We would never attempt to install XP on an older machine. The entire structure of the files is different from earlier versions of Windows.

We bought a new machine with XP about a year and a half ago.

The good news is that it's way easier to use, the restore function has saved our collective ass several times, and it virtually never crashes. Also, upgrades are automatically downloaded to our machine.

The bad news is that most of the software and hardware you now own will not work with XP. We had to buy a $150 upgrade to make our Wordpefect office suite work. Our printer worked pretty well but no where near as well as with Windows 95. Our two year old scanner produced horrible results due the Microsoft driver that comes with XP. HP no longer supported the scanner so we had to buy a new one. Gave the old one to a friend with Windows 95 and she's in heaven. Software that depends mainly on information contained on a CD that you put in to run it generally will work but that's about all.

Bev and Jerry