My brother is using XP on his 700MHz Duron right now. IE must be loading just as fast as IE5.5 on my Win2K machine (Athlon 850MHz). I have 512MB of RAM and I think he has 384 right now. I don't believe he feels its any slower than the ME he was running before. I haven't used his machine enough to compare to my installation of 2K overall though.

I plan to stick with 2K for a while longer mainly because I don't have the time to clean everything up that I need to for an upgrade right now. I'd like to move up to some new hardware as well, even though this setup is just over a year old (I'll definitely be staying away from anything Intel - AMD was a good choice a year ago and remains so for the near future). When doing that, I had full intentions of going with WinXP. Its enhancements will make my daily usage a bit more lively. I know of a few small things that tick me off already, like how they slightly messed up the functionality of desktop toolbars (when you vertically expand, if you have two of them next to each other, the one on the right jumps to the bottom - argh). But once I get them to line up the way I want, I don't need to touch them again.

I think the worst thing MS could do to keep me from an OS would be to remove the ability to move the START menu and main task bar (while keeping it at the bottom of the screen). That would be awful. Everyone knows the task bar and start menu belong at the TOP of the screen. I wouldn't want to have to hang myself from the ceiling, upside down, to use the computer.

Bruno