My 2 cents.

 I have owned Windows since version 1.01 ( what a dog that was!), Microsoft will
eventually release Office and other "productivity" (used very loosely) tools to
Linux. They will spends years doing smoke and mirrors to intimidate and push
and cajole the Linux community and to also leverage existing users of Windows
to "wait" until the Windows port arrives to switch over. But eventually Linux
or it's successor OS will supplant Windows as an OS and Microsoft will throw
Windows away and attempt to dominate the Applications market. Beware when that
happens, Microsoft will try everything in it's bag to control and rewite the
standards to control the market and drivers and, . . . 
well  . . .
etc. etc. etc.

(current OS stock, 6 MS OS'es; 15 Linux's, 1 Free BSD - 1 Machine with NT for
wifey and work, 2 Linux, 1 FreeBSD) 

Interseting side note: this weekend needed to do a powerpoint for work. So I
e-mailed the skeleton from work (NT); saved it in Linux to a Win98 NTFS
harddrive; read it over the LAN (home) from NT; modify project in NT, saved
directly to Linux home directory, e-mailed from Linux to work. Gave
presentation on NT. NT never had a clue I used Linux. God I love Linux, Oh by
the way before I had a chance to do any work on my NT box, it crashed! Had to
flip the switch (ROFL)!

Brian Densmore

On Tue, 22 May 2001, you wrote:
> Now Now Joe, Windows 2000 is not a rewrite of Windows NT 4.0.  It is just
> merely Windows NT 4.0 with Plug N Pray support, and tools with a few
> "different" features :).
> I would be very surprised to see Microsoft port any of its apps over tolinux.  I think that it's 
very funny that they ported IE to HPUX and
> Solaris, but they made sure to leave out Linux.
...