I'm going to add my fuel to the fire, even though I know better, and Chewie made a very reasoned speech for people not to do it. :) here's my theory about why *nix zealots exist, and why they think the way they do, even to their own detriment sometimes (as I will point out). (I'm also proud to say that I am firmly guilty of the things I will lay out below.) for purposes of this discourse, I'm going to try avoiding the mention of '*nix' and 'Microsoft'. based on who you are, which one is 'good software' and which is 'bad software' is a variable thing. there are a lot of 'consultants' that exist solely because bad software gives them a constant job, babysitting balky systems. Without the need for constant attention, the administrator market would be much smaller, and some people would be forced to go find other work. Many zealots are the sort who feel they have a moral obligation to Do The Job Right. They find the behavior mentioned in the above paragraph morally reprehensible (because it wastes time that could be spent doing Cool Things, or at least Other Things); and thus a Holy War is at least partly justified. even if the result of the War would be to have them downsized out of the company, they think ahead to that and say 'at least I did the job right; and there will be another place to go work'. I personally hate shoddy software because as an administrator, it makes my life difficult. people who use shoddy software (read: most end users) often will make your life difficult and waste your time, because they make the problems caused by bad software to be *your* problem. So even if I don't use it myself, I still have it inflicted on me by shortsighted and ignorant people. The upshot of all this is Use the Right Tool For the Job. I personally long ago decided that there was nothing under Windows that was worth the hassle. I don't game much, nor do I need accounting software; so I largely did without those things when they weren't available. Other people have different tolerances and needs. Carl Soderstrom. -- Network Engineer Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com