If you have to use XP, then get XP Pro, it's more stable. I ended up with that on the kids' new computer, but I am moving along very nicely with Win2000Pro. Since it's an academic version, the price was also right.

You have to go back 20 years or more to see the mistake made about operating systems. There was a guy with a better system who didn't bother to call back when IBM gave him a call. So Bill Gates got the business. Or something like that. MS-DOS, remember that? I forget what the other one was called. This is fuzzy, and probably put in the wrong order, but we have only ourselves to blame if we don't like the operating systems. We can change them.

The fellow who developed the better OS was a co-host with Stewart Cheifet on The Computer Chronicles. Gary Something-or-Other? I believe he went into a rapid decline and died young, broke and depressed. The CC archives don't go back far enough to show him as host, that I can find. Anyway, there's a sketchy history for you.

SRS