Regarding Multitasking -

I find the problem that Windows has is that it doesn't know what priority to put tasks at. By default everything gets a normal priority, and any process that wants can take the entire pool of resources by itself while other tasks suffer heavily. I usually bring up task manager and lower the priority of things that I don't need, and programs that I'm not concerned about.

CD Burning software gets a high/realtime priority, and Windows seems to work on that task as often as possible even when it doesn't need to. It is an enormous drain on resources, so at times I drop the priority of those programs myself, but I also have quite a few CD Burning Failures when Mozilla trashes my performance. At the very least I can multi-task during that stuff. My only gripe is that the high/realtime priorities wouldn't get all of the CPU cycles and thensome. If they simply got the CPU they need, no more and no less, I feel that Windows would be much better at multi-tasking.

My own expirence in Windows is fine. Except for Mozilla eating most of my system resouces, and the issues in CD-Burning, and huge slow-downs while writing to the HDDs, my PC is just great. I have enough RAM that I should never need to use Virtural Memory, but Windows 2000 doesn't seem to like it and would much rather swap stuff to my HDD and back killing my performance during the reads and writes. I'm looking into making a large RAM Disk to set as the place to get Windows to look for virtural memory so performance is better, but I can't find the post on AO where a member talked about it... Also, I want to break into 1GHz, but unfortunately this is as far as my motherboard goes. Can't be set beyond 150MHz on the FSB...

BTW, I'll just toss in my system specs for comparison:
P3-800MHz @ 900MHz
896MB RAM (@ 150MHz)
120GB Internal HDD
120GB External HDD
Tape Drive (Disconnected)
Floppy Drive (Disconnected)
DVD-ROM/CDR/RW Drive
CD-R/RW Drive
NVIDIA GF-3 TI-200 w/ 64MB RAM (+ 128MB System Ram) @ AGP 2x (I can't get 4x working right)

Current Temps:
CPU - 21c -> 60mm fan @ 4,500RPM
System - 25c -> My mobo usually runs hotter, even more so after 150MHz FSB
Air Temp - 19/20c -> I could easily drop temps into the negative and 0c range by opening my room Window...not that I want to freeze my butt off...