Well, I use W98 right now. Hearing that W2K only locked up once or twice a day scares me as my W98 only locks up on me about once a week. I use W2K at work and it's stable for what I use it for. As to XP, and the discussion about privacy and intrusion, it is touted as making sure you only use the OS on one PC by transmitting the configuration (about 17 items from your PC). HOWEVER, who really knows what else they check for? Would it be prudent of them to check for duplicate serial numbers of other software packages and transmit (behind your back, so to speak) that info back to them? Mind you, I have nothing to worry about as I have legal copies of everything I use on my PC and my wife's...it just bothers me that XP has the ability to gather info and send it to MS. Who knows what they are gathering. And for what purposes. NOW, having said that, I might consider it if it was a really stable OS. For example, our LAN manager ordered a PC for his 13-yr-old and after setting it up, it crashed when he tried to load a WAV file. I was looking for info concerning stability like that. As to getting a copy of W2K, it's hard to get. When I order the PC, I will be paying for a copy of XP as they do not offer anything else (planned obselescence). However, I would not consider it "stealing" if I were to discard that OS and load a copy of W2K from my office. After all, MS got their money from me for an OS and that shouldbe all they are really concerned about.