I was wandering weather or not I should get Windows XP Professional or just keep the 98 I have now. From what I have heard XP has many bugs and screw-ups. Is it worth getting and replacing 98 or just sticking with what I have now?

Ask yourself "what is wrong with the one i've got now?" does it work? does xp have something you really really need?

save your money (donate to ironworks :D ) and enjoy what you have. imho [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

I love XP. :D

It's incredibly stable, and works great, BUT I got it pre-installed on a new system. I don't think I would have bought it separately. Not that I don't think it's worth the money, but as the previous response mentioned, if what you have is working for you, and unless you really need something XP offers I wouldn't do it.

Problems with XP aren't that it crashes, cuz it doesn't. It doesn't support older equipment though. Like my two year old Visoneer 6200 USB scanner. I will never get it to work at it's utmost potential unless someone writes new drivers for it. Visoneer says they will not. You run into driver related troubles sometimes and find that there are no XP drivers around. So if you plan on buying any new hardware you might want to look around and make sure everything you have will have XP drivers available.

Other than that it's already been said...If your 98 is working great and you don't need it, don't pay out the extra cash for it.

Wulf, I had a similar problem with my webcam, only it won't work at all. The company is no longer in business, so I'm not getting any new drivers either...lol. ;)

My son thinks it's a pretty cool deal though. He got a free webcam for his 98 system. ;)

The problem with both winXP and WinME is that they are both HYPE!! All either of them are in Win98 with more multimedia applications. They dont add anything extremely usefull or new. Both also have certain undesirable things hardwired to the O.S.. One of thoes things is MS mesenger. With 98 and 2k you get to download and install it. With XP and ME it comes as part of the O.S.. You cant delete it OR disable it. It is like a virus that keeps comeing back again and again. Then there is the spyware built into XP. My friend had his WinXP quit working because he lent it to his roommate to install on another computer. Apparently Microsoft logs the CD key of every version of XP. If the same CD key is updated with Microsoft update from 2 diffrent computers then Microsoft automaticaly deactivates ANY versions of XP useing the same CD key number. According to the e-mail my friend got from Microsoft it is illegal to put any version of Windows on more than one comp. You have to have a seperate version of your O.S. for every computer in the house. Well , I guess that my [img]graemlins/2cents.gif[/img] for now.

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Hunter I disagree, XP is more than just hype...no it isn't all that the Hype makes it out to be, but it is a very good OS compared to the other NT products.
Yes XP is a derivitive of the NT line and not the Win9x line. I started with 4 systems all on win98SE and I loved SE, but, I changed one system to XP.....and linked its support and functionality so well that I changed a second and then a third system to XP. XP takes more resources (disk space and memory) but in my opinion it is worth it.

I keep my last box for emergency Ultima 7 (DOS games) fix. </font>

Hunger you are wrong as Magik said. XP is much more stable than 98 and handles resources i.e. RAM much better. It also has many good features such as better security, remote computing features, IPv6 built in etc.
However, I would recommend windows 2000 over XP because of many reasons I have listed before, including the fact that XP is just 2000 with a few extra features and a lot of ANNOYING extra features like product activation, "user-friendly" (read: annoying) new menu systems, and a built in firewall that lets XP connect to MS's servers with around 17 different applications without telling you. XP can't operate properly without access to MS's servers and this is bad. Did I mention that the built in Media player sends details of all DVDs you watch to MS? Of course you can use a 3rd party firewall but why should you have to disable features of an OS to get it how you want? 2000 is a much better choice, it also takes up less disk space and has just as good resource management and stability and nearly all the good features of XP.

<font color="plum"><font color=coral>Dagorian</font> - I purchased a new system last August and had to buy an O.S. for installation. My only choices were WindowsME or XP (neither of which I was excited about). I wanted Win98 because that's what I had on my old system and I had heard "horror stories" about WinXP.

I checked with a local computer store and was told that the ONLY time people have problems with WinXP is when they try to upgrade from Win98 or Win95. I would recommend you keep your Win98 and just wait until your ready for a whole new system before changing O.S.

My experience has been the same as <font color=dodgerblue>Ronn Bmann's</font>, I have had no problems with WinXP. In fact, the only "glitch" I've encountered at all is a game I purchased off of eBay that (unkown to me) is DOS-based. WinXP is not compatible with it, so the game will not work at all on my new system. I also just purchased a copy of Activision's Spiderman (the first version, not the movie version). I've had some minor glitches with it too, but nothing that I couldn't work around.

While I don't take full advantage of the multi-media software, it is nice to know it's there for novices like me who don't really know exactly what they are doing with it.

So - KEEP WIN98 - until you decide to replace your entire system. After that, I would definitely recommend WinXP.</font>

a friend of mine had probs with win98, like constant crashing and sound cards not working.. then i installed win xp on his system. now it doesn't crash anymore, and suddenly his soundcard is working too. i think for the newer systems win xp is just great. for the older ones: keep 98. so: how old is your system dag?