Well, I've been happy with my Windows 2000 ever since its release, but with all the good things I've been hearing people say about Windows XP, I decided to give it a try. After making the switch, and reformatting my drive with a clean install of XP Professional, I must say I was very dissapointed. However, I gave it a try for about a week before switching back to 2000. Here is what I found:

Good Stuff:
*The new look is more pleasing than the standard look of Windows. The familliar grey color scheme is getting kind of old, and it was nice to see the new colors and visual effects.
*The plug and play support is impressive. All my hardware, incliding my video card and wireless network card was installed quickly and completely automatically. The wireless network took only 5 minutes to set up and required no additional installitation of software.
*Built in support for zip files, cd recording and MP3s. This is something that makes a lot of sense. These are some software needs that almost anyone has, and it used to be that third party software was required to fill them. It is convenient and cost-saving to have them built into the operating system.

Bad stuff:
*Assumes you are stupid. Windows XP won't let you use your own computer as the administrator. Apparantly, none of us are intelligent and knowledgeable enough to handle that responsibility. The operating system protects a lot of files and settings, gives tips and warnings that I found condescending, and uses a large amount of system resources to back up everything you do, just in case you screw up. I actually found this operating system more difficult to use because of all the anti-intuitive features.
*Absurd hardware requirements. XP took 155MB of ram, just to start up. Compare this to the 70MB of ram that my windows 2000 takes. If you have 128 MB of ram, XP will probably use all of it, leaving little or none left for your programs, which will cause them to be dependant on the paging file, causing a major decrease in speed.
*Networking not so great.. I found the functionality of Windows XP's networking to be poor compared to 2000.

What I'd suggest is to go with Windows 2000 Professional. It is faster, more efficient, more user friendly (I think), CHEAPER, faster, has lower hardware requirements and does not have the annoying activation feature. The advantages of XP can be added to 2000 by installing 3rd party software, and the combined cost of 2000 and this 3rd party software is still much lower than the cost of XP.

Recommended: No