At that time using XP was a very viable thing to do. You would pretty much never do it now. Think about it from a business perspective. Something goes wrong in the OS. At that time you would have had to have linux guru on staff to take care of it. OR you could pay 30 bucks for a OEM embedded copy. If something went kinda bonkers you could call microsoft and they would fix it. Their support on things like that is pretty good. At that time getting that sort of support for linux would have been basically nonexistant. Today you could get that kind of support for linux. Back in 2000-2004 it would have been tough. At this point no company is going to re-write the firmware on a machine they sold 20+ years ago unless they happen to be still selling that exact same model and you are paying for some awesome support contract.