Way back at the dawn of time, before AtAT was even the germ of an idea rattling around in some nut's head, the AtAT staff lived in a dorm that was riddled with cockroaches. Really, the bugs in that building could overwhelm the entire student population by sheer biomass alone if they had ever decided to attack en masse. And even before that, Yours Truly once lived in a condo with a massive roach problem; one day the condo association fumigated the whole building, and walking back into the place after the bulk of the poison had wafted out was like tromping through some horrible roach catastrophe. Hundreds of dead roaches littered the floors and countertops. I never thought I'd see so many bugs again. And yet, this is all nothing compared to the number of bugs lurking in the still-unreleased Windows 2000.

If you live a Windows-free life, get ready to laugh out loud like we did, and if you're one of the poor sods who's actually going to have to work with the beast formerly known as Windows NT 5, brace yourself for a fierce crying jag: faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil pointed out a Sm@rt Reseller article claiming that, by Microsoft's own count, there are over 63,000 bugs in Windows 2000. Sm@rt Reseller claims to have gotten hold of an internal Microsoft memo, in which a Windows development leader is quoted as saying, "Our customers do not want us to sell them products with over 63,000 potential known defects. They want these defects corrected. How many of you would spend $500 on a piece of software with over 63,000 potential known defects?" (To be fair, only 21,000 of those bugs are classified as "real problems." Feeling better?)

Let's see, here... by our count, Microsoft's still got three days before the official launch. If the company really wants to ship a bug-free product (they claim that's their goal for the "next release), they only need to stomp just over fourteen and a half bugs a minute. That actually sounds possible, given their vast resources. Then again, we're talking about Microsoft, here-- the company makes a ton of money off of "upgrades" that fix bugs that shouldn't have shipped in the first place, and on service fees spawned by those selfsame bugs. Still, 63,000... That's not exactly subtle, is it? At least now we know why this version of Windows is so darn late: they've evidently spent the past three years slapping in as many bugs as humanly possible. We estimate that Windows 2000's code base is at least 79% bugs-- a new world record. Congrats to the team from Redmond!