Breaking-Up isn't so hard to do, girls break up with me all the time!

Dear Bill Gates,

Bill (Can I call you Bill? I've given you enough money that I feel like you should at least be on a first name basis with me.), I hate to break this to you, but I won't be upgrading to Vista. In fact, soon I will be leaving the all-embracing arms of Micro$oft, and I wanted to tell you, because you're like a friend to me.

You need too much space, Bill. Every Windoze upgrade requires more space on my hard drive than the last one. Vista needs 20Gb of hard drive space. My first computer had a 4 Mb hard drive, and I never thought I would fill it. But now you need a drive that's 500 times bigger than my first one? Well, that's just greedy, Bill.

Then there are the demands for money. More and more money. To Install Vista, I should upgrade my processor, increase my RAM and add a video card. Bill, for that amount of money, I can buy a new computer.

But what hurts the most, Bill, is your lack of trust. You simply cannot bring yourself to believe that I am an honest customer. Every time you force a badly needed security update on me, you make a point of telling me you are making sure my copy of Windoze is legal. I had to prove the copy was legal when I installed it, and you made my computer call Micro$oft HQ with my information! So sometime between the installation and update, you seem to believe that I have scrapped my legal copy of Windoze and replaced it with a pirated copy. And Vista will only let me change hardware a handful of times before I have to buy another copy. What if my new processor is defective? I have memory card problems? Tough, you say. Buy another copy, and make the check out to cash.

And not only do you believe I'm a software pirate, you believe I am a music and movie pirate, and have packed Vista with all sorts of watchdog software that will disable my system at a moments notice if it believes I'm using illegal files! No trial. No "We need to talk." You'll just disable my system.

So, as you can see, Bill, it's not me. It's you.

I'm dual booting, Bill.

I know. I know. It is unfaithful of me to treat you in this manner, but Mark Shuttleworth doesn't treat me like a criminal. He welcomes me into the arms of Ubuntu with a smile, and not a bludgeon. He's not asking me to change, Bill. He accepts my computer for what it is--older but not yet ready for the scrap heap; not ready to be dumped for the latest hi-speed processing floozie from a corporate shill or yours.

We can still be friends, Bill. At least until the end of XP's support cycle, the second Tuesday in April 2009. Then I'll be letting Ubuntu move in with me.

You have a year, Bill. Let's make the most of it.

Jeff