On radio 4 last night I caught a brief announcement that the Government are doing a block deal with MS of licenses for the NHS for 70m (per year?). If this is the case and they start doing this in the rest of the public sector, it will kill all competition because to the users in the service the software is then effectively free. Under EU law, deals bigger than 150k gbp have to be tendered properly and advertised in the EU journal. If this did not occur, the Government are breaking the law. If the argument is that there is only one reasonable source of supply, they are then dealing with an unregulated monopoly. If you believe as I do that this is anti-competitive practice and effectively forms a cartel between the Government and Microsoft, contact the office of fair trading. The E-mail address is enquiries.competitionact@oft.gov.uk Incidentally the Governement probably aren't aware that they are paying Microsoft more for their annual license for the NHS than Sun paid for the whole of Star Corp. -- IanL