In the last two days I installed operating systems on 3 computers..

[Phillip McCleod]

2. oh hell yeh. XP is a pain.

the driver dance is the worst. every single major driver has to be tracked down individually and loaded. trying to get xp working on that old toshiba would've been an ongoing nightmare.

and like you said, you have to install all the basics individually.. refusing the 'ask toolbar' and 'mcafee' half a dozen times.. saying 'no' to the 'plus' or 'pro' version.. no i don't want to 'participate in being spammed with viruses'.. and then, open up msconfig and turn off all the startup crap that got loaded.. 'no' i don't want apple to update 40x a day. 'no' i don't want msn, yahoo, skype messengers to pop up when the computer starts. 'no' i don't want java to start..

where the hell did i put the license for 'office'? shit. where the hell did i put the *disk*?!

i have every installer i might want for any basic windows system all stuffed onto a 16G thumb drive, now. still, like you said, if i were to add that onto each of the windows installs, which to be fair i should since Linux Mint has them already, then yeh.. *days* for each compared to about 20 minutes.