Well I am going to take the plunge and be upgraded from Windows 98 to XP. I was at the Ideal Home Exhibition and they were offering the upgrade (£89) with a free install (worth £49.99) by PC World, so I thought they could iron out the likely problems. I think that offer is only at the Ideal Home, so if anyone else is interested in taking it up, you have to pay a visit to PC World stand.

Actually I am waiting for the man to call today and am beginning to feel nervous at losing my familiar old Windows 98 interface. Will post anything of interest or information if it crops up!

My parents just got XP and although I haven't used it very much, I don't really like it much. It doesn't seem as easy to configure like my ME...

XP is brillaint, you wont regret the upgrade. "XP has detected a HP PSC 950 Printer. Would you like to to install it" yes please.

"XP has detected a network connection to a NEC P440 notebook. Would you like a permanent network connection" yes please. "Would you like to share the cable connection" yep...etc

The plug and play value is enormous and if you have broadband the net integration is also very clever for live updates.

Ladym, you can also switch to classic views to get a win 98 feel. I ran ME for a year or so and thought it was great, yet I heard some horror stories. It wasn't all that stable in some environments. XP has a similar feel to ME in the multimedia aspect, but it's stable as 2000.

One quick word of warning, might be too late, are your other bits and pieces like printers, scanners etc going to be compatible? I bought a computer with 2000 Pro (excellent) and found that I had to replace evedything.

When I upgraded to Windows 2000 Pro some of the drivers for my scanner, sound card etc were not compatible. I visited the web sites of the manufacturers and all had produced Win2000 drivers that could be downloaded and now everything is working again. It is often worth downloading the latest drivers even if you are not changing Windows because bugs in early ones are corrected in later releases.

You mean that I really didn't need to replace the two printers (one laser, one colour), the two scanners, the webcam... Sheesh!

Sorry Sue, though it depends how old they are. Manufacturers tend not to bother with very old bits of equipment as they reckon most of them will have been scrapped. Also if they were made by small companies they may longer be in business.

Personally I feel XP is the best Microsoft product ever...

Its true that DRIVERS are a problem...

even if XP says a particular driver is NOT compatible, be sure to check the web site of the manufacturer..
Even if you install a hardware which XP says is not safe, you can easily uninstall it using the "safely remove hardware" option (it will be there in your system tray)

I have personally installed a few hardware like that (no problems till now)

By the way, the driver for 2000 is most likely to work in your XP.

Again those of you like additional features, be sure to check out "XP Plus" - its kinda nice

I was talking to the engineer from the company who attend to our network needs at work and he was telling me that he had just upgraded to XP, he said that it was excellent.

Well I am now day 3 into the upgrade and am getting to like it more by the minute. Yes, there can be compatibility problems which is why I had this installed for me. He had trouble with getting back on broadband and also had to install new drivers for the scanner and printer. The only trouble I had after he had left was that I could not enable the antivirus, so had to uninstall and reinstall and then it was fine.

My first impression is of more stability, it has a 'solid' feel to it and secondly, the ease of getting about with clear and non-jargon instructions. Most things are more or less where you would expect to find them, so I have not had any problems with that.

I did find the Quick Launch bar a bit temperamental in that I still cannot reduce two lines to one, even though I have unlocked the bar and got working directional arrows. I also noticed a distinct shimmer on the white screens, but have now put the monitor refresh rate up by 10, which did reduce the screen a bit, but I adjusted this with the on screen display arrows. The shimmer has now disappeared.

So now all is working smoothly and I am relaxing by the day. Love Windows Media Player 9 news videos, very smooth music playing, and also the Clear Type option in Accessibility which gives a clear black Tahoma type rather than the standard one. Much easier on the eyes.

All in all, well worth it and I don't think I am going to regret doing it. Although there were many doubts about compatibility, I was told these have long since been resolved. My processor is only 500 MHz Pentium III, so it should certainly work well with most older computers too. The store is not allowed to advise you a product will work if it will not. If the installer had come across a problem he could not solve, then I would certainly have asked for my money back. Thanks for all the replies and comments.