I upgraded my computer to a Core2 Duo E8500 at the start of the year. I know that's not that hot of an upgrade but I had a pretty old one at the time. My original windows XP install would not work so I give Win7 Beta a run. It had some notable issues with IDE drives and DirectX10 games that were worked out by the win7 RC. I've been using win7 RC since it came out and I am quite happy with it. I have not had any blue screens or a program lock up that the task manager could not recover from. I have 3 computers on my home network with an old netgear router. Two of the 3 are on a homegroup and the file sharing all works as it should. The only issue I still get from time to time is 'no internet' For some reason I have to unplug my router to fix this. (the solution was deduced with the trouble shooter in win7) Don't think I'm a huge MS fan. I use Firefox, OpenOffice and was hoping to switch to Ubuntu Linux when Vista came out. My family is just too addicted to DirectX based games for that to realistically happen because Wine can only get you so far. Win7 is proving a happy replacement to XP. I have pre-ordered 2 copies at the discount rate.

Understood Steve. Part of my hopes is that something better than the 'I'm 18' button comes out soon. When we found my son's myspace account, he was 11 with 18 listed for the age and questionable quality material, mostly profanity and explicit lyrics on the site. We forced him to update it with correct info and clean it up. We recently found his Facebook page. He wouldn't be able to access half the stuff he does if he was required to supply verifiable info. (yes he accesses the internet outside of the house as well) I use OpenDNS to block most of it at home. My hope for real name concept is that a parent would be able to reasonably track their kids activities and like the original reply stated, a good portion of the stupidity we find on line would stop because people would be afraid to be associated with the crap they type. A dream yes, but it's a nice one. lol Thanks for the reply, Raum

Cragen, Thank you. I couldn't agree more. That would force people to be responsible for their actions. I think posting real names would also fix all the crap my son gets himself into on line. He would know that he can't get away with it being 13. His age would be verifiable. Say things you can be proud of and believe to be true or don't say anything at all; especially not behind a veil of cowardliness. If you are worried about your privacy on line, stop going places on line where you need the privacy.

I agree also. In the end, Microsoft will still publish their software but at an increased cost due to this mosquito sucking act. If they sat on their patent and did not show any evidence of moving the idea forward, even the patent office can rule this one as a no brainer. I've seen cases of patent-sitting before.

I agree. S. Korea hasn't played by the rules for a long time. Having spent 9 months there while serving in the Army. I quite frankly, think it's funny that S. Korea would even have anti-trust regulations since they don't believe in or obey copyright laws. You can go down the street and buy the latest CD from any artist burned to CD-ROM with the cover photo copied in black and white. Same goes for software, cars, electronics, etc. In my view, it's hypocritical for them to ask ANYTHING of a sofware company. Not that I'm a great fan of Microsoft. I am a great fan of protecting intellectual property so we don't have to pay 5 times the cost because of over compensation due to people and countries that blatantly ignore infringement laws. If you've ever ACTUALLY been there, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't been there. Go. Buy yourself a cheap Ford Mustang while your there. Only catch is that it's actually made by Daewoo.