SP2 has worked great for me... I especially like the new wireless networking system, it's soooo much better than the old one.

Edit: Don't read this if you don't want to read a lot of boring semi-rant. It's my perspective on modern "viruses" and windows operating systems.

I've NEVER used an active virus scanner.

Back in 1996 I got a boot sector virus from a floppy disk whose origin has been lost to time. F-Prot fixed that (also that was 2 or 3 computers ago). I think the virus was called NATAS (Satan backwards).

Sometime around 2000 I got some virus (these are real viruses mind you, not the e-mail spam scripts that are all that are left of the once proud computer virus heritage) from a spanish Bleem! install. Boy did that I feel stupid for that one, stupid warez. That was the last of my old era computers (350 MHz AMD, I now have 4 Athlon XPs).

This computer has never had anything malicious on it aside from WildTangent that I foolishly isntalled when playing with shareware winamp plugins. I often wind up in very seedy neighborhoods of the internet (cracks, warez, etc.) looking for disassembly tools and such.

The only protection my computer has is ZoneAlarm Pro (an older version, with only so-so pop-up blocking), and a hosts file that blocks a couple dozen advertisement websites. On the rare occasion that I'm worried about a questionable program I load up HouseCall and do a quick scan of it. I use IE (and as previously stated, Win98SE).

I occasionally run Ad-Aware or HijackThis to see if I've picked anything up, but besides from "tracker cookies" I don't get anything. I really cannot figure out what is wrong with the average computer user that these new-age e-mail "viruses" spread aside from ones that exploit some vulnerability in Outlook to automatically run.

On top of all of this, I cannot figure out where people get off saying WinXP is an improvement. My friends all have built monster PCs, and WinXP multi-tasks like barf, takes a good while to boot and by default you have to deal with that garbage of logging on as a specific user. I regularly maintain other people's computers and have dealt quite a bit with XP, wiping their machines clear of Ad-ware, Spy-ware and other malicious programs and don't see any benefits to XP besides an improved yet inferior task manager and built in alt-tab and file protections that make your computer harder to use.

On my "miserable" AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with a GF4ti4200 and 512MB SDR (not DDR) RAM, I can simultaneously run 2 instances of EverQuest (a resource hog), Counter-Strike and Jedi Knight and play each at acceptable or max framerates. The programs not focused on simply drop to low framerates (but that doesn't matter since they aren't the focus). My friend with a high end AMD with 1 GB of high FSB RAM (433 MHz I think?) and the best Radeon 9800 can barely surf the internet while a game like EverQuest is running. It's not just his machine though, everyone I know with WinXP gets worse multi-tasking performance than I do (as compared at LAN parties) and only a few beat my Win98SE machine with a Radeon 9800 in framerate.

I have yet to try any of the newest FPS games (D3, HL2) on any of my systems, but UT2k4 and Tribes:Vengeance perform similarly when I attempt to perform other functions while they are running.

I apologize for the rant form this post took on, but I have a lot of experience with the subject (having to deal with windows installs and "cleaning" systems plagued with malicious programs) and feel the general user is either brain-washed or misinformed into believing WinXP has actually been a step forward. I'd even take WinME over XP. =P

Have fun contradicting me, but "Win98 sucks" is hardly a valid argument.

QM

P.S. - I forgot to mention stability. What's your current uptime? I haven't restarted this computer in 3+ days and it gets more intense use than my other 3 comps (so their uptime is significantly longer). This particular machine can also recover from a windows crash without needing a restart.

Current? 23ish hours. This in Win2k. However, up until two days ago, I had a running uptime over almost a month. I'm still cursing the fact that I accidentially pushed the reset button on my computer with my toe. If it wasn't for that, I'd be well over 30 days. Your 3 day uptime isn't exactly impressive. At least, not to me.

Yeah, I only restart this computer, my gaming computer, when it's required by an install or if it's making too much noise and it's bothering me. I usually get many many weeks of uptime....even with heavy use. WINDORS IS SO TERABLE.

And only because I recompiled my kernel.

mmmmmmmmm..............kernel...................