> Next I'm going to implement the "minimize to tray" feature and the 
> option to autostart Bitcoin with Windows, so the number of nodes online 
> would stay higher. 

Now that I think about it, you've put your finger on the most important 
missing feature right now that would make an order of magnitude 
difference in the number of nodes.  Without auto-run, we'll almost never 
retain nodes after an initial tryout interest.  Auto-running as a 
minimized tray icon by default was the key to success for the early file 
sharing networks.  It wouldn't have been appropriate for v0.1.0 when 
stability wasn't a given yet, but now it's good and stable.  This is a 
must-have feature for the next release so any users that come back to 
try the new version we hopefully retain this time.

I think the most user friendly way of doing auto-run is putting an icon 
in the Startup folder.  I see OpenOffice.org and a number of other 
things on my computer do it that way.  The other way, creating a runas 
registry entry, is not easily visible or editable by users, I've never 
liked that much.  I guess what we want is an auto-run option that's on 
by default, if the option is changed then it creates or deletes the 
startup icon.

While it's tempting to do a Linux port, once we do it we have that extra 
work with every release from then on.  I'd rather put it off a while 
longer.  Auto-run might give us 300% more nodes while Linux might give 
us 3% more.  Linux would help server farms, but actually we'd like to 
favour individual users.  Someone reported that it works fine in WinE.