[NYC GOP Chick]

Oh, and what are some of the reasons to not upgrade to XP?

[goldstategop]

One word: Linux. For some reason, Windows still uses an easily corrupted registry to store operating system instructions and settings. One day you wake up and its gone and you can't get back to your desktop. Arrrrghhh!!! Linux is based on a stable kernel and very rarely crashes. Today its made in user friendly desktop distros like Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros, and Elx Linux. There's really no reason to stick with Bill Gates unless you need the tons of software written for the Windows market.

[XBob]

57- "I use Windows 98SE, but would definitely consider 2K -- although I had that at work and it didn't seem all that more stable."

go to microsft windows update, and run their analysis and update programs for both 98 and 2000 - both improve dramatically.

[Revel]

If your drive is WD then they have a free program that you can download from there site.(Data lifeguard or some such thing) It will pretty much take you by the hand and ask you how many partitions you want and such. It is good to have one for your system. One for applications. One for games. At least that many. You can only have 4 real partitions. But this program really only divides one partition into several volumes. That is all you need do unless you are a real geek who is doing multibooting into multiple operating systems.

If you do buy a video card then make sure that it is and AGP card since your PC has a superior AGP slot. This AGP slot is still in use in the most modern boards. The older style was made for a PCI slot. Don't buy that.(Be careful)

I don't use XP. I here it is also more stable. My biggest problem is that I don't want to get permission from Microsoft everytime I change a few things in my computer. Without that permission then windows won't work I guess. I don't like being spyed on and XP does that. Someone who sells computer stuff to the public told me recently that XP stands for X-tra Problems. I am not sure just what he meant. Maybe others could tell you better than I could about that. I also seem to remember that it won't accept device drivers that are not licensed(for a fee) by Microsoft. That it deliberately distorts MP3 audio from non licensed players. A bunch of wierd stuff that I have no personal experience with. I don't even know how much of that stuff was implemented in the release. Just reading about it bugged me though.