While I do agree with what your saying about WHQL licensed machines, it doesn't mean the problem goes away, it just means the problem is less likely to happen, your still at the whim of all the other weird and wonderful behaviour that can cause XP to crash.
The kernel pissing over your memory without it knowing any better is not the be all and end all of data loss problems in XP.
I've seen many "brand" name machines crash in many weird and wonderful ways, so the argument simply does not stand up when you extrapolate it across dozens of different configurations.
It doesn't make sense to me to base an opinion on a couple of brand name machines, instead of the actual reality, which is that XP as a piece of software (hardware aside) is just not that great and you should never trust your data with it.
Cheers for the clarification on the 9x vs XP though - that explains why XP was never as bad as 9x with data loss.
The kernel pissing over your memory without it knowing any better is not the be all and end all of data loss problems in XP.
I've seen many "brand" name machines crash in many weird and wonderful ways, so the argument simply does not stand up when you extrapolate it across dozens of different configurations.
It doesn't make sense to me to base an opinion on a couple of brand name machines, instead of the actual reality, which is that XP as a piece of software (hardware aside) is just not that great and you should never trust your data with it.
Cheers for the clarification on the 9x vs XP though - that explains why XP was never as bad as 9x with data loss.