Oh yes on my laptop windows xp was heavenly. XP installed itself on my laptop in less than hour with all peripherals working. First time my laptop didn't reboot every hour . Now that my laptop has Linux after several days and three different kernels my sound still doesn't work. But on here all i've got so far has been "compile the kernel yourself". Sorry, but it's got a long time before linux is ready for most people. They will only be able to use linux if someone else installs it for them.
The reason Linux is so challenging is becuase the community develops nearly all of its own drivers, usually with NO SUPPORT on the part of the manufacturer. If they spent 1/10 of what they spent developing Windows drivers on OSS driver development, then we woudn't have this problem.
If it bothers you so much, then stick with Windows. If you want to help improve things, then write your hardware vendors and tell them you won't purchase another product from them until they begin releasing GPLd or BSDd drivers.
-Roberto _________________________________________________________________Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail