Hah !

M$ is dying, they are out of ideas  Anybody remembers anything about WinME (a.k.a. Win98 3rd ED) ?? Well, I remember all the trouble it made and at the end we recommended to ppl to stick with Win98. I still recommend that.
If you wish to stick with M$ OS Win98 SE is the answer for desktop OS. W2000 is much better, but it's not for fun (I personally use both).

Now XP, well excuse me, that's another trick to sell the same crap with new shiny look. I also recommend you ppl to check this article >>  
http://grc.com/dos/xpconference.htm

So you want to try something new ? That's not XP for sure ...

Cheers
Chef
Cheflab.com