I'm waiting for some of the independents like Tom's Hardware to give us the green flag. XP essentially has the same kernel as 2000, that was the whole point with the stability issue. In a way it would be surprising if it were faster. AS Kevin said the added bells and whistles do little to make it aerodynamic. Also the self healing and auto update features that sunk ME are an integral part of XP. the real benchmark is how much ram or CPU can I buy for the $100 or $200 it takes to upgrade.