2 programs on 1 operating system

HOLD ON!
Don't revert to win98 just yet!

There are some things you can do to speed up & optimize your current XP setup:

1. uninstall unneeded programs via Control Panel/Add Remove Programs (your choice)

2. uninstall unneeded Windows programs via Control Panel/Add Remove Programs/Add remove Windows components:
a. MSN
b. Indexing Service
c. Windows Messenger

3. configure unnecessary startup Services (XP Home has 34 services loading at boot, only about 14 are really needed if your comp is not part of a corporate domain network) Access Services via Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services. Follow this guide and use the "SAFE" configuration:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

4. configure unnecessary startup Programs. This is easy IF you know how to edit the Windows Registry. If not, then we can use a free program to see what programs load at boot on your comp. Download the HijackThis Program, use it and save the log. Copy+Paste the contents of that log and post it here. We can then tell you how to use HijackThis to stop unnecessary programs from loading at boot. (you can still use the programs, they just don't need to load every time you start the comp)
HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php#hijackthis

The above will probably speed things up about 30-50%.