Aside from the abominable Windows ME, windows has steadily improved in each consecutive release. XP is an extraordinarily stable system that is enough of a departure from the 95-98 gui that I had to do a little research to familiarize myself with the more technical admistrative tasks but not so much as to be overwhelming at all. The system recovery is phenominal and I cannot recall ever having to reboot due to locking-up. This on a machine that, running Windows ME, had to be re- booted several times a day running essentially the same programs. This is a home office PC. Extreme multi-tasking, which often crippled ME and was the main reason 98SE would, on rare occasion, crash, is handled with ease by XP. Setting up a WI-FI home network with XP was done easily with the XP GUI. However, the interface with units still running ME was not easily established and was only resolved by upgrading ALL PC's in the home to XP. Which is actually a GOOD thing but of concern to anyone not in a position do install XP on all PC's in a network. I have come to rely on this product and recommend it for home office and personal PC users without any hesitation.