I reformatted my primary hard drive again and brought my computer back to brand-new settings. I do this every six months or so, because after installing and uninstalling applications, there's always residual bits and pieces of the program floating around in the registry and slowing things down. I'd love to just blame Microsoft for the problem, but I suppose that poorly written applications are just as much to blame.

I've used slackware linux in the past and enjoyed it, although I wasn't able to do all the things I do with XP. It turns out that the latest version of ubuntu linux might be a better fit. There's a lot of hype around ubuntu right now, and while I'm generally anti-hype, the ubuntu community is large enough to provide information and tips on getting everything to carry over from XP. I'll give it a shot over the weekend and see if it works for me.