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I was told that if you change or install more than 4 components...you have to get clearance from Microsoft to use XP..it will clam up. And if you change computers....you have to call them and get clearance....???

Yes that is true. How often do you change things? I changed things a lot at first because I was building my own machine, so I had to re-register it, but they didn't give me any problems.

Out of principle if you want to avoid XP for that reason alone, well I won't blame you, but I still think it's worth going with XP, esp on a new machine.

I was told that if you change or install more than 4 components...you have to get clearance from Microsoft to use XP..it will clam up. And if you change computers....you have to call them and get clearance....???

MS will not refuse to reauthorize you, according to their documentation.

The truth is that if you change enough of the hardware on your system to fool the OS into thinking it is on another machine, you will have to get it reactivated by MS. There is no good reason to believe that MS will not reactivate the product for you. As for reporting Software, it does not exist as a built in feature of XP. If a program crashs, you have the OPTION of reporting the crash to MS so that they may be able to fix it for everyone. If you do not want to report it, you do not have to. All non-MS programs are the manufacture's problem, not MS's and they only really want the report to see where the incompatablities are. They are only interested in making sure you are not stealing their products. I wish everyone would quit being so paranoid (or dishonest) 98 support will go away soon, so your only real choices for a new system with MS OS are win2k and xp. XP smokes win2k for home use and ease of use if you can get over your fears. Anything that wont run on XP and is newer than about 5 years old probably wont run on Win2K either FWIW.