I hear you! It makes one wonder if the internet had never been invented,
would MS send out monthly updates on a disk? Of course no web would mean
almost no viruses. Then maybe even Win XP would be good forever, and MS
could close down because nobody needed to upgrade their software.
Forgive me I'm halucinating again.

In my case: Installing XP SP2 on a computer: 25-30 minutes or even less. In
Virtualbox, a little longer, but not much longer. Then, about 1-3 hours
installing all the needed programs, depending upon what stockpile of CDs were
given to me and depending on computer type. It is not the case with Virtualbox,
where you do not have to install drivers and you install only a few apps that do
not run in Wine or there is no Linux equivalent. Not my case, also.
I installed Windows 95 yesterday. It installed fast, but then I was faced with
lots of error messages, then I installed, experimentally, some modern programs
on it and I was surprised they got installed OK and ran.
Yes, without the Internet MS would earn less, but especially because a lot
less computers would be needed. Or maybe I am also hallucinating because there
are lots and lots of gamers and readers and many more who would want to listen
to music and watch movies more easily and there would be much more. Piracy would
be more difficult. Indeed, the antivirus industry would earn much less due to
the lack of a network on which viruses should spread.
Without the Internet, faults of an OS or of some programs would be more
difficult to broadcast. Also, vendors would carry more newspapers and electronic
newsletters on CD or tape.
Linux, also, would be far more difficult to distribute and its qualities would
not be as valuable as today, in the real world of Internet, hackers and viruses.
By the way, Linux is used a lot in Romania on servers but almost nobody wants
it on the desktop.

it took my windows 2000 and its lousy hardware detection 1hr to install on my
pc, in virtual box it took ten minutes I kid you not! I know XP takes a lot less
time to install on my pc, so I am surprised you take longer to install to
virtual box, although perhaps this depends on hardware because the virtual box
still has to work with hardware.

I once counted the clicks to install Ubuntu vs windows XP because a Windows
user told me how simple it was to install XP. The problem is that Windows
users do not register in their brain many things they do in that OS because
they are so conditioned to clicking through EULAs and feeding in driver
disks. They assume that this is just standard behaviour. we know better. :)

BTW, Ubuntu takes only a fraction of the clicks and the time to install. And
there is only one re-boot.

I redid some installations in order to see the installation speeds when using
Virtualbox.
For Windows XP, it was 29 minutes, from 17.38 to 18.07 today;
for Windows 2000 it was 22 minutes from 18.17 to 18.39 today;
for Windows 98 it was 1 h and 17 minutes from 18.41 to 19.58 today, it spent a
lot of time with updating system settings.
Then I tried to install Ubuntu Lucid Lynx in Virtualbox and it failed.
In all these cases the host OS was Ultimate Edition, my PC has 2.66 GHz
processor, 1 GB of RAM.
All the installations went slower than on bare metal. During installation I did
not do anything else with the computer.

Incidentally Maverick Alpha 1 failed for me in Virtualbox. I plan on
installing it on a HD, but thought I would experiment a little.

Windows ultimate eh? Well in my Ubuntu it was a ten minute install for win2k. So
even in a virtual box linux is way faster.

I finished right now. Windows 95 got installed in 14 minutes, from 14.44 to
14.58.
Again, I did not manage to install Ubuntu in Virtualbox, as the keyboard did
not work and could not type my name, an username and a password. This hapened
with Hardy.
When I booted Gutsy it got jammed at "Loading Linux kernel 11 %"

No it is UE, Ubuntu Ultimate Edition.
So, from those that I managed to install in Virtualbox, Windows 2000 was the
fastest to install and Windows 98 the slowest and the most nerve-wrecking. I
wonder how much time it used to take to install it on those weak, slow computers
many years ago.
I failed to install Ubuntu Lucid in Virtualbox. I am gointg to retry with
Gutsy. I will give it only 512 MB of RAM, as usual.
Then I will reinstall Windows 95 so as to see in how much time it installs.

That's some heavy-duty checking. I am not about to try to go through
the process again to see if it goes any quicker this time. :-)
It probably would have helped if I was installing XP with SP2 (circa
2004), rather than the xp released in 2001. It is good for a laugh to
sit back and read all the "exciting" add/propaganda from microsoft
while you're staring at the install screen though...