XP...It's great. I can't imagine going back to the other OS's. Now if my apps/games wouldn't run on it I guess I would go back to the 9x line, but every single game/app I have runs just fine. The key to getting XP to run faster is memory. The more memory the faster it will be. If you have at least 128 you'll be fine, but double it and you'll notice big improvements.
AOL...well I don't like it. In fact, I had to install it once and it trashed my win2k box. So I call their tech support and they said I shouldn't have installed AOL. So I rebuilt my box and moved my mom to MSN. AOL does have it's niche. Non-technical people who don't know how to spell ISP really love it--and it does serve them well.
13 yr. old launches Denial of service attacks remotely
The first thing I hated about XP is not being able to pop up my computer or startup by right-clicking on the start button. That was a stupid feature to lose, and enough to totally turn me off on XP.
I've been using XP (home) for about 3 weeks, since it came on my new computer (I had not heard of it before). It's different than Windows 98, but that doesn't mean it's better or worse. One problem I've had is that the game "Black and White," which I have wanted to try for a while now, won't run on XP. I'm very disappointed. Everything else runs fine, though.