Richard Hammond missed the biggest problem. If the problem was just MI or XP, then the cost would be reasonable. It is all the other stuff that you have to upgrade. I estimate that it would cost me about $10,000 if I went to XP. XP cut off support for many early digitizers and scanners (have you priced a 3x4 foot digitizer or an 11x17 duplexing scanner lately?). You then have all the other programs - adobe illustrator, photoshop, MS office, etc, etc, etc. Many of them can be linked and if you up-grade one, you have to upgrade them all or lose the capacity to link them (ie Adobe acrobat, illustrator, and photoshop).
What are you going to do two to three years down the road when uncle bill refuses to provide you with a verification number when you try to reload your legal retail version of XP (the reason they give you is that XP is long longer supported)? What it appears that uncle bill is trying to do is make all operating systems (either retail or oem) only valid on one computer for a limited time period (two years?). If you upgrade- you have to by a new operating system whether or not you need one.
