My opinion don't be afraid of XP, I got the home version when it first came out and it has been rock solid! never once a blue screen of death, I wish I could have said that about 98se. as for privacy issues even if microsoft could decode the system ID (which they say they can't) who cares? does it realy matter weather microsoft knows what video card you have? or how much RAM? the system ID is only to keep people from pirating their software. as for hardware for Brice and Poser, three words RAM,RAM,RAM. I run a 900 T-Bird with 1 gig of SD ram at home and have smoked render times of newer machines at work with less DDR ram