Just thought I'd post my own views of Whistler. I loaded ver 2296 and ran it for a few days. Overall it has a lot of promise, its quick, its semi-stable(I say this because its not fully developed yet and I did manage to crash it a few times) and it has some very nice features that are missing from Win2k. Overall I think it will be a very good replacement for win2k but I don't think I would upgrade just yet, there are still too many quirks in it to make it your permanent OS. One thing I found odd was why put win95 compatibility in it? Why not win98? Many games that run on 98 will not run on 95. I tried a variety of games on the os and many ran flawlessly but some demanded a higher version of drectx than 95 provides. I hope this is only an interm for whistler and newer versions will address this problem. Microsoft has some 6 odd months to add new dimensions to this product and it will definitely be worth investigating the final product when its released, but for now unless you are very tech savvy and adventurous I would recommend sticking with 98se or win2k......just my 2 cents.....