The simple answer is no - hey you could hack on a basic 386 with Windows 3.0 if you wanted. The recommended box for a newbie is a 486 or Pentium running some version of UNIX (the worlds greatest and most powerful operating system ever - allegedly) and a shell account. But don't underestimate the power of Windows - you get a few decent hacker tools with windows 9x and you can download a lot more including various UNIX commands which have been made to run in the Windows environment. Now for the shell account bit, if you haven't got UNIX then you need a shell account although I find I can do just aswell with a Windows 95 box using AOL for net access (I can here the elite hackers out there flaming me already), you just need to know what you're doing and it takes a bit longer. The shell account is very useful though and everyone one should get at least one, just search the web for a free shell account and set up a few with various ISPs (Internet Service Providers).