It wasn't that long ago that XP was rightfully loathed by a great many people. But M$ kept at it; sending out update after patch after service pack... and what do you know? XP in it's current form is a pretty slick OS. It does a great job handling all kinds of media. The Windows picture viewer runs much better than a number of 3rd party apps I had tried. And thanks for SP3!! I had a number of issues (including boot freeze-ups) which were totally cured by installing the final pre-release version, recently. I can easily run my 2.4 gig AMD processor to it's limit running some of the A/V apps I use (even with 2.5 gigs of RAM). I know a more resource-hungry OS would necessitate a new CPU.. which means a new motherboard... which means my power supply may not be big enough... auggh!! C'mon, Redmond!! I waited thru the '90s with no computer because they obviously couldn't do what I wanted them to do. (My old man was a software guy back in the days of boxes of punch cards.. he knew where things were headed back in 1975.. and he was basically right, too.) Now with XP I can do all manner of A/V wrangling (I should point out that I'm a professional musician, not an oil tychoon). And it's really fun, and even productive. It's only reasonable to allow a good system like XP an extended life so we aren't strongarmed into buying all new hardware that we can't afford anyway. (We; meaning us mere mortals living paycheck to paycheck... which is most of us in the now-demolished middle class...)☺