And even then it's probably only certain applications. Office plugins seem to be among the worst offenders in my experience. I remember problems with both IBM

And even then it's probably only certain applications. Office plugins seem to be among the worst offenders in my experience. I remember problems with both IBM Rational and FileNet Panagon. Those are both huge software packages developed by big companies, so I don't know how much blame to lay on microsoft. Barring hard drive issues, I've never had to reinstall the OS on my personal PC.