<< UnixFreak: I can believe it, but it never hurts to see what you are basing your opinion on. If you've got the proof, I don't see why you would hold it back >>
Well, I am at work, I couldnt find the site, to the one I was thinking of. Its a really good test, that doesnt seem biased towards any of the OS's and runs threaded pipes through the CPU under different platforms, its deep in the IBM developer site, the only reason I am holding it back, is because I dont have the link here, but when I get home, I will post it.
it shows some drastic differences in pipespeed between XP and 2000. Even more drastic between XP and Linux. But the thing to keep in mind is, in a realistic operating enviroment, the differences arent as noticeable, because of all the other factors involved. There are too many things that considerably change the performance of the software environment, so, as a result, even though the raw pipespeed in Linux is 9 times faster than that of XP, we all know that overall, Linux is not 9 times faster. There are so many other variables involved, but, as to what was said, at the core, XP is slower than 2000, from what I can see.