First a caveat: I'm a Linux bigot. I think Microsoft products are evil. Unfortunately most of the executable software out there is written for the Windows operating system. I only boot the Windows partition to play card games or use MS-Word, Autocad, etc. I do all my real work under Linux (I simply love Linux).

Windows 95 and 98 are crap. These operating systems will become unstable if installed on modern hardware using modern application programs.

Windows 2000 and XP are based upon the Windows-NT operating system. Windows-NT was heavily influenced by the IBM/Microsoft OS/2 operating system. The last version of OS/2 was a thing of beauty. Unfortunately IBM got snookered by Microsoft and OS/2 went the way of the dodo bird. OS/2, Windows-NT, Windows 2000 and XP are all multitasking operating systems (like Unix and Linux). I have found the Windows 2000 operating system to be very stable. Despite being a Microsoft product, I'm happy with it. So now you jump in and ask: "What about Windows XP?". Windows XP has a big problem that can be summed up with two words "Product Activation". To use XP, you need to access Microsoft's website and basically ask for permission to use software that you paid for. If you change your hardware configuration then you must again reaccess Microsoft's website and have your permission reasserted. In the mean time, if you're accessing Microsoft's website with Internet Explorer then Microsoft is probably doing a full inventory of your hard disk, checking serial numbers of installed software and possibly checking out other naughty things like pirated DVDs and CDs. I refuse to accept this sort of crap from Microsoft so I will not install XP on my computer. Eventually I'll abandon Microsoft operating systems altogether and go over to Linux based Windows emulation like WINE or VMware. Unfortunately WINE is still too buggy to be usable. I'm hoping that Microsoft will eventually be forced to publish their API's and then WINE will become usable.

Gary