I don't know if it's bigotry so much as convenience and sticking with what works. If XP does everything you need it to do and your vendors are happy to support it, why should you expend the time, energy, and money to roll out an upgrade? Yes at some point you will have to upgrade, but why not get every ounce out of those XP licenses before you throw them away?

A lot of folks are making the argument that just because you can't afford it doesn't mean you should pirate it and instead you should just go without. While I get that this adheres to a nice and simple principle of fairness, the author is the one that really pays the price. Think about it, if I pirate a game and it's a good game, I'm likely to talk to my friends about it. Maybe you get a sale out of my word of mouth, but even if you don't, you're getting a lot of free marketing out of the deal. Plus, you're exposing me to how good your stuff really is so I may purchase another title legitimately in the future when I have the money (think college student). Or maybe there comes a point where piracy is impossible (ya, unlikely) or you release a game that's heavily online (ie wow...much more likely), and now I'm forced to buy it. It'd be tough to pass up your new game if I loved your old one so much. The point is that you lost no money when I initially pirated, but it really does increase your chances at a future sale with the pirate and gives you free word of mouth advertising in the mean time. Honestly, it's way better from a business perspective to be pirated than simply ignored isn't?

Let's not forget that Netflix saves quite a bit on postage for each movie sent via instant viewing rather than through the mail so it's more than simply "icing" for the consumer from Netflix's perspective. It's one of those rare occasions where a company can lower costs and actually provide a better experience for the customer at the same time. I used to be an 8 at a time member a couple years ago and when I heard they were offering streaming, it almost made me come back until I saw the selection at the time. If they ever get to the point where new releases are streamable, I'll be back in a heartbeat and would probably never even use the mail option.

I got a new PC a few weeks ago (black friday deal) and it came with Vista home premium installed. I wasn't looking to move to Vista, but I figured it couldn't be as bad as people have been saying so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out it really is as craptastic as folks have been saying. Here's how my experience has gone. First boot up it can't find my LCD monitor and hangs when I try to fill out the ACER warranty form. Trying to enable the LCD didn't go well either, but it eventually worked after 5 minutes of back and forth flickering between the screens (mind you this was a pre-built machine so you would think it would have the appropriate drivers loaded). The UAC system was annoying as well, but I tried to live with it for the extra security. It wound up getting turned off after a few hours when it kept blocking functionality Aptana needed. The system also just seems generally unstable...probably about 1/2 the time I try to come back from standby, it won't turn back on and i have to hard-kill it. On the plus side, this has led me to become much better at saving my work more frequently:) Gaming has been another nightmare. I mean it's not a top of the line system and I'm more of a console gamer, but since it came with a fairly decent graphics card (Radeon HD2600 Pro) I figured I'd try out a couple of the better PC games I'd seen. I bought one of those Wireless receivers for an Xbox controller and the installation disc didn't even include the right drivers for Vista...not a big deal but kind of a WTF? for a microsoft driver cd to not have Vista drivers on it. Playing Bioshock is hit or miss. At first it had no sound until I started running it in xp compatability mode. It also seems like it only loads about 1/2 the time. Sometimes it will load in windowed mode and on the occasion it does load in full screen mode it will often break the dual monitor setup when I exit, requiring a reboot. I just bought Crysis today and it has been an adventure as well. First run it locks up before I even get to a level requiring a hard-kill. I haven't bothered with it again yet but I'm not optimistic. Crysis was the last straw for me as like the author I will be upgrading to XP tomorrow.