I can't vouch for other's experience with Xampp, e.g. Rick has maintained that it has generally been a positive experience, and more luck to him. All I know is that it became a nightmare so I dumped everything. I didn't know enough to save anything at that time, but I did have a set of backups of all the courses I had developed in my Xampp Moodle so restored them when I got everything working. There weren't any issues I recall, but I think that was due more to the Moodle backup/restore process and good luck rather than Xampp's use of PHP. I suggest that Xampp's limitations are not worth the effort of pursuing Xampp so would recommend installing Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin and Moodle. If you want, you can then install apps like Mahara, Wordpress, MediaWiki, a Podcast generator, a chat board and lots of other things, if you are interested.
Also, please note: I used the WAMP for about four or five years with a minimum of fuss, used it pretty ruthlessly and broke Moodle a number of times testing stuff with code hacks mainly, but IANAD, so it was easy to make a mess of it. I then purchased a NAS, and while it hasn't been entirely trouble free motoring, I can do a lot more than I used to by using the server setup in the NAS. One of these days I might get around to transferring my web site to it, and set it up with external access, but not in any great hurry to do that. I couldn't do that with Xampp.
BTW: I understand that the Xampp/Moodle was designed for the technically illiterate, like teachers 
, to easily install on their computers to have an accessible development tool. In this it easily fulfils that role. If you want to do nothing with your Moodle, just make courses, then it is probably the tool for you. If you want to learn to admin your Moodle... mmm probably not. Good luck with whatever you decide.
