Why bother? XP for me. 98 ftw tho.
In the days before the dominance of USB interfaces, affordable ≥4Gb RAM systems and ≥127Gb hard drives, multi-core and 64-bit CPUs, mature virtualisation and emulation platforms, OS streamlining tools like XP Embedded and nLite/vLite et al, and Linux out-of-box hardware support which often rivals Windows, Windows 98 had a lot going for it. These days not so much so unless you're a real masochist or just want to go out of your way to prove it CAN be done.
I'm happily using Windows 7 (6.1.7127) at the moment. Some things take getting used - especially the new task bar - but for the most part the changes are for the better and there's not a lot that you can't change if you really don't like it. The learning curve moving from Vista to W7, XP to W7 or even 98 to W7 is a shitload smoother than the learning curve involved in defecting to Linux or OSX. XP virtualisation is being offered as a freely available feature of W7 - albeit in a very cumbersome way but it's still there - so software compatibility is far less of an issue than it was with Vista. Hardware compatibility is almost a non-issue with W7. I'm not pro-Microsoft by any means, I'm just pro-whatever-GetsThingsDone™, and so far everything in W7 works well.
A lot of people chose to give Vista a miss and it may well be a good idea for some. The NT 5.x kernel which Windows 2000/XP/2003 is built on is around a decade old now though. We're talking about something which was released when the Nintendo 64 and Playstation still ruled the console gaming roost. The Xbox didn't even exist. The Nokia 5110 was still the ants pants of mobile phones with cutting-edge features like the Snake game, changable covers and the ability to store a massive list of your last 5 sent and received phone calls. Maybe that helps put into perspective just how long 10 years is in technology terms. How far behind the 8-ball are you willing to fall?
The NT 6 kernel W7 and Vista are built on will have around 3 years of maturity, hardware vendor support and end user experience behind it by the time W7 launches. For now XP still GetsThingsDone™ so I'm not about to encourage people to run overboard screaming by any means. If it's "too hard" to grow with current versions of Windows now though, it's not going to be any easier with subsequent versions and you're going to end up stuck clinging to the flotsam of WinXP and a rapidly-antiquating collection of old hardware that supports it.
