I use WinXP without too many problems. A big part of stability is prevention. I run AV software, firewall, and run Ad-Aware and Spybot at least once a week. I defrag regularly. I clean the registry. And, most important of all, I have a 300gb external hdd with full backups of both my computers.

Sure, it is a good amount of work. Maybe I'd be better off using linux, but as a law student I don't really have the time to make the switch. Anyway, sometimes I miss ms-dos and WordPerfect 5.1.