Perhaps you're being misled by the fact that in its infinite wisdom
Microsoft decided that WinXP (and its predecessor Win2K) should not be
able to *create* FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB,

Correct. A bad decision.

BTW - Vista/2008 can format 128GB to exFAT.

create the partitions (Wikipedia says you can even use XP's format.exe
command-line utility),

No. Creating a partition using Windows Setup booted off Windows CD can probably
work, but not command-line FORMAT which also has the artificial limitation.

after which any Windows system that supports
FAT32 (and presumably Mac) should access them just fine

Yes. There are plenty of laptops where Windows is installed on a 40-100GB FAT32
partition.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com