I'm not a big fan of Microsoft...In fact until I discovered how great XP was, I felt more like a prisoner of MS than a consumer...I mean where else do you turn to? I don't feel like learning UNIX or LINUX, I quite like the fact the Windows has tons of support and software - I just HATE that it always crashes. I let Windows 2000 and XT just fly right over - 95 was terrible and I felt almost fortunate when I got 98 SE, since it was actually half way stable!!! Enough bashing, the bottom line is that XP is a drastic improvement over just about any other MS product you may have used or had, regardless of whether or not you lvoed it or hated it...XP is real!

I got the Pro version running on the system below:
Thunderbird 750 socket on an Abit KT7A raid
512 PC 133 RAM
ATI rage fury 128 w/ 32mb

As you can see, NOT exactly a state of the art system...Processors have gotten so cheap nowadays, you can buy a great chip and board together for less than 200 bucks! At this point I could care less about state of the art- this machine does just about all I need, from gaming, to web surfing to trade-oriented computation.

98SE, despite being supposedly "more stable" still crashed alot and I had countless .DLL related problems and issues resulting from installing and removing programs...let's face it - system clutter slows your PC down and I don't feel like having a ton of garbage software on my box if I don't use it. I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by people that give me burns of great software and games and stuff - the problem is that you have to install and try them to see if you like them. I found 98SE to NOT be very conducive to this. XP on the other hand seems to be much more flexible and safe-guarded against stability issues resulting from putting in and taking out software....All the programs on the machine seem more "unfied" if that makes sense.

In a way this is a good and bad thing - one thing i DO NOT like about this "unification" is that your machine, especially if you're online, is like one big magnet for pryware! XP is basically designed to go out to the web at the first sign of missing software or the necessity for a driver update - XP is a very web-friendly and web-oriented OS - at first glance a great thing! However immediately you will probably feel like you've lost a substantial degree of privacy - at the drop of a hat, XP is ready to go out there and share your info to get better drivers or to update itself..etc. This I do not particularly care for - so the important thing is to make sure you are the administrator, NOT XP!

The installation of XP may get a little tricky especially for those of you going from 95 or 98 up...in fact I'll bet a bunch of your software may create issues on the install! Backwards compatibility is lacking here - mostlikely you'll have to do some cleanup and uninstall a few things to make your system XP compatible - the software detector on the XP install shield is great though - and you can rest assure you wont FUBAR your machine simply by trying to install, even if it can't be done: IE: Once upon a time I had to install win 98 (not SE)...there was some kind of software hitch and 98 couldn't completely install...however instead of reverting back to the way it was before my failed attempt, my machine gave me all sorts of funky errors upon start-up and it got worse by the day! Ultimately (3 days later) I was forced to wipe out everything and start from scratch win 98!!! I was PO'd to say the least! Thankfully, you will not run into this problem with XP- however expect to do the aforementioned cleanup. Also, Many of you probably use Norton Anti Virus - be prepared to update this before you isntall XP, or the install will fail.

stability after you install is SUBSTANTIALLY better then 98 or 95...games run smoother, movie files and such run fairly glitch free and alot more fluidly. The desktop is more customizeable (without installing a 3rd party skin or external software) AND you can switch it back to the 98 style desktop if you don't like the new style.

If you burn CD's, I'm happy to say that XP has a very good built in CD creator for backup that works happily with Easy CD and most other Adaptec software- to me this was really a great feature, because in the past I've produced plenty of "coasters" as a result of having older burning software. I use a SCSI II external plextor burner and an EIDE Gen 3 DVD/CD ROM - personally I like the advantage of reading from EIDE and burning on SCSI - since a SCSI burner won't bother the mother board to burn - one of my favorite parts of SCSI is that peripherals and acesories need not use the mother board to talk to each other - they talk directly. In this case, the motherboard regulates the "talking" part of the reader since it is EIDE, but the SCSI burner just flies and I haven't had a single error yet...no more coasters!

There are alot of aspects to look at which make the upgrade well worht while - you will notice a difference in system speed and performance - you WILL NOT have to intervene too much to make thing work - confirguations and the mundane stuff that most laymen HATE (although you're probably VERY familiair with it if you've been running 98) are gone - some people look at this as the user losing control of you r PC - however who the hell cares about having control of somethnig if it DOESNT WORK???!!! Obviously the MS people have acknowledged this complaint and have assessed and reacted - you will not have to waste time setting up and reconfiguring and tearing your hair out...If the XP install shield lets you install, then XP will take care of the rest - and if it needs something, like I said before It will go to the web and get it.

Real LIfe complaints or problems: THe only problem I can mention - and it's easily solved is that my KT-7A board is designed to let the user create a RAID with multiple hard drives. I use a newer 30 Gig western dig and an older 7 gig seagate just to store my static data - mostly picture and movie files - I like those seperated. I do not have the drives configured as a RAID - they are fully independant of each other. The 30Gig is my main drive C: the primary master. the primary slave is the DVD drive. The 7gig drive is the secondary master (the slave is a ZIP drive and the burner is SCSI so that is not invovled)
An interesting thing happens when I defragment my C drive...If I begin defragmenting and then go to bed, the next morning I wake up and find my E: drive (the second hard drive) is GONE!!! The first time it happened I nearly FREAKED and thuoght XP automatically helped itself to my second drive and turned C and E into one raid, without asking me! Luckily, this is NOT what happened, and a reboot got me back me E drive. I don't know why this happens - but if you use a KT-7A raid, I'd be curious to know if this phenomenon has happened to you too...

XP is getting cheaper and cheaper - pricewatch has home for sub-80 and pro for about 100!!! Bear in mind, PRO supports dual processor setups, and has a few bells and whistles that make it worht while- like remote desktop. the remote desktop is anice feature but not a necesity..however If you run dual chips, you're SOL - you must run PRO or else whats the use????

Of all the microsoft prodcuts I've had the (dis)pleasure of using, I'll admit, XP has changed my mind and I'm very happy with it. Don't get me wrong - you can't expect 100% perfect install - you're going to have to do SOMETHING unless you start out on a clean slate and wipe out everything, but once its in XP runs faster, cleaner and all around better! the Hype around XP was amazing, I even got to see STing in bryant park!! how cool? finally microsoft did ti right!!!



Recommended: Yes