The funny thing about XP is that it indirectly made running 2000 as a daily driver a better proposition, because all of a sudden consumer hardware and software

The funny thing about XP is that it indirectly made running 2000 as a daily driver a better proposition, because all of a sudden consumer hardware and software was being made to work on an NT kernel. XP also had the benefit of riding Moore's law for so long that the "high hardware requirements" became lower than the cheapest hardware you could buy halfway through its useful lifetime, which helps with its perception.