>However, the government also informed Microsoft that they would no longer invest in purchases of an OS that was not truly updateable without bugs/problems and would not guarantee support for the required 5 years of service the govt demands on EACH version and MS has not made any changes in this regard to this day, so who knows?

Bah, this isn't true. Windows XP updates like a charm and is pretty damn stable. I'll get a little popup saying updates are avialable in the bottom of my screen while I'm working in VFP and while my girlfriends is logged into the computer with applications like IE running, I click on it, it goes through. Sometime I need to reboot, sometimes I don't, but its very slick and very easy.