"And XP was a great OS. Today it is not. It cannot use more than 1GB of system RAM effectively, hence why a system with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of RAM never seem to differ in performance. It also does not utilize multi-core CPUs properly. XP will load core 0, then core 1 then core 2 etc. Vista and up will load each core as evenly as possible."
Err say what? The difference between 1 2 and 4 gigs of ram on xp is night and day.... Unless the only thing you do is browse non java/flash web pages or something...
I use 4 gig and 2 gig ram xp systems daily, and a 1 gig xp system about once a month. The 2 gig system is constantly going to page file and slowing down compared to my 4 gig system. I normally have a load of about 3 gigs, so i constantly see the difference between 2 and 4 gig nearly every day, and its a pretty massive difference between paging and non paging workloads. Even with a light workload the 1 gig system paging and slowing down, its unusable for anything i normally do, but fine for the person who does use it with a lighter load.