Ask any techie who knows his craft, and he will tell you that if you do major upgrades such as new mobo or cpu or something similar...guess what? Windows will choke and die. No, but seriously you will have some serious problems with drivers. In most case you will never get past by the screen where it detects new Hardware and drivers for it, and if you are lucky you will make it work. But as rule of thumb with winblows reformat will fix 99% of problems with ur pc if you are running WINDOWS. Of course if you upgrade ur HD or Vid Card you install new drivers and you good to go but with CPU and Mobo diff story...been there done that.

And as for linux I hate it...YEAH RITE. Everybody knows Linux/BSD kicks ass. Personally I prefer BSD, freedom to the world of internet and blah blah. If you start off your kids with linux, there is a problem in school they might be smarted then most other kids who stuck with M$ and ur kids might be more open minded then most other kids who stuck to M$. I give u props for introducing ur kids to fun and challenging world of Linux. Next step...open book and learn some programming and take compelte control of the system. I know some of this sounds stupid but what do u expect from a hungry man, who did all his work and now sitting and thinking what else he can do at work....