ruszka writes
"CNN has a good article on the release of Windows XP in London and NYC.. The BBC has their own article." I find it amusing that I didn't really even notice until I saw this submission. I know this affects a fair number of users but for the life of me I just don't know why ;)
XP matters because... (Score:2, Informative)
Finally it's bringing the masses to a reliable operating system, and truly this is closing the window for Linux. There are lots of people who truly and rightfully got thoroughly upset when Windows 95/98/98SE/ME took a dump because they opened explorer before the soundblaster drivers had settled in, or because they made the mistake of alt-tabbing between apps a few too many times, and these were the people who were ripe for picking for conversion to the Linux camp. However how many people do you hear complaing regarding the quality of Windows 2000 (on which XP is based)? I have 2000 and I have never, since I first installed one of the RCs many moons back, got a BSOD. Ever. There are nuisances such as the fact that explorer.exe locks directories forcing you to wait several hours to delete them if you made the mistake of navigating into them, and that it itself occasionally dies, but they are trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Anyways I'll probably keep going with Windows 2000 as there is no redeeming factor for me to upgrade to XP from this, but for everyone using one of the 16/32 OS', it can't said with enough emphasis that you really don't realize how much shit that you're unnecessarily putting up with.
My First Impressions (Score:5, Informative)
XP handles crashses better on my system. It's like they didn't happen. However, they occur more often than in Windows 2000. So even though my system doesn't become any bit more unstable after a crash, I get to see that error report dialog box a bunch. This is really a pain for apps that don't seem to like XP entirely. For example, Real Player 8 gets a bit upset from time to time. My system shouldn't crash at all. I have brand name components (ASUS, Hercules, CAS2 Corsair, etc.) and Windows 2000 rarely if ever crashed.
The boot time for XP is freaking amazing. I think it's faster than ME even. I have a sub 10 second boot from pushing the power button. Another nice thing is that hibernation is transparent since there is only the option for Standby, Shutdown, and Restart when you go to Start/Turn off Computer. The only weird part is that it takes longer to turn off my system than it does to turn it on. I think it's because of the nVidia drivers I have installed, but I can't confirm that.
I like to have multiple folders open on my Desktop at the same time when doing file management. When there are > 5 or open, at a resolution of 1600 x 1200, the taskbar will group all these folders together in one button so that the taskbar doesn't get overly crouded. You can then close all these folders as a group, etc. This is one of my favorite features.
There's loads more to talk about, but it all boils down to one thing. My productivity has not increased one iota. If you have 2000, it's not worth upgrading to because of this. It's not like the upgrade I did from 98 SE to 2000 I did a while back, where all the sudden everything ran flawlessly.
Marketing's all Bill's got left. (Score:3, Informative)
XP has improvements, but there's no exciting reason to upgrade. Plus, with all of the security concerns finally ,the press release the other week coming down on publishing exploits is a tacit admisision that MS products can compete in a real world security environment.
So they have to compete through saturation advertising. The Register [theregister.co.uk] has had a few articles over the last few weeks. Here's last weeks warning about the salvo we're experiencing : Microsoft will kick off a $200 million marketing campaign on
Monday 15 October to create consumer awareness of upcoming Windows
XP. [theregister.co.uk]
They also explained how MS was able to insert a press release into Reuters [theregister.co.uk].
Re:Scarriest part of the article (Score:1, Informative)
So um yea.. you're right.
Re:My First Impressions (Score:3, Informative)
The task bar sorting is nice, grouping applications together cleans up the desk space alot.
VPN seems more stable, i don't have weird problems like i did in 2k. (IPsec)
Builtin PPoE is a godsend for verizon dsl customers, no more having to chase down 3rd party vendors for software. I have a linksys that does this for me, but for some people, this alone is worth the money for the upgrade.
Interface is "bubbly" but just goes to show you how much you can change these days.
Stability is nice. I have random complete reboots in 2k, doesn't happen under XP.
i work better, it has smoothed out the rough edges of 2k as far as compatibility and speed, and kept the stability as well as added support for DX8, better media support and whatever
Plus Java 1.4 with the WinXP look and feel makes java look native as far as interface and you get the added benifits of the new release.. even if
Chicago, Cairo, Memphis, Whistler (Score:4, Informative)
CHICAGO: Code name for Win95
CAIRO: Code name for NT 4.0
MEMPHIS: Code name for Win98
WHISTLER: Code name for WinXP
HTH.
Notes on the webcast (Score:2, Informative)
It started with a gospel group singing America the Beautiful and then an appearance by Mayor Rudy. Bill Gates talks for a while about XP (fun, reliable, rich media, blah, blah), and "shuts down DOS for the last time" by typing "exit" at a C prompt. A voice says "Are you sure you want to to that, Bill?" in the style of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Then Bill introduces Jim Allchin who talks for while about XP too.
Then Regis Philbin comes in and they do a WWTBAM take-off. Regis does the obligatory millionaire jokes ("Sure this is worth your time, Bill?") and do a few lame questions and answers about XP. After this, Bill leaves the studio while Regis gets a lesson on the great new features of XP. The MS guy tries to do a voice command demo and three tries later it finally works. Regis is whining at him mercilessly. ("You see? This always happens to me with computers!")
Bill reappears on screen a bit later as he's visiting a record store and showing a kiosk at a music store that's built with XP. He scans a CD at the kiosk and it comes up with samples from the CD. Next they try to do a webcam setup and that screws up for a while (Regis: "See!") but finally they get a picture.
At this point I can't say I was paying much attention, I had the audio on but the picture wasn't worth watching.
XP BSODs still happen (Score:2, Informative)
The crash usually comes when changing graphics modes to run older programs, like a little kids program for my daughter that insists on 256 colour mode (which XP can't do unless in compatibility mode!).
The BSOD looks a bit different (new font used) but still dumps out to disk and when you reboot it wants to send a trouble report to MS.
Also when changing graphics modes between users it got confused and refused to rewrite the background when windows were closed or moved around. I have not allowed my machine to connect to the Net so maybe there are fixes for these probs but I will download the service packs on another machine and copy over the Net. Call me paranoid but I'm not going to let my XP box connect directly as I just don't know what it'll be doing in it's "automatic updates" process.
I did an upgrade from Win2k so maybe that's the prob but I dont want to scrub my drive.
Also runing a really old version of Lemmings (what a great game, brings a tear to my eye to watch my kids getting excited about a game I played on an Amiga 15+ yrs ago!) has sound but no music (midi synth) on my SBLive! card.
Two steps forward and stumbling back...
[sigh]