We have a friends Windows notebook computer at the moment. It's only got an asmatic little Celeron CPU and way too little RAM, but even so it's PAINFULLY slow! My antique systems with a fraction of the speed CPUs and less RAM are way faster. Both Debian Sid and Windows 98 are so much faster than Windows XP that's it's not funny.
I wouldn't mind but Windows XP is so ugly too, it's not as if it actually does anything useful that any modern Linux system can't. There is even little real benefit of upgrading from an earlier Windows to it - there are days that I do wonder what planet the voles in Redmond are on, it's not this one...