wouldn't live without tabbed browsing and also a modern browser (no IE7 on Win9x, and no FF soon either) 2) Nowadays' internet isn't 1995's. Youtube, google video. Embedded flash and quicktime video. Countless flash animations. That's when they're not also using music (like myspace users seem to all do -- not that I go there), or those CPU-eating javascript-based animations (like snowflakes falling down - I hate it!) Combine all this with more complex and heavier designs, loads of javascript for everything, AJAX this and that... All of it is becoming much more CPU intensive. Browsing the web is sometimes slow-ish on a 3GHz PC loaded with RAM. On a P2? No way. I'm sure it's capable enough for webmail or use with older email clients though (not like you'll use Outlook 2007 on there, and Thunderbird would be painfully slow too). But that's hardly a reason by itself to keep an old box lying around... Your new PC can check mail too

Then why don't you use your beloved netcraft and check ANY of their domains? (anything but the Akamai mirrors). Or better yet, check the domains yourself manually. It's very easy. You can continue living in your fantasy world... Good joke. I laughed.

100% false. So you say MS uses their competitor's products instead of theirs, and as sole evidence, you show another company's servers (Akamai's) instead of Microsoft's? MS uses Akamai's services to distribute some of their stuff because they have lots of bandwidth and lots of servers at lots of peering points as well as servers co-lo at most major ISPs, and nothing more. It lowers usage of ISP's backbone connections (faster for everyone, cheaper and all) and makes for much faster and lower-latency downloads for everybody. Instead of MS having to put thousands of expensive servers at ISPs and peering points, sitting mostly idle except when there are service pack releases (like SP2 for Win2003, which was hard to get even using Akamai), they only pay Akamai for the actual bandwidth used. No hardware to buy, no agreements with ISPs required, no hardware/servers to maintain/upgrade/look after, etc. And it's not like they're the only ones using their services. Now try that on every real MS website (not some Akamai mirror) like www.microsoft.com, search.microsoft.com, update.microsoft.com, maps, technet, msdn, msdn2, office, reasearch, support, premier, connect, office update, ms press, etc. Even the non-microsoft.com ones (like netfx3.com). It all runs IIS6 on Win2003. Saying MS doesn't use Windows for its own servers is laughable at best. One would have to be a bit naive to believe that.

And I'd say more or less the inverse: slightly slower all-around. Perhaps it depends on the actual hardware you're using. It means very little without numbers. Either ways, it's in the same ballpark. It was a pretty good system. See 2 quotes below. Honestly, I'm tired of that old line. Vista is based on XP. XP is based on 2k. 2k is based on NT4, which is based on a older VMS-like NT core and Win9x aesthetics. Win9x being little more than a new desktop and 32bit support on top of Win3.11, which is Win3.1 with network support, which was little more than an app launcher with basic multitasking for dos, dos being little more than a CP/M look-alike... You get the drift. It's not so much the way you put it as much as the "XP is just 2k with more DRM" folks which annoy me to no end, and by their logic you might as well still be running CP/M, if not one of its predecessors. Which brings me back to my previous point. Of course XP is not totally different than 2k. Very few new OS'es are drastically different from their predecessors. Yet XP is so much more than 2k: -new taskbar stuff and new start menu altogether -there's a 64 bit version (imagine that), and also media center/tablet pc editions -Better deployment tools and better group policies -ClearType -System Restore -Hibernate -- and ACPI that actually works (unlike Win2k) as well as hot-docking for laptop users -Prefretching -Basic firewall (good enough for most uses) -Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance -Fast User switching for home users -IE7 and WMP11 won't ever make it to Win2k -IE's ActiveX addon manager -MMC 3.0 -The .NET framework 3.0 (the future of development on Windows) will never be ported to it, so no new apps that use WPF either (a very big problem IMO), nor any of the upcoming development tools (that alone is a reason enough for me to never consider using it again) -Tons of improvements for end-users so they don't screw up their systems, like Windows File Protection -Lots of useful little things like driver rollback (who never came across a buggy or problematic driver before?) -Tons of security enhancements, like DEP -Recovery Console -UPnP -newer version of IIS -no powershell on win2k -Automatic Updates -tons of little and sometimes useful things, like the image viewer (with built-in slideshow, just press F11), CD burning, zip file extractor, movie maker and all that -Better WiFi/BlueTooth support -Win2k is in "extended support" (and there's only like a couple years left) -many new apps and even hardware that requires WinXP (or newer) ... LOTS of new stuff. Win2k just isn't viable anymore for me. You're joking, right? DirectX 10 is just a TINY part of the changes. Even if you also exclude Aero Glass and Flip 3D (the "shiny" stuff people can actually see), there's still TONS of changes. -New installer and deployment tools (disk imaging based, no need for ghost anymore.) WDS replaces RIS. Out with the NT3-era blue screen installer that requires a floppy to load Mass Strorage Adapter drivers. -ReadyBoost, ReadyBoot, ReadyDrive and SuperFetch -the new shell (i.e. explorer) -the sidebar -new desktop search app -lots of new apps, like windows mail instead of the outlook express, calendar, photo gallery, etc. (lots of them!) -voice recognition -BitLocker -new games like you've seemingly noticed -the improved media center app (in some editions) -IIS7 (a huge improvement over XP's) -further improved security, like "real" NX bit support, IE7's protected mode, etc -new better driver model (WDDM) -transactional NTFS and the Kernel Transaction Manager (a very big deal on its own IMO) -boot configuration database (no more boot.ini) -better thread scheduling -I/O cancellation finally done right -I/O prioritization -memory priorities -kernel address space that changes dynamically -symbolic links (not the same as 2k or XP's, and explorer is symlink-aware too) ... etc. Saying Vista is like XP with DirectX 10 is exactly like saying a 2008 Porsche is like a 1976 Ford with new paint. Not only it totally misses lots of the underlying technology changes, but it also misses lots of the obvious stuff too. On a side note, why can't I ever seemingly find the latest typo no matter how many times I preview, and it just jumps at me when I post? ...

I ahve a hard time with all these people claining Win2003 is faster, and as always, without any numbers or anything to back it (just seems to me like they want to believe their 1000$ OS is faster, or that it must be better because it's a server OS). I've *NEVER* ever seen anything supporting those claims either. And if anything, it seems slower to me (and MUCH more expensive). Adding 50$ worth of RAM would likely make much more of a speed difference than spending 1000$ on that OS (if it's not slower to begin with). As for the stability, Win2003 in a SERVER role (not people browsing the web and installing games and crappy apps, but rather serving files away, handling HTTP requests and such), with all the acceleration turned off, on server-class hardware definitely is more stable. But start tweaking stuff heavily, enable acceleration, load it up on cheap hardware with so-so drivers and it's no more stable than any XP install. If someone has stability issues with XP, then they either have broken hardware or bad drivers, because XP itself is very, very stable. That however is something I can attest to. Not so much with hardware (I've had the occasional hardware/driver compatibility problem though), but with software. Lots of it won't run on Win2003. Even in compatibility mode. And lots of installers require hand-editing to get it to work too (that's if the app even works at all). A real and unnecessary PITA. Good luck with that. This isn't something you can do in an hour (if you want meaningful results). You will need: -to ensure it's using the exact same drivers for all OS'es (different versions have different optimizations) -must all be defragged thoroughly, using the same app (same version of a good one) -same HALs and hardware configurations -to enable/disable the exact same features, services, tweaks, processor/memory scheduling, graphics (themes, resolution, effects, etc), and all that -- absolutely identical -for each one you have to look at all the potential problems that might arise and all kinds of stuff... It should take you a while to come up with a decent test methodology. And even then as it is, it would be fairly meaningless: one will be faster, but mainly for certain tasks, and the tests will be mostly specific to what hardware you'll be using. What's faster (doesn't necessarily means best either -- just somewhat faster) for gaming, graphics work, server use, number crunching, business apps or whatever might be different OS'es. And were you using other hardware, your benchmarks could be TOTALLY different. Test on a P2, and Win2k is likely to win hands-down. Test on a Core2Duo with fast video card, and Vista just might win. Again, it depends on the tests too. In short, you'd have to come up with a perfect test methodology, do LOTS of tests on a wide range of hardware. Then spend time analyzing all this. And IMO it's fairly pointless. Let's say you find out Win2k is 5% faster than XP, which is 1% faster than Win2003, which is 5% faster than Vista. Now what? I personally wouldn't go back to Win2k even if it was 50% faster than XP. And I'm sure not using a 1000$ server OS that requires heavy tweaking and has compatibility problems over good old and inexpensive WinXP that just works. And when or if you have any games that require DX10, then speed is irrelevant anyways (same if any of your apps require a specific version of an OS, which is not uncommon) Tradeoffs. Raw speed is one thing, but there's also compatibility, new and useful features, usability, security, support and all that to consider too. Personally, WinXP just works. Does what it needs, fast enough, has the features I need, is compatible with everything I use, there's good stable/mature drivers for it for all my hardware, good support, and all that. And the next PC I buy will likely run Vista.

You keep thinking that. Yes, people are buying new PCs, but mainly to replace their old ones. Most Win9x installs are darn old boxes (like P2's), and it's not like people keep them when they get a new one instead. They don't keep every single PC they've had, so the Win9x users definitely does go down a lot. And people just buying new and faster PCs "just because" is only part of it, there's the old PCs breaking down too, and people switching platforms and all that (countless Win9x boxes are being replaced everyday). Again, there is lots of evidence to support this too. Don't like percentage statistics? Alright, just check total hit couters: January 2 711 151 hits. February 2 274 397 hits. That's about half a million less hits - in a single month, or about 20% of their user base -- again, in a single month. If they keep losing users at such a fast pace (which has actually been consistent in the last few months), the number of users would theorically become a negative number within 6 months. Perhaps thehitcounter's stats suck, but use anyone else's (w3schools', OneStat's, your own websites, ...) and you'll basically see the same thing. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, which numbers or who's stats. The Win9x numbers are decreasing a lot, and consistently. The win9x user base is anything but "not shrinking" like you seem to think. And it's not exactly surprising (for many reasons like I've mentioned before, like software/hardware compatibility and what not). It's been a few years since I've even seen a Win9x box. What do you (or anyone else) know about XP availability through system-builder channels? It'll be available to system builders for 24 months following Vista's release. But it doesn't really matter, most are already shipping Vista instead of XP on most their products (most people actually want the latest version of Windows on their new shiny PCs). Just go to Dell's "Home & Home Office", and pick either line of PCs: every single model I've looked at ships with Vista Home (basic or premium). And I don't see this trend reversing anytime soon. And I don't really see it being a problem (XP not being for sale anymore, that is). Vista should run just fine on all new PCs. When I said within a year, I meant off the retail shelves. And for all practical purposes, within a year it'll likely be equally hard to buy a new PC with WinXP instead of Vista too. Oh, and even companies are soon going to want Vista on their new PCs. There's no point in buying WinXP boxes in the last few months of its availability: last month should be January 2009 (if my math is OK), which is also the month when WinXP falls into extended support (and god knows companies like support).

What, no votes for my most awesome and breath-taking desktop yet? I'm offended! ... Alright, I'm not. Very nice! I like it a lot. Brings back some memories... BTW, what's that (very minimalistic) media player at the top left?

There is no WMI class that will help you detect the chipset. Nor any native API of any kind. WMI is somewhat limited (not just for tasks like chipset detection, also like how to detect CPU types properly: 64bit or not, Dual Core or not, HyperThreading or not... Some classes are there but never return anything -- like some probes). But it all comes down to this: there's no chipset information in the SMBIOS tables and such. There's no real place to get the information from. There's only one easy way. And yes you'd be using WMI (and yes, specifically the Win32_PnPEntity class you were already using). You enumerate them, and try to match with the right vendor/device IDs of the chipsets. Yes, it is a real PITA. E.g. you want to detect an Intel chipset, like say, the 915G. Their VendorID is 8086, and you use a device like the one with the DeviceID 2580 ("Host Bridge / DRAM Controller" or "Intel® 915G/P/GV Processor to I/O Controller - 2580"). Pick something specific to the chipset you want to detect (i.e. not USB ports or a IDE controller, more like a bridge or such) So here you'd be looking for a DeviceID of PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2580&... (match the left portion). Via would be VendorID 1106, SiS would be 1039, etc. You'll have to create a database of sorts for the chipsets you want to detect. Yes. It sucks, but there really aren't any other easy ways (reading the ACPI tables directly is not easy). No idea how you'd do this in Delphi (last time I've used Borland's stuff was in the Windows 95 days, and I really don't miss it).

Most counters haven't made the changes required to handle Vista yet, that's all. It's not automatic. They have to write some more code to handle various user-agents (IE7/Firefox/Opera/whatever, all running under Vista -- they say Windows NT 6.0 instead of Windows NT 5.x) before they can really count it. Then update their reporting tools too. No big deal. Just wait, they'll all get around to it. Not that I care much for thecounter's statistics. Were you looking at the ones i linked to previously, you'd see Vista. Just check it out here. Quick summary: -Vista is at ~1% (from from ~nothing in Jan when it was first introduced). -Win98 is at 1.5% (down from 1.63% -- it's been losing about 0.13%/month constantly for the last few months) What to expect? -With Vista "selling twice as fast as XP" as they put it (20M licenses sold already), 17 million PCs bought between last October and now which are entitled to free or low-priced upgrades to Vista, Windows XP being pulled off the shelves in a few months, and they say 96 million computers will be sold this year, and you know the vast majority of those will ship with Vista. The market share/percentage is going to shoot up very fast. XP just started going down (not by a lot, but it's just beginning), at some point within the next couple years Vista will likely surpass XP -- it's really only a matter of "when", not "if". -If Win98 continues to lose users at that constant rate, there's basically going to be as many Amiga users left as Win98 users in a year... RainyShadow: it may seem like that, but there's actually VERY FEW linux users. Yes, that little. The vast majority of Linux installations are those cheap "LAMP hosting" boxes for all those PHP forums and blogs. But people running it as a main desktop OS? Basically nobody (a very, very small but very vocal community).

Deleting it us not uncommon. It's one of the very first things I do to any PC I normally use. It's a useless bin as far as I'm concerned. I only delete stuff I really mean to delete. But there's the one time where I forgot to disable it before deleting the offending link. Not to worry, one goes under c:\recycler\ (or whatever drive the case may be), right click on the S-1-2* folder, properties, global, then "do not move files to the recycle bin".

Exactly. Thankfully they don't teach such specific skills, but rather just good "general" knowledge (so in a few years what you know is still relevant). Those things are most often covered by certifications... And god do I hate those things. Not to mention, it's not like anyone works with all of this. There's stuff from too many domains in there. From database admin, to networking (cisco, sonicwall...), to storage technologies (tapes, RAID, SAN, etc), to "thin" computing (TS/citrix/wyse/etc), to more "general" admin (exchange, GPO, AD, scripting, etc) to basic hardware (tie-your-own-shoes A+, laser printers, etc). Usually, these things are done by different people (except in very small shops, where often one person gets to do everything). The problem with certs is, they cost more than they're worth for the most part, they're no substitute for experience (a cert with experience is OK, but certs w/o experience makes one look like one of those useless "paper MCSE"). Many certs have to be renewed every couple years or such (who wants to spend 10k$ every 2 years to renew them, and always have to study the latest stuff for it? Unless your pay is too good and you have too much free time on your hands...) And if you don't renew, you eventually end up looking somewhat outdated (how useful is a NT4-era MCSE with Vista now?) Some certs eventually lose pretty much all their value (like Novell certs nowadays). But there are still some certs which are worth something, depending on the field. Experience/skills and "formal" education (e.g. degree) is what matters the most. Then "networking" (who you know). The only place where the certs really give you an advantage is if you're non-experienced and with certs, over the non-experienced with no certs. Anyhow. You have to choose which field you want to work into first.

Wrong. The computer sharing the connection also serves as a DHCP server for all the computers connecting thru it. And it works... Like half the time. If there was no DHCP server, it wouldn't ever work -- at all (unless you manually setup static IPs, which you don't have to -- even the ICS wizard sets up the clients to ask for one). The DHCP Allocator is part of the NAT/Basic Firewall service (there's also registry entries for the settings and all). Don't believe me? Try running netstat a ICS host, and you should see it listening on :BootPC and :BootPS or something similar. It's using an APIPA address (from 169.254.0.1 to 169.254.255.254, B class, subnet mask 255.255.0.0 i.e. 169.254.0.0/16). Always happens when DHCP doesn't work (it's the best way to find out if it worked). No surprises here. I'm just saying that ICS' DHCP server sucks/is unreliable, that's all. That's the main issue with it as far as I've noticed (other than that it's not nearly as bad as most people tend to put it). No you don't have to. You can (and I tend to, because the DHCP server sucks). But most of the time it'll work fine (it's just the initial setup that seems problematic). It's not like they expect end-users/home users to go around and start assigning static IPs (and then wonder why it doesn't work when they plug elsewhere and all). There's no reason to... Besides ICS' DHCP server being brain dead I mean. My point was, it's not nearly as bad as most people put it, besides the DHCP server issues. He can spend the 15 minutes to fight with it, and see if it works for him. Total cost 0$. There's just no reason not to try it, especially when you look at the other options, either: -another modem. Likely costly, if even possible, or -3rd party software. That would most likely be expensive, heavier and more complicated (like Kerio WinRoute Firewall at 400$), and sometimes no better than ICS...

That's the 2 most common ones, but there's also 2 startup folders/directories which are used quite a bit (by apps like MS Office, Extensis apps like Suitcase, and countless others). But that's not where it ends. Startup Control panel has tabs for each common location, but even that is missing a couple (should be sufficient to eliminate most though). As for msconfig, I think I would rather rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than to be forced to use it (just my 2 cents). Regedit works, if you know where to look (the common ones are easy to remember, but it takes a while to "navigate" to them all manually, and it can be hard remembering the more obscure places) My recommendation would be Autoruns (by MS, used to be from SysInternals). It has *everything*. Everything you'd find in the registry (and startup folders) all in one spot. There might be some other 3rd party utils (JV16 perhaps?), but I know this one is good, and the price is definitely right.

While I don't recall having issues with opening ports in ICS (haven't tried that in a while, so perhaps I just don't remember -- or did I just chose to forget the horrible memories?) I can certainly attest to ICS being a PITA. Very often after running the config wizard the "client" PC gets stuck at the DHCP stage. I've never bothered to see if it's just too braindead to accept one, or if it's the machine doing the sharing/NAT that's too stupid to hand one out when asked (likely this one). But the client is stuck on 169.254.x.x for forever -- until you fix it. Eventually you get it working, but it's always a pain. Once it finally gets an IP (required to see the other PCs), then I've never seen it have problems with "connecting to internet". I don't remember a single instance where one couldn't get to the internet through it (unless a particular app needs one port open and it's not). Not sure about xbox'es (I got one, but it's never been on the net) As for RRAS, I've never had any troubles with it (that's what I'm currently using). Opening ports is simple and it works all the time. Sufficient/secure enough for me and it has all the features I really need (i.e. I can VPN through it no problem too). But it's not part of XP, so not an option here. Even if some think ICS sucks (I'm not saying they're not wrong), why not try it anyways? It'll take about 15 minutes to set it up (10 minutes of that being troubleshooting/fighting with the braindead DHCP server). No 3rd party software to install or anything. Totally free, nothing to buy or whatever. Just a few minutes of his time. Pretty easy to use too, even for the "networking-challenged". It's worth a try. And if that doesn't work, then try to get a non-USB modem (preferably one with no ghetto router in it), threaten your ISP to leave or something. I know I wouldn't ever use a modem w/o a plain old RJ45. And if that fails too, then you're basically stuck looking for 3rd party NAT/internet sharing software (often commercial, and often sucks as bad or worse than ICS).

While that's true, it's still sufficient for basic needs. Well, XP Pro at least -- patch TCP/IP limits if you want, disable stupid (or simple) file sharing, install IIS if you need it, etc. Throw XAMPP on it if you want Apache/MySQL. Works well enough for most uses. But if you need lots of concurrent users (not that most home cable/DSL connections are fast enough for it anyways) - especially for IIS, DNS, DHCP, Windows' own VPN (over say, OpenVPN or things like Hamachi), Distributed File System (way overkill for any home setup IMO), ActiveDirectory (mostly pointless for just a handful of PCs), and all that stuff, then yes, XP might not work so well. Making server use out of XP is against the EULA, but there's a fine line between sharing some files (arguably that's server use, but acceptable AFAIK) and using it primarily/just as a server on a larger scale (definitely against EULA). Stability shouldn't be a real problem. But if all you want is like a LAMP server and perhaps mail (I would strongly advise against running a mail server at home for many reasons but it's your call), then why not just throw Linux on it really?

There was no pong included in any version of MS DOS (used it since v3.0 and definitely never seen any pong game there). Never seen a pong game in PC-DOS nor DR-DOS either. And I don't think FreeDOS ever had that either. I've really only seen pong on some really old consoles (can't remember what it was for sure, it's only been like 25+ years since then). I'm sure there's ports of it and various "imitations" of it too. I would bet there's a ROM for MAME too (too lazy to even fire it up) -- that would be as authentic as it gets. Edit: It's all your fault! I'm starting to miss some old TRS-80 games now (downland, quix, radio ball, zaxxon, pooyan, thexder, ...) Too bad I've never really found an emulator for it (much less along with the ROMs and games).