Mike, if you don't have the right driver nothing will work in my experience and the Windoze API is far from fool proof. The biggest problem I see is the drivers will step on each other and crash the system. Video drivers have the worst reputation for this. It can even be important in what sequence they load. Ah for the days of Microchannel when there was a real standard.
I have really started going backward on this speed thing. I am looking more at power consumption these days and that infers that you use the slowest machine than can get the job done. All that heat is money burning. For things like MP3 players I still like my P1 166 machines and they are rock solid.
