Maybe the BIOS handles it, maybe it doesn't. In any case, XP seems capable of handling it. I also routinely changed my IP settings in Win98 without reboot.

Obviously, windows does need to be rebooted more often, but most users won't notice this. It's rare enough to avoid being an annoyance, and most people turn their machines off for the night. These aren't servers here.

Truth be, there's very little of the old *nix complaints that still stick to windows, other than everyone running as administrator, and my pet peeve: the RPC service.