I don't know what the OS costs on it's own. he got it packaged with the box.
It's everything I hated about moving up to XP, but twice as much.
You are not allowed to do anything, including give yourself permission to do anything.
It doesn't get along with the XP machines already in the network at all, and it seems to be monumentally troublesome to do the smallest things.
Trying to give yourself permission to do something, without letting the entire internet also have permission, appears to be an exerciser in futility. Everyone has access or nobody does.
Somewhere in this poorly documented monstrosity, ther is probably a button that does what I want, but isn't the point of a Windows OS that you don't need a year of IT training to use it?