*Umm I do have half a GB of RAM. I meant half a TB, but wasn’t thinking (or typing) straight. 
But, as far as I know, all of those releases were done with rather explicit and open change logs that told exactly what you would lose and gain by upgrading.
My point is this: Comparing Linux upgrades to Windows Service Packs is rather bizarre, and not really useful. SPs are simple to install, but you essentially pray that it doesn’t break anything: You have no clear idea what it’s doing, and how what it’s doing will affect all of the other closed-source pieces of software on your machine, which may depend upon specifics of kernelspace code. Linux upgrades are very open, and because a vanishingly small amount of software runs in kernel space, a change to the kernel’s internals won’t even be noticed by userland applications: The API is the same, the libraries are all still there, and everyone’s happy.
It’s two very different cultures, and comparisons are rarely that useful.
Or maybe it’s because Linux users tend to be computer-savvy enough to make a decent backup and then do a clean install? I know I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now if I’d “upgraded” Win 98.
That’s part of it, but it isn’t the whole story. Linux users aren’t all geniuses, they aren’t all wizards, and they aren’t all perfect people who conform to best practice at all times.
In other words, you apparently missed my point.
GorillaMan, you have been slightly whoshed. I thought it was obvious that my tale was partly fictional, a composite of many experiences, some from this thread. Except maybe the “Hello Kitty” reference. 
Nevertheless, it represents many typical tales in my 25 years of computer experience, most of the bad ones involving MS (the company, not the condition).
I hate upgrades. Just when I get something working, it needs to be fixed.
Well, I’ve updated two PCs, and so far, they both still work.
One is my “main” PC, which is running out of hard drive space. XP SP2 just seemed to make this much worse. I was desperate to get stuff off of the hard drive, but I can’t delete any more programs, and some of the stored files I really need there, so what else can I do? I’ve got about 2 GB of free space on the C drive. (I partitioned the 60 GB drive up into several smaller sections.) I’m considering backing everything up and just starting with a new installation, with maybe two partitions. I know that the space issues on the hard drive are mostly my problem (I just fill up hard drive incredibly fast), but there’s more going on than that. Something’s got to give, and I’ve done “given” all I can at the moment.
The other PC is a used 1 GHz Dell that I just bought off of eBay. Fresh install of XP. The update for SP2 seemed to go flawlessly. There wasn’t really anything on the PC to mess up.