Joe,

I appreciate you--and everyone else on the UT forum--making sure I stay on track. In nine years of writing Home Office, this has been one of the more pleasant experiences.

Ordinarily, when I make a mistake--or just say something that offends someone (or something...)--I pay dearly. I get flamed, deluged by PR people berating me for not writing about **their** product, or stomped by the denizens of one Microsoft newsgroup or another. I once received thirty e-mails from people in the midwest because I said..."the system was probably built by a guy in a garage somewhere in the midwest." I also received one message from a midwest *gal* who was ticked that I said the guy in the garage was a guy.

So it's pretty clear I could have done a better job with SET CENTURY ON, and probably taken some time to talk about the latest editions of Fox. If I get more than 100 e-mails on a column, I recommend that something goes into Letters to the Editor. As a writer, that, unfortunately, is the best I can do.

In the meantime, the best thing to come out of this dialoge, at least for me, is discovering the UT forum. Pretty neat stuff...and perhaps the focus of a future Home office column.

Steve Bass
PC World