It remains a silly idea. Ignore a bunch of versions, pretend XP is a successor to Windows ME, and hey look, a pattern. The pattern simply doesn't exist.Just years of observation and applied logic. Most view this pattern more as one of MS tries something stupid but pretty then brings out a version that fixes their screw-up. win98=bad win98se=good winme=bad winxp=good etc. Essentially the second version is exactly the same as the first but with all the stupid things taken out or fixed...