, stick with what works.
MS has it's good and bad points. I love XP for many reasons having gone through 95, 98 NT4, 2000, and XP. XP is so friggin easy.
With Win 95 I had driver problems, crashing problems and networking was difficult to set up.
Win 98 had a little bit better plug and play and was pretty good for games.
I had a love hate relationship with NT4, Drivers were a bitch, Games sucked but it was the first OS that I learned in-depth and the security was great compared to 98 and 95.
2000 was fun, all the security of NT but it also had great plug and play and games worked well.
It blew my mind when I installed XP and it automatically worked with my DSL without configuring a thing networking was easy as hell, it had built in cd burning and picture viewers.
While learning NT4 I first started playing with Linux and had no luck with red hat or free bsd, but I was able to run caldera. I was not however able to do much with it.
I was pretty impressed with Mandrake 7, and I really like Mandrake 8. My knowledge of Linux is getting better and I'm able to do alot more than I used to but I still have a long way to go to get to the point where I would switch 100%
Hopefully I can learn more from people like you guys.
BTW what do you think of the new Apple commercials on TV. They crack me up. I can't say much because I don't have much experience with macs but it seems like there is not much tweeking you can do to them. I still love building my own machines and learning how they work.