Ok. I get the final copy of XP from work to install on my laptop, and decide that I'll run it since one day MS will find a way to force me to it anyhow.

I did a clean install figuring that would avoid problems. Well when I restore my data, I realise I forgot to backup "My Documents" from 2000. My mistake.

I get it up and running, and it seems to be ok. And some of the features grow on me, like the systray icon hiding and paint finally being decent enough for quick jobs (saving to PNG and such for screenshots).

Now onto another annoynance. My wireless card has no official driver support, and the 2000 install program won't work. So I find a way to manually install it, but I have 1 shot at setting my wireless settings. So much for being able to use it at work anymore, since encryption keys change. Again, not the fault of XP per say...

Then I start using my laptop as a laptop, thus unplugged from AC. And sound stops working 95% of the time. And anything multimedia related will bring the system to a crawl (flash, movies, etc...). Plugging it into AC dosen't resolve this problem until after a reboot.

Numlock. 2000 would remember how it was set across reboots and docking. XP won't properly (hell, it seems like at times it's turning it on just to piss me off).

And finally after 2 months of trying it, it gives me the last "screw you". It breaks the network. Running ipconfig results in an odd "Unknown Internal Error" for both the NIC and wireless card. Reinstalling the wired connection does nothing to fix it. TCP/IP cannot be uninstalled. The repair feature gave an obscure error.

And so I figure I'll boot off the XP cd and run a repair. Well, choosing repair dumps me to the worthless repair console. (2000 gave the choice between the console and an autorepair that copied files back). Reboot, ahh, they moved it. "Press F2 to run an automated repair". Pressing F2 gives me a prompt to insert a floppy that I never created. (Not called an ERD, of course they would have to change the terminology again, and who knows where it's created from now...). And if I try to install from booting off the CD, it says it will kill the existing XP install. So I boot back to the OS, and run setup there. I choose upgrade, and watch it go through the file copying and reboot. And I watch it reboot again and again... Seems to reboot right after I see my network link lights pop on. It's on it's 8th reboot like this, so I doubt it's coming back.

So now I have 2 choices to keep my data on it and do a clean reload. Either buy a 2.5 to 3.5 inch IDE converter, or do a parallel install and hope it works.

I'm definitly going back to 2000. It worked flawlessly on this same hardware for many months. Then in a few months, I'm moving to OS X on a Powerbook.