W95 and W98 are both working fine for me. I have been paranoid enough to apply all the patches etc. (flash bios, etc.), and avoid any new MS products until the bug fixes come out. Working to me means, the programs I want to use will run, and right now they do. Anything prior to about the second service pack release I call Beta. MS can migrate ALL the new system vendors, so those OS sales are in the can, what I don't think is happening are the upgrades of W9x to these latest versions.

I'm told that the principal difference between W98SE and ME is that you can't install ME without first registering it. I haven't tried it, so I don't know whether that's really the case, but . . . Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 12:39 PM Subject: Re: MS Laugh-In yet. broken

Carlos wrote: Someone will undoubtedly figure out how to hack that. I had the same thing on some OCR software. I'm pissed off because the box didn't say that I was *required* to register it. I think this is a violation of implied warranty of merchantability. When I "buy" the product in a retail box in a store, unless stated otherwise I expect to be able to use the product on one computer in any way that I like. The vendors all try to disclaim implied warranties, but I'm not sure they can get away with it. (Well, in states that have passed the UCITA they can.) Of course, now with our wonderful new Digital Millenium Copyright Act here in the former "land of the free", it might actually be *illegal* to reverse-engineer the registration counter, if the vendor can convince a court that the registration counter is an "effective copyright protection measure". In a truly marvelous display of sophistry, the judge in the 2600 case ruled that even a completely ineffective copyright protection system is in fact "effective" because the DMCA gives it force of law. If you were to get the idea that I'm fed up with what the republicrats in the US Congress (more aptly named the "Parliament of Whores" by P.J. O'Rourke) are doing for^H^H^Hto us, you'd be absolutely right. If you want lower taxes and sane public policy, vote Libertarian. OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. Eric

THETechnoid(a)home.com wrote: Wouldn't be worth it, Jeff. It would make you pay over and over and over again. And more likely than not, it would crash before it was done. <ducking> -- Tim Harrison Network Engineer harrison(a)timharrison.com http://www.networklevel.com/

NO. You can't put an end to anything on the interent. I don't say that to be disagreeable, but its a basic fact that some issues will apparently arise from time to time for all eternity. Also though unrelated in my opinion I refuse to grow up.