If you run a, say a 1GHz+ Athlon/PIII or a P4/AthlonXP, then running Windows with all of its graphical and user enhancements is the de facto OS of choice.
I ran Windows ME and it was a slight step up from Windows 98 SE in terms of user friendliness and graphical improvement, but I would call it "bloated" and buggy in certain aspects. The thumbnail function would constantly become buggy, and the Win9x code in general still showed... the inability to close certain crashed applications without closing down explorer.exe as well.
I've had a rough time with Windows 2000 because of these nasty sound problems with my SB Live! Value on my Via KT266 686a southbridge, and the same happened for WinXP, but it's a keeper just because it looks nice (and I sold my card to my friend, who has a 686B chipset on an MSI motherboard). But, I'd say that if you have the resources, run Windows XP. It's certainly a step up from Windows 2000 and is pretty stable for the most part (few bugs here and there, but nothing to make me want to kick my computer like I used to with Win95 and Win98)
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