It *may* be better in terms of stability then (?). Windows 9x is so bug-filled that DirectX 10 might be even more stable in the long run.
Or it just means that Billy wants to force people to upgrade to Windows XP. At least for Windows 95 users, where DirectX stopped at 8.0a, it is still available for download off the Microsoft site. I'm guessing it will be the same way for 9x users with DirectX 9 in the future.
Either way, I dumped Windows 9x a couple years ago for Windows 2000 and now Windows XP. As many problems as I had with the 9x family (God...I hated how they gutted DOS, I hated the incessant "fatal errors," and how I hated how ME gutted out DOS completely), I don't miss it.
Melon