Holding many MCSE certs. gives me some room to explain a few things. Microsoft is the one of the few companies you buy something from that is "a work in progress". A lot of the updates are for security so it is best to download them all. Most people who flame windows do not know what they are talking about. More BSD...blue screens of death...come from problems with chipsets on motherboards or motherboard communication related failures. They can also be caused by added software that has conflicts.

I would seriously urge staying with XP or 2K. Vista is far from ready for home use. It will require massive memory and processing power compared to XP.

My kids braces and massive game collection has been paid for by people bringing in their comps that did not have security patchs DL'ed and virus protection running. Will say it once..if you are not running an updated virus protection you are asking for trouble.