I have been slowly building my first cabinet for a MAME arcade.  I have been doing some reading in regards to software but the more I read the more I have questions.  
I am at the stage of getting ready to start installing the computer in the cabinet and start installing the needed programs.  There are so many different option I do not know which to go with.  
I am starting fresh with a recently formatted Pentium 4 with a bare minimum copy of XP with no updates as I had previously read would be best as far as performance.  
Can any of you tell me what you are running in your MAME as far as software and tell me what you like about it and dislike.  If you had to start all over what would you do different or change?  I have read some people saying they are running one thing but if they had to start all over they would change to this or that.  What is important to me is easy of use.  I want friends to be able to just walk up and be able to easily get a game going on there own with any complicated instructions.  



I do not know if this question is allowed but where is the best place to find the games for MAME?  (If this question is not allowed admins please delete)

As far as roms go there are many places on the net to download them from.  If you only want 10 or 20 games this is okay.  However you may just want to bite the bullet and buy the disks from http://www.allgameroms.com for a few bucks.

http://www.mamedvds.com/ worked well for me.  Well worth the 30+ bucks.

Good luck.

EastSIDE!