Great XPectations for Windows!
Written: Apr 04 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fairly stable OS, and nice looking desktop environment
Cons: Still pricey… Not as many features as the professional, but takes up same space
The Bottom Line: If you are not a techie. You just want something new, easy to use, and don’t want to pay for all the extras then this is for you.
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| WildBillm's Full Review: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (N09-00048) For ... |
Should I get XP? And if so, which version should I get; this home edition or the professional version? First, let me start off by saying that if you have Windows 98 or 98SE and everything is working fine maybe you should not get Windows XP just yet…
If however, you are one of those people who have money to burn and like to stay on the bleeding edge of technology then go for it, but not with out some warning. They don’t call it bleeding edge technology for nothing :)
Here is the general consensus when making the switch to XP. You will have no problems or you will have a lot of problems. All of your hardware will install with no problem, you may have problems with some of your hardware, or you may have problems with all of your hardware. There is no way to tell without just doing it. Those people who have not experienced any problems are those that very rarely use their computer and install 1 or 2 software packages from my personal experience. I have yet to met a person who plays with configurations, installs a bunch of stuff and hasn’t had any problems.
My general rule of thumb consists of 2 things.
1.) If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. If you don’t like to deal with computer problems and errors, you may want to stay away for now. In about 6-9 months from now it should be a little safer and closer to being as error free as it can be when you do decide to make the switch.
2.) When buying computer operating systems or office type products, I usually try and stay 1 year behind. Why? Because a software company (like Microsoft) doesn’t want to spend all of their time fixing all of the problems and let competition get a head of them. It costs a lot of money to pay their developers to find and fix every possible error. It is cheaper to put out a product that has some problems. Work on those problems after the release, and wait for the customer to report new ones. You actually are testing their product if you buy the first release of software like the first release of Windows XP Home or Pro edition. So if you don’t like errors, kick back, relax and wait 6 to 9 months to a year before buying XP. By then, there will be a bunch of service patches and fixes for you to download and you can eliminate a lot of possible frustration. So why did I buy this you ask? It was actually a part of MSDN library. Since my company will not use windows XP in the office for at least 2-3 years I was able to use one of the licenses for experimentation purposes at home.
First check your system for compatibility
If you are considering upgrading your computer to XP, either have some one check all of your hardware for compatibility issues or do it yourself. How do you do this you might ask? Well, first I would recommend doing an assessment of all the hardware on your computer. I am sure you want the easiest way to find out what works, so I have I would recommend going to the link at pcpitstop.com listed below and take their XP test:
XP Readiness Test: http://www.pcpitstop.com/xpready/default.asp
It will run tests on your computer and point out any incompatibilities that your system may have. I don’t believe any test is completely full proof, but it gives a pretty good basis.
Can I upgrade to XP Home Edition?
OS restrictions
If you are running windows 98, 98SE or windows ME, the answer is YES! If you are running Windows NT or Windows 2000, you can only upgrade to the XP Pro edition. If you are a Windows 95 user wanting to go to XP, then upgrading is not the option for you. Just save your important stuff, format your hard drive, and install XP. If you want to do a clean install with the XP Home Upgrade CD you can do this, but just have your 98 CD on hand. You will need it just to verify that you have a valid 98 license.
System Requirements
I know some people do not like this kind of posted information in a review, but I do. I don’t like to have to go to MS website to find this stuff if I am reading a review. I want all the info in front of me. So here are the requirements.
Your system has to be equal to or greater than what is listed: (remember this is the bare minimum)
300MHz Processor
128MB RAM
1.5GB Hard Drive
Super VGA (800X600)
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM
Keyboard and Mouse
I want to point out a couple of things in the requirements. These are minimum requirements and Microsoft always under estimates. If they say you need 128mb RAM, then it really means you should have 256mb if you don’t want possible memory problems. The hard drive requirement of 1.5GB is good if you don’t plan to install anything else on your computer other than XP. I would recommend you have at least 9GB hard drive, but 10-20GB will give you more breathing room. I have run XP on a 6 GB and found myself installing software and then uninstalling something else because of low disk space. And trust me, XP will let you know when they think you have too few disk space. I believe the warning appears if you have around 256mb hard drive space left.
Should I get this version?
That depends on a couple of things:
1.) How much money do you have to spend?
If you have $300 to spend, I would recommend going all the way and getting the XP Pro version. It has all of the Home Edition capabilities plus some. (See my XP Pro review for details- http://www.epinions.com/content_50099752580)
If your budget is kind of tight, then check to make sure you do not need some of the features I mention in my review listed just above. If you do need some of those features, then hold out and wait till you can find a good deal on the pro addition. If you are not a techie type person and want to experience XP, then the home edition is for you.
2.) What are you looking to do with your computer?
If you don’t really care about all the extra functionality of what your new OS can do, just go with the Home Edition. If you just have to have some more features, again... hold out for the Pro Edition
What are some of the features I will get?
- # of Processors - Home Edition only supports a single processor. Professional supports 2.
- Security - The Home edition offers the simplified security approach. If it doesn’t matter who sits in your chair and physically gets on your computer, then Home Edition is for you. Security on the Home Edition is basically setup for everyone to have full control over the whole computer (everyone in your house hold or office). So if you have kids and you don’t want them changing any configuration on your computer, you need more security than the Home Edition so you may want to go the Professional version which gives you more control of who has what access. It is your judgment call to determine if the extra money is worth it.
- Fast User Switching - This is one of the few features that is only offered in the Home Edition and not the Pro. It does exactly as it says. It allows you to switch from one user profile to another with out logging out. This is a pretty nice feature in it allows you to not touch what another user was doing. If they have an application open and have not saved their document, it doesn’t matter. Just switch to your account, do what you want and switch back and it will appear as if you were never there (because you weren’t, you were on your own account).
- Remote Desktop - exists in both Home and Pro edition, but you can only use Remote Desktop to connect to another computer and you can not connect to any XP Home Edition computer. Home Edition can only be a client and not a server. What does that mean? It means you can connect to a Professional edition computer from your Home edition computer, but you will never be able to connect to your Home edition computer from another computer using Remote Desktop. I hope that wasn’t too confusing.
- Fax - Out of the box, there is no fax functionality in the Home Edition. But there is in the Professional version. To get this functionality in the Home Edition, you can install it from the Home Edition CD.
- Backups - There is a common misconception that XP Home Edition has no backup feature whatsoever. This is not true. It does come with some, but you have to install it manually. Go to your XP Home Edition CDROM, /valuadd folder and you should be able to find NTBackup their. If you do not do this, you will not find any backup anywhere else. To be quite honest, I do not use this feature. I have everything I want to save on my system in the “My Documents” folder and I just dump this folder to a CDRW periodically using Nero Burning ROM.
There are numerous other things the OS offers, but I just wanted to touch on the features I find to be the most important.
A couple of things worth mentioning
- Guest logon is on by default in Home Edition. So if you don’t want it, you have to manually disable it. I personally don’t like guest accounts, because you don’t know who is using it. So if you want someone else to be able to use your computer, then just create an account for them. It is not difficult. Go to Control Panel, User Accounts and viola! The options are in front of you.
- Default filing system will be FAT32. You do have the option to choose, just make sure if you want NTFS, then choose NTFS and not just click through the menus without noticing. The difference is that NTFS has more security functionality in it and it has the ability to compress folders to take up less drive space. Fat32 is the same filing system used in Windows 98.
My Install Experience - Just like my XP Pro install experience, it went smoothly. I did not do an upgrade; I did a clean install. I chose NTFS because I like the added security functionality in NTFS. Everything seemed to work okay until I started getting some errors with my Internet Explorer version 6.0.
Errors Encountered
I did not encounter any errors for about a week and actually started to believe that there would be no crashes. Then reality kicked in after I started loading more and more software.
After about a week, for some strange reason I would be surfing in a couple of windows and all of a sudden, an error message popped up and all IE windows would shut down.
A couple of weeks after that, my system would periodically reboot if left on for long periods of time with out any applications loaded.
The Fix:
Of course I did not find a fix on MS website. It took a few days of searching and finally I found someone who had the same problem and listed what they did. So I will list them here:
I saw someone post this on a forum. He said to open up a command line and type out each of these lines separately. What you are doing is registering these (DLLs) Dynamic Link Libraries into the system. I figured what the heck. I will give this a try and did the following:
Start--Run—command... This opened a command line then I typed the first line followed by the enter key. It will then let you know that this library was loaded successfully and I did the same for each line following.
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll
regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
regsvr32 Urlmon.dll
And viola! My problem was solved. I haven’t had a mysterious reboot in a while. My browser window does not close while I surf. I still periodically will get an error if I am trying to do too much in too many different windows.
Bonus: Cool XP Tip
I thought I would add a little bonus tip for any of those XP users out there. Here is a tip I found that will let you change your start button to say what ever you want. I changed mine to say, “Dude!”. So instead of clicking on the boring “Start” button I click on “Dude!”
(Note: Please be careful when performing functions like this because if you are not careful and deviate from what is listed, you could cause your system to be unstable. This is my disclaimer, do this at your own risk. I have done this and it was easy, but I do not want to be held liable for what happens on your system.)
Here is the link to the information: http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/windowstips/story/0,24330,3361674,00.html
Here is how it works in my words:
1. You need to download the resource hacker tool to edit the c:\windows\explorer.exe file. (http://www.rpi.net.au/~ajohnson/resourcehacker/)
2. Go into your C:\windows folder and make a backup up your explorer.exe file before changing it incase something goes wrong and you can change it back. I would recommend copying the explorer.exe file to explorer.bak or explorer.orig
3. Now run the program you downloaded from the site listed in #1. Click on the File menu, then Open, browse to C:\windows\explorer.exe. There is a list on the left side of the window and drill down through the following path String Table, 37, 1033. On the right side of the screen you should see the word “Start.” Change it to something else a little more exciting. Then click on the “Compile Script” and your changes have been made to the file loaded in the program.
4. After compiling, you need to save it by clicking the File, Save As menus in the upper left corner. You can’t save it as Explorer.exe because that file is currently being used, so you will have to change it to something else, like explorer-new.exe
5. Restart your computer is safe mode. You do this by following the normal restart function, and when you see your computer beginning to start back up, you want to press the F8 key on your keyboard.
6. Log on as the administrator and type copy c:\windows\explorer-new.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe. This replaces the explorer.exe file with the one that you just modified.
7. Reboot and you should see your new “Dude!” button or what ever you called it.
Conclusion
Well, I hope you have learned some important information here on whether this version of XP is for you. I personally like the Professional version better because I am a techie. If you aren’t, just stick with Home edition. Enjoy your new OS and happy computing.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
WildBillm
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Member: Bill Mounsey
Location: Slidell, LA
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 43 members
About Me:
Unix Administrator in Louisiana. Love college basketball, football, baseball and computers.
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