> However it seems you've ignored the larger issue of future
> maintainability here.  I thought John Nemeth explained fairly clearly
> that any M$ Windows device driver can define a new device name and that
> they can appear anywhere within the NTFS filesystem hiararchy.
> 
This is not true. A windows device driver cannot define a new device name
that can appear anywhere in the file system. Only the old DOS device names
already listed have this property. New device drivers are always accessed in a 
separate namespace that does not overlap the rest of the filesystem. This is 
true for all Win32 windows systems from Windows 95 all the way up to Windows 
XP.

So no maintenance issue just a constant list of filenames to avoid. As others 
have said not a big deal. 

Mike