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Thats because the providers never package things up cleanly. If they sent a client on a disk, a la AOL, and they set things up to autoconfigure, they'd never need to speak to the clients.

You've obviously never attempted to get a Windows product working for someone whose previous experience with a computer is limited to "Solitaire".

I've done work with this ISP, and I can tell you it's nearly the most frustrating experience I've had in my life -- Windows has bizzare conflicts with software eating other software, ports getting set up wrong, and just general nastiness. Even the slickest software needs helpline time - for whatever reason.

I hate jumping in when I may be completely off base but... NT and (possibly Winodws97) may solve some of this, mainly through better controll over devices and protected memory. I recently installed some NT services, HTTP server, and Time Service (to get time off a trusted host). The HTTP server was installed and working in 5 minutes. I'm a little more advanced than the typical "Solitare junky", but I was amazed at the ease of install and controll that some of this stuff gives you. I would probably spend atleast 30+ minutes trying to get them properly installed on my UNIX host. ... __o .. `\<, Chris.Claborne@SanDiegoCA.ATTGIS.COM...(_)/(_). CI$: 76340.2422 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PGP Pub Key fingerprint = A8 FA 55 92 23 20 72 69 52 AB 64 CC C7 D9 4F CA Available on any Pub Key server. PGP encrypted mail welcome.