The best release to install now?

[Choy Kho Yee]

I would like to install freeBSD on a machine which only has WinXP 
resides in it now. I
need to set it up to do some work. And I think there are 2 choices for 
me now, which are
5.2.1 or 5.3-BETA5.

Although I would like to keep up-to-date with the OS but still I want a 
reasonably stable
system on which most ports installs without many problems.

And I would like to be able to upgrade to 5.3-STABLE when it is ready 
some point in the
future without much struggles. I don't mind to recompile all the ports, 
though.

So, what are your suggestions?

Thanks for any input.

---
Choy Kho Yee

"There are only 10 types of people in the world, i.e. those who 
understand binary numbers and those who do not."