Windows XP

Windows XP.

Was it worth the hype I ask myself?

Coming from a well setup and thought through 2000 installation, I thought I have a bash at installing my recently obtained copy of Windows XP Professional.

Now, for most of this I'm fortunate, because being a careful sort of chap, I generally have at lease a backup, if not a backup copy of my irreplaceable data on another PC.

I'm glad I do this.

Firstly I decide to to dual install XP onto the same partition as 2000. Now, fair is fair, it does say it is not a recommended configuration, but it was never an issue in other versions, and it installed okay, into its own WINXP directory.

Booted up, got into it. Okay, some natty graphics and entry screens - but as a supposedly secure OS is sucks. It asks you for admin passwords when setting up, but then forces you to create at least one logon name at 1st login, which by defaul has admin priviledges. As do every other name you create then. With no option (at that time) to set passwords.

You then end up in an OS anf gui which looks and feels very much the way windows 98 did to me the first time I saw it, only scaled up to the point of being very, what's the word? Fluffy. All pretty icons and pictures (yes, I know it is windows) and no hard, rough, available tools.

The only icon on your desktop is a recycle bin. reassuring - not.

Driver support is very good, GeForce2 Ultra, via chipset, promise raid all working out of the box and the via all at DMA access as well!

Now I had unfortunately seen this product as a replacement of 2000. I was sold on uptime, stability and such.

I rebooted back into 2000 again and found to my dismay that in some way, Houston, we have a problem. Started getting library errors, NAV won't run, cannot access modules from 2000 computer manager.

Yep, despite installing into a fresh directory, my 2000 installation was officially RIP.

Well, what the hect, XP runs and looks okay, let's re-install the partition on my 80GB disk with just XP.

Probably a dumb idea, but I let XP repartition the space, and it blew the whole 80GB right back to factory ready. Ah yes, thank you Microsft, I shall so enjoy replicating that 19GB of MP3s and 10GB of home photos over my wireless LAN again when this is all over.

Anyway, we get a clean, full build of XP underway. Installation is a breeze, virtually nothing to do except push return a few times.

Get back into XP. Right, what do we have here?

I have an OS with the promise of great things. It will be my multimedia hub, allowing greater image, music and video management. It allows digital editing, CD-R(W) native from the OS, it allows people to connect to you PC from anywhere and work on it. It allows all sorts of really neat stuff, but it doesn't do very much I cannot do on 2000 already, that I want to at any rate.

So, first things first, I have an ISO file I want to burn to get some installations rolling (Office XP seems like a good candidate). Well, I know there are issues with EasyCD, but I'll go for the install anyway (don't feel like hunting for Microsofts attempt right now) and do a limited install of Easy CD 5. System crashes, and is unrecoverable, due to missing system files. And there's me without an ERD yet. Ooops.

Well, what I found in my foray is that XP seems not to offer _that_ much to me as my 2000 does pretty much everythign I ask of it - well, it will when I re-install it again. XP seemed very 'pretty' but its default security sucked, and there were no really familiar tools and interfaces to dive into to lock it down.

Sure, those familiar with security requirements will know what to look for (roughly) but I got nervous about the amount of stuff it had included, what it all does and how to control and log it.

For me, XP was a brief foray, and I don't think I'm heading back that way until either I have learned more about it, or I hear it does something that I don't realise that I want that I cannot do now.

Sure - there are cool features. Switch to another user without killing the current users session, remote consoling, excellent (proported) multimedia capability. I was not impressed with either stability, or managment interface. You can, given enough time, hack most of it around to look like 2K again, but I'm not going to bother. The 2K CD is coming out again tomorrow and I re-install. I get the opportunity to redo that raid array again too - so I guess I should be thankful for something.

-* <font color=red> Under Offer </font color=red> *-
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I loaded Win XP Professional, the final beta. Looked nice! Couldn't do much, hard to find any real controlls, most of my software was incompatable, much of my hardware was incompatable (couldn't find a single TV card that worked), couldn't burn CD coppies (would not allow direct coppies), could not run DVD player, 20% slower in 3D benchmarks, memory full all the time.....
I would not recommend it to anyone. I think those who do are doing so based on the facination that it's new. Oh, and that it's supposed to save our economy by forcing people to buy new equipement.

Back to you Tom...

Better perfomance? You must have had 98SE seriously screwed up then. No, I didn't have stability problems with it either, but it can't run a bunch of my cards or software and is hard to tweak.

Back to you Tom...

Was a universal message Crashman....

I can't really speak on behalf on your hardware and software, but mine works fine. Took me a couple hours to get the drivers for my old voodoo3 card, but that was about the only trouble. The OS hasn't even been released so I have no complaints...

Never used win2K, but like I said I don't really see a reason....

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

OK, I can't use ANY TV tuner card-none are supported by XP that I know of. I own an STB TVPCI and an ATI TV-Wonder.
My USB modem is not supported.
My DVD-decoder card (needed for a "special" thing I do) won't work.
Some of my sound software is not suported.
Some of my CD-Editing software is not supported.
Norton issued a warning that using one of their progrmas would cause a permanent failure in the O.S.
And yes, the dreaded loss of performance in benchmarks. We are supposed to cope with that by buying new hardware.

Back to you Tom...

I "upgraded" to XP as soon as the final version was available for pre-release. While
will probably be forced to use a newer operating system in the future, right no XP offers me nothing but less compatability and slower performance. I've been working with quality parts and 98SE long enough that stability is no longer a problem.

Back to you Tom...

You haven't already? I got $2,000 out of my machine in the first month!

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --