I made the mistake of buying a new system last year with only 128 meg memory, and XP Home as the OS.

It runs but performance is pathetic. My PII 233 mhz laptop with Windows 98 SE runs much faster than this 1.6 gig dog. I know, I know, memory upgrade will make a big difference--it's DDR memory which is kind of pricey, so I keep putting it off.

It was a custom-built system, perhaps I should have known better but the shop that built it didn't bother to point out that it would run for shit as configured.

One of the problems is that, on the XP system only, IE6 simply will not open secure sites--I've been all through the settings a million times and there is nothing disabled that would matter. Netscape 7.0 will go where IE won't, but if I have them both open the whole system virtually freezes up, the response time gets so slow.   Blah.

And if you have _specific_ software you want to run, check compatibility. For example, the free 8-track version of ProTools runs only on 98SE, not on XP. That's a big disincentive right there.

One more thing. WARNING relating to System Restore. Last week my anti-virus program found a copy of Bugbear virus nestled in EVERY SINGLE restore point (they are stored in a hidden folder System Volume Information), and it couldn't clean them out due to the folder's protected and compressed status. Apparently they were just waiting for me to run System Restore. System Restore (which was also in ME, an otherwise pathetic OS) only works if you have restore points which were saved when you didn't have a problem. It's a good and useful thing but not a cureall.

(I solved the problem by turning off System Restore, which deletes all the restore points)

So XP has its advantages--built in firewall, and built-in networking software which is easily set up for DSL or cable high-speed connection--but it needs a good platform.