My favorite is Win2k. XP is a nice upgrade, but it still had issues. I personally run 4 Desktops with Win2k and had never had a BSOD on any of them. I have tried to get it to fail, and aside from destroying the registry, have not been able too.
With XP, I was able to get it to bail on a simple driver change. Seemed kind of strange, cause PnP was supposed to be better. After taking an MS training course for XP (2272B) I still think it is pretty weak.
Something else that I did recently was to build a new box. I had some stuff in another system and thought I would just move it over. Pre transfer this is what was in box 1:
P4 2.4 GHZ
MSI 845E MAX
1 GB DDR memory
Maxtor 30GB 7200 RPM
PNY Verto 4600 128Mb AGP4x
3com 10/100 Nic
SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer
I took the HDD and the nic over to the new system. I wanted the HDD intact and thought I would see how it worked. New system is as follows:
P4 2.8HT
GA-8KNXP with 875P chipset
1GB PC3200 DDR400 ram
maxtor 30GB 7200 HDD (from old system)
4x Seagate 80Gb 7200 HDD RAID 1
3com nic (old system)
Radeon 9800 Pro 256 AGP 8x
2 optical drives.
Now the part that is important, is that when I booted the system, I was using the same system drive from the old system running win2k. The system booted normally except in VGA mode. Needed to install drivers for the Motherboard's onboard stuff and then the system worked like a dream. That is something that XP cannot ever do. cause you have to reregister to get it working. Although XP looks nice and seems to work on many occasions, there are places that it will never work as well as Win2k does.
Good luck in your quest...