>There's also the cumulative problem where the programmers at MS take the view that getting the extra performance for the new OS isn't worth the cost, because the speed of processors will make up for it in a couple of years. And then the applications programmers take the same view, slow now but in a couple of years the processors will hide the fact. In between you've got various video drivers, printer drivers etc. By the time the processors are up to speed, the new OS comes out with the new app & drivers, no speed improvement is seen because each individual item was written without performance in mind.

And this may be a major point where Linux may beat Windows - with the thousands of guys out there who will take the time to shake each driver and kernel routine, we may soon see the same software running faster in a Windows emulator under Linux than in Windows proper.