My views on 98 vs XP are the opposite. I ran 98 for a while on my HP Vectra VL with a ~233MHz Pentium II and, if I remember correctly, 256MB of RAM. It was dog slow, took at least 10 seconds just to open an Explorer window.
Decided to try XP on it, and I was blown away at just how much better it performed. Explorer windows opened up instantly and the whole system just ran smoother.