(02/11/2010 09:52 PM)Assassinator Wrote:  Because unless you own an 8yo PC, Windows 7 > XP.  Windows 7 actually takes less resources to run than Vista.

True. I've had 7 running on a Pentium 2 based Celeron with 192MB of RAM.

Just install XP. It's pretty good out of the box in terms of speed. nLite the installer to remove any features you won't be using that'll save you a few hundred MB. If you really want follow some tweaking guides to speed it up a little more. The effects of these tweaks are barely noticalbe though (at least in my experience). Once you've got everything installed and running as you want it make an image of the hard drive. That way once Windows Rot (The gradual slowing of a computer over time. Happens to the best of us.) starts setting in wipe the hard drive and restore the perfectly clean image. Obvously this means you need to keep all of your documents and stuff on a seperate drive or partition.