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Chuck Guzis wrote: How much has the sales side changed? I mean, I suspect for a typical user just doing some word processing etc., a simple bitmapped display is fine - they don't *need* the high speed of a card that has a lot more features. Printers are a case in point too - a parallel port does that job just fine, yet it's hard to find a machine that doesn't have more complicated USB interfaces on it, and a printer's now expected to use that. It just seems that in a lot of situations all that extra hardware and software complexity isn't actually necessary - an average user doesn't actually make use of it anyway and could just as easily get by with simpler hardware. I get the impression that the high-end market was always this way - with companies / sales-force trying to convince people that they *needed* the latest gizmo even if they didn't. For the home market though, it seems like a more recent thing. e.g. take PCs (please! ;) - Back in the early 90's you could choose whether to have an accelerated graphics card or not, a caching disk controller or not, a CDROM drive, a large or small hard disk etc. - at least the customer had the choice. These days they don't get given that, and everyone has to have the complexity whether they actually want/need it or not... cheers Jules -- A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation. Q. What's wrong with top posting ?