[Undertoad]

As people here tried to tell me not to upgrade to XP, it made me think.

People always have advice on whether or not to upgrade.

Consider a sliding scale of -3 to 3, where:

3 = Excellent or even revolutionary new features, bug fixes, things you need and a style you want; will improve your life.
2 = It's good, but not immediately necessary; you'll want to eventually upgrade, but you don't need it tomorrow; there may be a few quirks
1 = Generally recommended, but not at all necessary; a few improvements here and there
0 = You might want to upgrade but then again you may not; or, nobody can tell the difference
-1 = Generally not recommended; bugs or bloat outweigh the advantages
-2 = There may be a few nice bits but most people find it a problem and/or a pain
-3 = Upgrading considered harmful; new version breaks desireable features, loses data, causes government corruption or societal upheaval

That's the scale, now, do we agree on our perceptions of the advice out there? Consider the following upgrades, and tell me whether my perception matches yours.

Win 3.1 -> Win95: at release, 1; now, 3
Win95 -> Win98: at release, 0; now, 2
Win98 -> WinME: at release, 0; now, -1
Win98 -> WinNT4: at release, 1; now, 2
Anything ->Win2000: at release, 1; now, 2
Win98 -> WinXP: now, -2
Win2000 -> WinXP: now, -2

Office 95 -> Office 97: now, 1
Office 97 -> Office2K: now, 0
Office2K -> OfficeXP: now, 0

This even works outside the software world.

Vinyl -> CD: at release, 2; now, 3
VHS -> DVD: at release, -1; now, 2