Well, I'm not a windows user. The last thing I used was NT4 some years
ago...

IIRC the graphics chip is Silicon Motion SM722. I've had some problems
with the same in a cheap Celeron based desktop that had a max RAM
capacity of 64Mb. I think it's due to the limited RAM available to it.
It's been a while since it ran Win98se but as I recall Win Media did
work better than flash and realmedia.

I've noticed that windoze media plays well on even old VESA systems
where flash and realmedia are slow or just freeze. Perhaps windoze
media codecs can cheat by stealing more RAM and priority.

The Skype problem sounds familiar but I can't recall for sure. I
recall hearing about the Transmeta having some problems with
multimedia because of the the kind of code optimizations used for most
x86 codecs. Something to do with the Transmeta needing more clock
cycles, I think.

I haven't heard about this XP virus yet: It apparently hasn't hit any
of the feeds I'm watching. If it's this serious it should have hit
them all by now and even the media.

--
jd