George, you missed Windows 2000. It was the Anti-ME. ME took everything bad in 98se and NT and made a really, really sucky OS. Win2k got the best parts of both, and was my personal favorite Windows OS. I ran it as my primary until 2004, when XP became so ubiquitous that I had to use it to keep up with my user base.
You are right about Windows 2000. I never did go through that because 2000 was primarily targeted to business and the server market. It is my understanding that XP used a lot of 2000 as its base.