Windows XP (Home Edition): My eXPerience ... (updated)
Written: Nov 15 '01 (Updated Mar 26 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: stability, improved interface, increased speed (over ME)
Cons: Not fully compatible with Win9x and Win2000, privacy concerns, most necessary upgrades not free
The Bottom Line: WindowsXP lives up to expectations (stability), compatibility a little bit behind (make sure it does not affect existing software that you cannot live without)
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| theuerkorn's Full Review: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (N09-00048) For ... |
Was waiting for that category to become available. So now, 2 weeks after I happily upgraded to WindowsXP (from WinME), I would like to take a moment and go over the things I encountered during install and use.
In a nutshell, however, Windows XP has been released with a big media hype and most users of the Win9x variant are certainly looking for some relief this new version promises to deliver. (STABILITY)
The first encounter
... is exciting, and since I was desperate to have these constant stability issues of WinME go away, I was happy to get the upgrade the very first day. Hoping, of course it would do what I expect.
Installation is very easy. Just run the setup to figure out your installed software and hardware compatibility. The wizzard actually pointed out a couple problem areas, and so I went out to gather suggested updates to make sure I have it available. (in case my internet connection would cease to exist after the upgrade). Some programs, however, fell victim to the god of deletion.
Well prepared, I started the upgrade. 72 minutes were predicted by WinXP and realistically it spent about 90. WinMe tried to pull the same trick, suggesting a much shorter time than it actually took (but there the resulting 150 minutes were way off).
WinXP apparently spent the installation time well and pretty much recreated almost all settings and software (registry etc.). Another positive side note: Practically no interaction is needed and that is a nice improvement over Me where one had to acknowledge some steps and in return spend the time computersitting.
To keep it up to date, Windows integrated an Autoupdate feature (like LiveUpdate from Symantec), that supposedly scans the web for system updates (Microsoft) and if desired automatically installs them. This worked once and now I am getting rejected (Access Denied - Network Policy Settings). Since I am using NetZero I could think of some issues there, but otherwise I still have to figure out what the actual problem is (since I am not on a network).
Beauty is only skin-deep
... but who says that skin in not important? I mean the new interface now has the ability to integrate some of the functionality known from WindowsFX or WindowsBlinds and make this a lot easier to the eye. Skins (or themes) are nothing new, but this way it's practically compatible by default (within its limits) An optional WindowsXP Plus! package ($40) contains 3 more skins (sorry, themes) but I was happy with the included XP theme. (A little tweaking needed to reduce these huge window title bars.)
Finally, the text under the icons on the desktop is freed from the ugly box around it. (Iconoid and WindowsFX are 3rd-party tools that do the same, hence XP now integrates the same functionality)
The smoothing of screen fonts (new: Cleartype) makes the fonts appear smoother (big surprise, LOL). Though the shape of the font improves significantly, there is especially on LCD/TFT screens an aura-like blurr around them. No surprise either (since that's how smoothing works), but it's certainly takes some time to getting used to it.
One improvement that actually matters is the management of the taskbar, which allows now programs that open multiple windows to be listed as ONE button, revealing a list when clicking on it. Also, those little icons representing active enhancements, are now hidden when not active. Finally, the clutter is tamed.
Speaking of the taskbar, the ability to hide icons on the desktop may be a good solution for those users that have every program place a shortcut on the desktop. I am very selective to show only frequently used icons on there. Form that perspective it's actually more cumbersome to open the start menu rather than just double click the item on the desk.
There is many other things that have been seen in WinME or Win2000 before and received little improvements in XP. The whole taskbar idea is in my mind nothing different from actual menus. I thinking back to the NeXT interpretation of the laucher idea as docks (that I still consider more flexible. Some versions of Linux offer the same.
The new Internet Explorer (6.0) looks a lot better, but I like Netscape 6.2 a lot more (If they just wouldn't change their format for the themes with every update.) More important is the Search engine though and recently looking for car covers the exact same key words still returned a much better match of sites in Netscape. (Same old, same old.)
Real beauty is more than skin deep
... and nothing could be more true than the fact that the actual advancement is inside WindowsXP. Call it stability, and you get a vastly improved system over any Win9x/ME version. The microsoft statement that XP is 30x more stable than Win98SE and still 20x more than Win2000, actually just shows how marginal the previous versions were.
However, as far as Win2000 goes, I had pretty much no problems with that in my daily battle for better products (at work) so I am not following that argument. I sign every little bit of the statement regarding the 30x compared to WinME.
However, call it bad software or maybe even the hardware, but I was still able to lock up my computer in (very) few instances. Most cases were directly connected to me actually forcing an installation.
Call it compatibility and the picture looks a little bit different. As mentioned before, some soft- and hardware is not compatible with WinXP.
An excerpt of my most severe problems:
- HP CD Writer 8220e (XP driver just available)
- Adaptec DirectCD (no XP compatible version unless you purchase(d) v5)
- UDF Reader (no XP compatible version)
- Sony Clie (no XP driver available)
- Gravis GamePad (no XP driver available)
- Norton Utilities 2001 (upgrade to 2002 needed)
- Norton Antivirus 2001 (upgrade to 2002 needed)
- Alone In the Dark 4 (display incompatible)
- Lemmings Revolution (some colors are off)
- IL-6 (system froze)
- Pro/Engineer 2000i (does not start)
- and many more ...
To highlight the dilemma some users might run into, I would like to quote Sony's support (11/15/01) ...
"SONY offers no device drivers, support or troubleshooting for the installation, configuration, or hardware compatibility issues for the listed CLIE models below under Microsoft's Windows eXPerience(XP) operating system. As stated on the product package, the PEG-S300/S320/N610C/N710C and N760C CLIE models were designed specifically to work with PCs running Windows 98/98SE/Me or 2000 Professional...."
and to compensate for the bad things, here a list of improvements that I got out of the upgrade:
- Quicken 2002 stability improved vastly
- NetZero 4.0.5 (platinum) stability improved
- Memory management actually frees up more RAM
- Faster hibernation / wake-up
- Faster response in most applications
The new task manager comes in handy. Best known from Win2000 the biggest improvement over Win9x/ME is the improve control and remove Reset upon hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del twice, which can happen by 'accident', if the system responds extremely slowly. (or am I just impatient?)
The compatibilty settings (in order to force XP in a Win9x or Win2000 mode) sound like a good alternative, and those old enough to experience the Win3.1 PIF editor will find some parallels. However, I was not able to improve my score (of compatible programs) by using this feature. As it seems, programs either run or WindowsXP prevents them from doing so. (The forcing didn't sound like a good idea after the Gravis Controller somehow froze my system.)
Is it worth it?
... is the main question and can only be answered with regard to the system that you are running right now ... and if you have problems with it.
I personally like the upgrade because of the problems it solved for me. Of course, I am neglecting the fact that some hardware and software is either temporary (driver) or permanently (non-upgradeable) unavailable to me.
In a nutshell: Using Win9x/ME in all it's flavors, the upgrade will improve your system dramatically, but actually only if you have problems with your current installation. If not, you ma want to stick with the 'old' system a little longer due to availability of updated drivers or even incompatibilities.
Win2000 already is relatively stable and WinXP does improve only regarding added compatibility (with limitations) for Win9x software. I found, however, that some software runs under Win2000 that doesn't under XP.
All those things aside, there are major concerns regarding privacy and I would heavily recommend to install a firewall that controls dataflow into your computer as well as out(!). With that (and the disabled automatic reports) one should be relatively safe.
Of course, there is still the factor of new things that lures many customers. In that case you probably already gave in to the temptation ...
Update (1-22-02):
It has been some time and I have been using XP for almost 3 months. Not many things changed, so here just the skinny ...
Multitasking: is still something that doesn't seem to be going well with Windows. Everybody who has experience with Unix (or the now dead Commodore Amiga) looks bestranged at the screen when the system seems to freeze and mainly because one task got it extremely busy. It improved over time, but the fact remains the same: When a windows is busy, it barely redraws or sometimes even prevents from moving it. Can be annoying at times, especially when not sure if the system actually froze or it's just the application.
Stability: has been one of the great improvements of XP. However it's not bullet proof either. So I managed to wipe out my data already due to a strange problem. When updating Me to XP, there appeared another partition (D:) and not second-guessing it, I thought it was one primarily used for storing Me data, since nothing seemed to have changed.
... Until I started to corrupt disc D: for no apparent reason. To make a long story short, XP sort of invented partition D: and assigned 2GBytes of C: to it (without taking it from C:) Hence, writing on either disc had a chance of writing over the same physical hard drive location and therefore invalidating it. Solution? Backup the system and repartition and format the drive.
While this may be a unique problem, it does illustrate that XP is not bullet proof either.
Software Compatibility: did improve and especially HP fixed the problems I ran into before. DirectCD from Adaptec is not needed anymore, the replacement (DLA) allows to write directly on CD-RW as well. (Did not work until I reinstalled the system and loaded DLA again.) Still when hooked up to the external CD writer, the driver would prevent my laptop from hibernating. Some other vendors, still need more time and have at best released beta-versions. Adaptec's UDF reader is still being rejected from Windows eventhough version 5.x is supposed to be certified for WindowsXP.
Another fact however seemed interesting. For software that would recognize the system and then decide to install or not, the XP ID as Windows NT (!!!) might prevent sftware from installing that actually could run in compatibility mode. This would mainly happen for software that is strictly written for Win95 and prevents installing under WindowsNT.
Sony: finally would release a XP update in January (surprisingly, see note above)
Reboot again and again: When is it going to be that installation of most software does not require the system to reboot anymore??? (Did I mention other systems ....)
;-)
Recommended:
Yes
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