arethinn | (no subject)

(no subject)

Right now I'm running Win2K on my computer. I bought an XP upgrade disc just in case I decided I ever wanted to switch to XP. So, tell me some reasons why I might or might not want to do that, aside from the activation thing (which I haven't decided if it bothers me enough to make it a no-go), or networking features, which are unlikely (although not impossible) to ever be used in my household.

Edit: two comments so far are "greater stability". I haven't had Win2K crash at all since I've been running it, not that I can recall. Granted that's only been a few months now, but actually, I very rarely crashed Win98, either. I don't know whether this is luck or because my computer likes me, but as stability has really never been an issue for me, getting any more of it isn't of great importance.

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I've had individual programs crash on XP, but after a 19 months of use, I've never had XP crash. It's far more stable than previous versions of Windows.

More stability. XP has a significant enough amount of stability improvement to make it worthwhile, especially since you've allready bought it.

On various machines I'm running Win98, NT4.0, Win2k, and XP. Of these I like NT and XP best. Win2k doesn't drive me to quite the frustrations of '98, but it is not an improvement over NT. XP, however, has so far been adequate -- that is, I haven't had any need to scream at it, like I do at the others.

I have XP at home and Win2K at work. Both are stable, but XP is a LOT easier to tweak, add stuff to, remove stuff from, and use in general because it's geared a lot more for the personal user than W2K is. Some features of XP I particularly like:

Task manager gives you a lot of good info, not only what's running but how much resource it's using and what thread processes are active.

You can run older software under XP in an emulation-type mode, ie if you have software originally designed for W95 or 98 it runs easier on XP than on 2K because you can tell XP to run it in 95 or 98 emulation mode.

It self-recovers from the very, very rare crash you might occasionally get. I think I've crashed mine maybe once (computers like me, too) but B crashes his about twice a week, mainly because he insists on clicking seventy different things all at once thinking that's somehow gonna make it run faster. It doesn't give you the BSoD, it actually recovers.

Overall it's just (IMO) a lot easier and smoother to use than W2K. You can also get a nice set of tweaky powertoys from MS' website that add some really nice functionality to XP (such as having coolswitch show a small screenshot instead of just an icon, nice when you have multiple browsers open, a nifty power-calculater, etc). I like it quite a bit, actually.

You can run older software under XP in an emulation-type mode, ie if you have software originally designed for W95 or 98 it runs easier on XP than on 2K because you can tell XP to run it in 95 or 98 emulation mode.

I haven't actually had any problems with this except for DOS stuff that won't run under 2K (that I assume won't run under XP either, although I might try in 95 emulation). But good to know.

You can also get a nice set of tweaky powertoys from MS' website

Heh... I've already been a tweaker in this regard. Besides TweakUI I have a third-party thing called Xteq which does a bunch of random stuff, some of it useful, some of it just fun (e.g. changing tooltip text, making the BSOD any colour you like, etc.). But also, good to know.

I've heard people I respect who are active in the IT industry say that XP is a massive set of security holes held together by some code.

I've not used it myself, but n light of that I'd say: Patch often. Patch very often. And run a Firewall.

I already do, and I already do.

Cause... XP is a cooler name then 2k. 2K is dated. Xp is eternal.

I've never had 2K crash.

I've never had XP crash, but I've frequently found myself needing to kill and restart Explorer.exe.

Is that normal?

Actually, I think I've heard that it is. Weird, but fairly usual, like under 2K it seems to kill-and-restart itself (does that all the time at work, with no visible ill effects).

The main new feature is just more stability. I think the rest of the differences really are kind of minor at this stage of the game. I think Windows XP has somewhat of a cleaner feel, but you have to learn a new set of annoyances.

I think the one thing I liked about XP was the built in multimedia picture viewer / slideshow in Windows Explorer.

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