Quote Originally Posted by Lemur
I did not have that experience. I was using Win2K at the time, and I asked my early-adopter friends what they thought of XP. Their reviews were universally positive. Even my favorite techno-curmudgeon, a real grumpy old geek, gave it a thumbs-up. Win2K with way better driver support was the general consensus.

So from my perspective, equating the releases rings false.
From your perspective that may be the case. Though from the perspective of many others it was clearly not so. Pre SP1 XP was bug ridden and full of holes, it took SP2 to really sort things out. Win2K and Win98 users were not happy to see XP hogging the CPU with it's fancy effects, themes service and other added bloat.