Sorry Saab! I know you know all this stuff (and more). Understandable that you should have thought I was talking about UNIX/Linux/BSD
I actually run Windows (9x and XP), FreeBSD and a couple of Linux flavours, but I'm only an amateur and it's just a pastime, not a crusade.
For all it's faults and foibles (and awful default security model) 2000/XP is not such a bad OS (despite MS unpleasant and rapacious corporate culture) and it's certainly fun to tinker with.