There are a bunch of things here so I want to make sure I dont miss anything:
<< Oh, BTW, I happen to like WinXP Pro a lot....some of the new features are nice, I liked 2K almost as much, but I find that it really needs to be run with NTFS.
But NTFS makes for the most stable system when running demanding programs. >>
It also alows for security, compressed file structure, and encrypted file structure.
<< since Windows 95/98 may be better suited for people who run games or applications that do not run happily on Windows 2000/XP >>
With all the compatability updates and latest service packs just about everything that ran under 98 will run under 2000 an XP ("just about" being the key")
<< I'd also like to hear what typ of apps you guys are running? Anyone running 3DSMax or Photoshop a lot? >>
I am running many Adobe apps, Photoshop 7 (beautiful), 6, 5.5; Illustrator 10, 9; Golive 4,5,6; Livemotion 1,2; Acrobat 5; Premiere 6
also Visual Studio .net; MS Office; Maya and some others
every one of these programs run great under 2K and XP, however tend to be much less stable and happy when ran under 98
<< 98 and/or ME are not even potential candidates for a "decent OS". >>
amen
<< I run xp pro on all of my machines, some dual or triple booted with other os's like 98 or rh 7.2. I do not like the default look of xp. Instead i prefer to turn it into a visually appealing 2k. I
also change quite a few things with xp power toys like the search wizard and other things, simply because it runs sluggish on even the latest stuff (search wizard). In a production environment, i would use nothing but 2k for desktop purposes, with a linux backend preferably. 98 and ME can't compare to xp as far as stability is concerned. >>
I dual boot XP/2K (and used to have mandrake, but not running it right now). I also had to do some tweaking to XP because the interface looks pretty but just plain doesnt respond as quickly as 2k, and I like a quick UI (I set menu popups to 50ms, turn off some of the effects, etc)
Hope that helps!
-spy