Parent did specify XP Home. XP Home didn't have the same settings boxes as XP Pro or W2K. There was a hack available to allow the use of the file properties dialog from Professional on Home.

Without the hack you had to use CACLS at the CMD prompt, which I found to be a real PITA.

A machine I had came with XP Home, which I mulibooted with W2K and Knoppix. I bought XP Pro to add to the mix when I wanted to use direct X and the latest version wouldn't work with W2K.

The speed was pretty much the same on W2K, XP Home and XP Pro including the start up time. (XP let you log in sooner, but it was still about the same amount of time before you could do anything. All operating systems were heavily tweaked.) XP Home's only problems were the lack of settings available in the GUI, and the limit on the number of simultaneous connections.

2: You're proposing a reactive method of systems administration. This might be fine for a hobbyist who doesn't care about his system(s), but for a production environment this is playing with fire. You know that support for ReiserFS will disappear (unless you know for a fact that another person/group has stepped up to provide support); why wait until the last possible second, when you'll only have more work to do, to migrate your systems to a new filesystem? Don't put off to tomorrow that which can be done today.

How often is FAT32 updated? I'm pretty sure the kernal still supports FAT12 and FAT16. Considering the popularity of reiserfs there will be plenty of warning before it is dropped, and there isn't any particular need to upgrade to a new filesystem. Filesystem migration shouldn't be a nightmare in any case, unless you image drives to back them up instead of backing up files.