Is there anyone that tests OS's like they do processors or graphics cards?
Windows XP Pro vs. Windows XP Office vs. Windows XP
or Windows XP vs. Windows 98  on and on

you might try anandtech.com That's a bad ass site for reviews. Anyway, i was curious - you said your friends were "professional gamers" Professional usually means that this would be their profession and therefore get paid. If your friends get PAID to play games, that is the most BAD A$$ job ever and i would like a little more info on said topic.

They don't get paid to play-they build gaming computers.

dang - my hope for the perfect job has now been crushed.

All you guys who say 2000 doesn't game well, quite frankly, don't know what you are talking about. 2000 runs every modern game well and most older ones to boot. It has the same NT kernal as XP but lacks the fruity colors and bloatware utilities that most people don't use anyway. It is 1000% more stable than any 9X os.

XP is truly a piece of poo-poo OS, bugs and worse then that, will be part of daily routine. If you buy XP..

Also.. loads of money and time to update all the soft and hardware that doesn't work anymore.. a shitload of driver issues.. In short.. i know the MS helpdesk people of my country by there first name, and of most of them, also theyre neighbors...:-)

BUT... it is a very promising OS.. and i would go for XP anyway.. i did also from day one, because i own a small comp. service Company.. (so i had to...:-))  and after half a year of learning and tons of money, 3 motherboards and 2 harddrives later.. (they were ruined because my drivers for my raidcard were not updated..)  it is more or less stable.. and runs here for a week without even turning it off, or rebooting..  and you can't say that of any other OS.

I must say that i have load's of software running, audio and video editing soft and hardware, and all my games as well....and i have as many cards as my pc can hold, so maybe i was asking for problems..:-)

First i would advice you to use a clean install.. or you are allready in trouble... and second.. is to download all of the updates for XP after installing it, before installing anything else... coz' they are essential..  And i would be carefull with running Office XP and Norton antivirus at the same time.. if you do.. THEN you have fun...:-(  ..LOL..

Gamer DuDe.

Well, I just LOVE 2k. I generally hate XP, due to all the security flaws. I think it also has something to do with all the services I am running on mu 2k adv. server i'm running (app server, gateway, firewall etc.).
XP is an OS which LOOKS more user friendly, only by hiding all "secret" aspects (like a NON-functional firewall and the raw socket layer support, which will turn a lot of XP clients into "zombies" (you know what I mean when it hit you)).

All in all I also think 2k doesn't suck at gaming.. AT ALL. I don't know why people say it does. Although I scored a couple of hundred points less on 3dmark 2001 in 2k than I did with ME, 2k runs stable and doesn't eat all the memory available.

I think it all has to do something with what it is you need. If you are only playing games, WinME or XP will do the job.  If you have anything else running in the background, rule out ME. If you want control and no "cover-ups" too, run 2k instead of XP.

Hey, no bad word on XP... if you know what you are doing.