No flames please :-)  I was looking at just the technology and was saying
that I'm a bit impressed with advanced server 2000.  When cost isn't an issue
microsoft has a place in the data center that linux can't easily fill (yet).
This is the first product from microsoft that actually looks promising.  I'm
convinced it would have never happened if linux never rose to power.  But
Linux is #2 in the OS of choice for servers being sold commercially.  It out
sells all the other unixes currently and this has MS scared.

Paranoid data center managers who have been waiting for some of the 2000 AS
features are going to use them.  They're not easily available elsewhere.
I hope penguin application developers can easily reverse engineer or better
yet, make open-source apps with equivalent functionality that will out-perform
2000, but for the people that need these features now, microsoft fills a 
business need.  

But who knows, personally I think as MS raises the pricing of software, and
then eventually will only do one year renewable leases on software, that will
make it so only the richest corporations will follow the M$ lead.  Others
will get fed up with the recurring costs of leasing software.  I hope it is 
their downfall.  We will wait and see.

	Mike