>Might want to check this out about XP's speed - http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/10/29/011029tcwinxp.xml

If I ran VFP benchmark tests that ran for a measly 35 seconds, management would have my head. Let's see what others in the industry have to say about the speed of Windows XP.

From David Coursey at ZDNet, hardly a Fan

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2819476,00.html

XP seems to be significantly faster than Windows 9x and insignificantly faster than Windows 2000 Professional. However, speed isn't really the thing here.

Also from ZDNet

http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2809413,00.html

If you've been using Windows 2000, the performance you'll get with XP is virtually identical; if you've been using Windows Me, 98 or 98 SE, or 95, your system is going to feel like it has a whole new lease on life.

From PcMagazine

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%253D700%2526a%253D15583,00.asp

As we expected, Windows XP's performance was very similar to that of Windows 2000, with a few notable exceptions. For instance, Windows XP, which is the heir to Windows Me, proved much better suited than Windows 2000 to gaming and 3-D graphics

Also from PcMagazine

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,apn%253D6%2526s%253D1470%2526a%253D13705%2526app%253D4%2526ap%253D5,00.asp

Performance gains under Windows XP, based on the Content Creation Winstone 2001 test, are minimal when compared with the gains of a Windows 2000 system (which is not surprising, because of the shared underlying code). Windows 98, Me, and NT users, however, should expect speed gains of around 15 to 20 percent (and more for Win NT users).

From CNN

http://money.cnn.com/2001/08/23/technology/windowsxp/

Although we did not run any benchmark tests to measure this, applications seemed to run faster under Windows XP than they do on similarly configured, or even more powerful, systems running Windows 95 or 98.

The speed difference was especially noticeable on memory-intensive programs such as Microsoft Word, which frequently has an annoying lag at startup. On our test system, there was almost no lag at all.

From Fortune

http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=204226

It makes my PC boot up and shut down faster, which alone is worth the price of upgrading

From GameSpot

http://gamespot.com/gshw/stories/flat/0,12880,2819455,00.html

Remarkable stability, robust multiprocessing and networking, solid gaming performance, better compatibility with consumer products than Windows 2000.