For most of us the hobbyists, it is becoming less and less justifiable to program for Windows. Just consider the following carefully... 1. On Windows it is MS Office first: MS will make sure they get the best out of the GUI toolkit before releasing it to the public. You cannot even now use Agent in your own application. 2. If it does not make Bill happy then forget it: WTL is a cool effort to help simplify programming with Windows, but it simply does not make it possible for Bill to fight Java so it is just out there for "if you care". 3. If you do not have the money then forget it: I spent a lot to buy the Enterprise edition of VS6.0, to get database programming but now I have to pay for 5+ OS versions to test my software--start counting Win95, Win95b, Win98, WinME, WinNT 4.0 (just leave the sp out), win2000, not to meantion the Win95J etc. The so-called .NET preview is released, but you need Win2000 to use it. It will not even work if you have the sp1 installed. 4. If you do not live in the US then sleep in peace: Many software releases that are honored enough to merit CD-ROM cut get posted only to US resident. In fact to get the most out of my Enterprise edition, I had to let someone buy it from the US and register it there before sending me the pack. This way he get the sp CDs and others, and post them to me. Downloading 84 MB of .NET SDK is just not worth the time, especially when you have to buy a new PC to use it. This and others will never see the CD-ROM cut, and even now the platform SDK does never gets on CD-ROM even though each release of IE does, even bug fixes. Why? maybe this does not provide a way for Bill to clear Netscape. With more and more life coming into the Linux community, it will become very difficult to justify any time on Windows.