I am the one who could be perfectly happy with Win98. It's the kids that clamor for the latest tech (games and all that rot).
Granted, in comparison to office suites operating systems are cheap, but then let me drop the use of WinXP (I'm NOT going to upgrade to Vista unless'n'Igottadoitorelse) as an example and say MS Office or one other more expensive software.
I can happily go back to my old DOS WordStar (still got a copy somewhere... ) under DOS 6.22, 5.0, 4.0, whatever (well, not 5.0; it was gutted of several useful commands). I DON'T need a GUI. I can function without a mouse; I love keyboard shortcuts. Why, doing so would allow me to use again the original GOOD versions of Norton Utilities
.
It's really the kids that drive this stuff in my house (glad that they're not exactly old enough to be hip to the CPU scene and know the latest and greatest; they're happy as clams with their Athlon XP Barton core 2500+'s; though, they do have some inkling about hot vid cards... not good.
). They wanted WinXP over 98. They are still using Office 97. Mine got upgraded only because after a HD crash, my reinstalled XP didn't work well with my older CDROM and DVD drives and couldn't execute any files on the Office 97 CD. (Must be all the updates to XP!) Otherwise, I'd still be happily using it, too.
Yow. Multiply everything by some factor greater than 2. One does *begin* (who'm I kidding?! I felt it on day one!) the hit.
MS DOESN'T have to have variable license sizes; it can set a number, and I personally think at least two or three or maybe up to four or five is decent, and if you have a Brady Bunch, then you buy two or three copies. For a large family, that IS fair, as you'd have to buy more food, clothing, fuel, etc. But to make EVERY SINGLE member, preschoolers or elementary school kids or parents alike, pay for a copy on EVERY machine is a bit steep.