Best OS for gaming, etc...

I just built my new system last night with an Athlon XP 1700+, EPoX 8KHA+, 512 DDR RAM, IBM 60GB HDD, GeForce 2 Ti. If I plan on using this machine for CD burning, heavy gaming, and basic development, etc...which OS is best? I want to get the most performance out of my memory/cpu, etc.

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- Enlight 7237AZ (340 watt PS)
- AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (retail)
- EPoX 8KHA+ VIA KT266A Motherboard
- 512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
- Gainward GeForce 2 Ti/500 XP (Golden Sample)
- IBM Deskstar GXP 60GB HDD
- Sony 52X CD ROM Drive
- Creative Labs Soundblaster 5.1

QNX & Linux of course!

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"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are." Unknown

The choices I'm looking at are Win Me, Win 2000 Pro, and eventually Win XP Pro. What do you think of each of these?

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- Enlight 7237AZ (340 watt PS)
- AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (retail)
- EPoX 8KHA+ VIA KT266A Motherboard
- 512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
- Gainward GeForce 2 Ti/500 XP (Golden Sample)
- IBM Deskstar GXP 60GB HDD
- Sony 52X CD ROM Drive
- Creative Labs Soundblaster 5.1

I use win2k and it works very well with ram and resources. WinME is good because it has all the support. I think your best bet is win2k. Just keep an eye out for unsupported games. I know when i try to play Unreal Tournament, the darn thing freezes. other's seem to work without a hitch. That's my opinion though

Bah!!!!! But win2k is the least of all evils you mentioned.

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"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are." Unknown

Don't go with Win ME...Win2K is good overall but there are some older games (BattleZone 2, EA Sports Games) that won't play on it, or at least I couldn't get it working. I have had a lot of success with WinXP Pro. No incompatibilities up to this point, and there have been fewer freezes.
You can also tweak it so it emulates MS's previous OS's in case an incompatibility devolops.

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