I do not, though, claim moral superiority for DOS or WinXP or any operating system, though I remember OS/2 and AmigaDOS fondly.

Perspective, CogDog, perspective. Try to install OSX on a Windows machine. Ah, okay, that’s a violation of the OSX EULA. Guess we won’t know what kinds of blue screens that would cause.

Really, the thinking behind these two platforms is essentially different. Apple does a near-complete lockdown and gets to “it just works,” with “it” defined entirely by Apple. IBM/Windows is completely open-standards and gets healthy CPU competition between Intel and AMD, highly commoditized and cheap and plentiful user-installable upgrades and peripherals from many different manufacturers, and a significantly cheaper bottom line (though Apple is doing better these days). But the diversity breeds certain opportunities for chaos and hair-pulling. Windows machines think of applications as running on their platform. Macs think of apps as part of their platform–the app is the platform, almost. I wouldn’t claim superiority for either idea, but they do think of the end user experience rather differently. And I’ve never understood the logic behind ejecting a CD-ROM by dragging it to the Trash icon, just as I’ve never understood how any user would expect to shut down Windows by clicking on the “start” icon.

Now what does that have to do with your current woes? Maybe not much. Since Apple doesn’t support WinXP on their machine (that of course would be clean contrary to everything their business plan insists on) even though they do make it possible to install WinXP, I think you’ve fallen between two stools. All I can say is that I do not myself routinely have the troubles you describe, though I have had my share of Windows woes.

Hang in!