Know where I can find any Winblows freeware for Computer Aided Manufacturing? Because I haven’t been able to find any. There’s some for Linux, but due to hardware considerations at the moment, I can’t make the Great Leap Forward to Linux.
The upgrade to XP is probably your best bet, you can upgrade to XP Home edition for $99. Not too bad, really, the Pro edition will run you $199. That’s by far your cheapest Windows alternative. 2000 is nice, but I don’t think it has all the driver support that XP has, and would be more pricey anyway.