>> open source rocks but linux still sucks... Sounds like an IT engineer already. Keep it up:-) Apparently, it depends on who is talking. Overall, Windows XP is better than Linux for day to day jobs. The number of professional applications are too many for XP to ignore it. Now a days Linux has come a long way, too, especially in scientific arena where super-computing and clustering matters (using kinds of processors like yours). Linux has readily available ports for other processors. My experience with Linux was also not so good. I loaded Xilinx ISE on Linux, it never finished any synthesis, I mean never! I just then ripped Linux apart, bought Windows XP SP2 and I'm very happy with it. Also, I saw that Linux kept cranking my hard-drives too many times for no obvious reasons (slow). But I'll be working on Linux very soon.