Originally Posted by Kerry56

I don't see the need to stop using XP. It will still be a viable operating system for many years. Extended service will continue, and critical updates for security will still be issued. I don't intend to stop using it till new hardware simply doesn't get XP drivers. And even then I may keep a "legacy" system around just to run XP.

I use Vista in a secondary partition, mostly because I like the way Media Center works with my tv/capture card. I have not run into any issues with the DRM installed in Vista. Not anymore than the DRM installed in XP.

The best alternative for an operating system is probably Mac OSX. But that requires Apple hardware, which you have ruled out.

I have tried Linux several times, just to learn a bit about the system. I always ended up deleting the partition and going back to XP. I found it unintuitive coming from a Windows environment. Ubuntu was the easiest to set up and use for me, but I have too many programs that simply won't run in Linux, even under Wine, and there aren't good alternatives for them in Linux.

I believe my experience in Linux is fairly typical for a casual user experimenting with the operating system. If you have enough incentive, I believe you can migrate from Windows successfully. I just didn't have such an incentive.