Maybe we should all chip in to see what can be done ... and it only needs one or two really rich guys to make it happen really fast. Wouldn't that be an interesting experiment?

I'll quote one of the Backspin readers, Greenman, who commented on the online column: "Reactos is the germ of a fantastic idea, but to become a legitimate global alternative to XP after M$ pulls the plug on it, Reactos must garner the support of the most credible computer community members and the financial backing of the right secure computing business interests. I say this because the global computing ecosystem needs competing top-level alternatives for user communites to choose from, each with a different set of strategic approaches. We already have Linux offering an open source approach to extensions of the Unix OS model and Apple's OSX's closed source approach to the Unix OS model. M$ is withdrawing it's support for its legacy closed source NT 5 OS model in favor of a more bloated & less backward compatible NT6 OS model embodied by Win7 & beyond. For organizations and individuals with substantial investments in XP-compatible computing systems, what is needed before the plug is pulled on XP is both an open source binary compatible replacement and a closed source ultra high security replacement."

So, if ReactOS were to reach production quality, would you be excited? Would it extend your existing investment?

To close out this thrilling installment of Gearhead how about a recent release of a product (count 'em, nine!) years ago: .

MindManager is an implementation of a methodology called "mind mapping" -- it's a visual way of collecting your thoughts about a topic so that you capture as much breadth and depth of the intrinsic and related ideas.