XP good or bad?

[Carl East]

Does anyone else here think that the os XP is the best operating system by far to date. I personally have had no trouble since installing this very stable os.

Although I have heard some horror stories from friends, like how they can't get any of their old programs to work with it. I just like how smoothly it runs and how good some of the new features are, like media player for instance.

Carl

 

[explain]

Rock solid. Highly recommended.
But if you plan to play games that use Direct-X 3 and below, forget it. Just ain't gonna work reliably at all. Seems Direct-X 5 and higher games work OK.
And DOS apps, forget it...

 

[riff]

It is better than anything that MS has yet offered. It's their best OS since Win95, but still has bugs- mostly driver related.

And the usual security problems.

Linux is making great strides- but the battle is over anbd that is old news. Think 10 years from now, that is where the lines are being drawn.

 

[Carl East]

No, I only play the most recent games on my computer, I purposely look to see if it's XP compatable before buying, I think that's the best thing to do.

Carl

 

[Spinaroonie]

Bad.

Very unsecure, lots of secuirty holesm and has built in Microsoft Spyware besdies the spyware in Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

 

[Carl East]

Something tells me you've had bad experience's with XP. lol I'll tell you something I didn't know until recently, you can have the full program installed onto your computer even if you only bought the upgrade.

It requires you to own a full working copy of a previous operating system such as windows me or 98. At first I didn't know that, so I installed the update on top of windows me, which then became inoperable, unless you had a melt down which meant you had to go back to the older os just to reinstall the new.

I also had a trick up my sleeve that gives me piece of mind where my os is concerned. You see I have a second hard drive and a piece of software (I can't remember the name of it right now) that sort of takes a snap shot of the new os as soon as it's installed. So if anything goes wrong I just reinstall straight from my other hard drive and I'm back in business.

The beauty of it is, it only takes half an hour to be up and running once more. I've had to use it once so far, not because the operating system failed but rather that I placed some software on it that I should never have placed.

Carl

 

[fgarvb1]

XP is what it is. I bought my wife a new computor with XP on it and also one of our niece's for, hell just being a great kid and going to college soon.

As for programs it is a toss up if they will work at all. Sometimies a new driver is required and sometimes there is no new driver to be had! If your are dealing with XP the two most important things to remember are; One set a restore point before you start jacking with it and Two, use the compatibility wizard to install new programs!

Not everything will work on XP as stated in other post.
new updates, fixes and patches are coming out almost everyday it seems like so stay updated.

note:if you know someone who has PLUS for XP...trust me you want it!

As for myself i will stick with 98SE for now, Maybe someday i will do a dual boot with XP if the price comes down.

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[Willing and Unsure]

XP==Xtreme Poo

 

[Carl East]

Surely you mean Xrated People. lol

Carl

 

[Willing and Unsure]

nope... i mean that XP is terrible... very very bad.. so XP stands for Xtreme Poo. its bad. if you want to upgrade, i'd suggest win2k. there arent as many security problems with it, let alone other ones. its a lot more stable, i think. and to check the compatability on it, i'd say look to see if you can find some of the drivers you would need. it has some built in to the os itself, but there are a couple that arent (the only ones of mine that werent was my webcam.. and i've got quite a bit that goes into it). the only time the win2k system will crash (at least supposedly, and from my own experience) is when there is a hardware problem, whereas xp will crash with a software problem (and those are a bitch to fix in xp)

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[Tap-Out]

My 2 cents on Windows XP

I have been reading this post on XP and for some unknown reason I thought I would put my 2 cents in.

I am a network administration student, as well as a network administrator for a contracting company, and I must say that graphically XP is the most stunning OS I've ever seen. However it really sucks functionality wise.

XP is so graphically stunning that it hogs most of the system resources just to make itself run. If you are using the Windows Media Player (WMP) as well, things get even worse. Unless you have a really really powerful computer with lots of resources, I wouln't recommend XP to a user. Also Media Player wants to take complete control of your entire computer's media needs. Third party software (winamp, power dvd, ect.) have a hard time running on an OS machine because WMP wants to run it.

XP does NOT like to be part of a network environment. With the exception of browsing the internet, it's network abilities (even as a client machine) are severely limited and awkward. Something as simple as sharing a folder now requires a lot more steps than before. Forget trying to make it a member of a domain, because it is really really picky about letting you do that. Trying to access the entire network tree can sometimes be a chore in itself.

If you are a person just looking for a stable version of windows to run on your home computer, I would suggest Windows 2000 Professional. If you don't want to use that I would stick with Win98SE.

See you all on the boards.

 

[Carl East]

Um, I didn't know all that 'Willing' but as I haven't had any trouble what so ever with xp I'll stick with it for now. However, thank you for enlightening me to this other os, I'll keep it in mind.

Do you Ladies use the computer a lot (as in for other things) or is it just for study purposes and the occassional visit here.

Carl

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[riff]

I have not tried XP in my lab. I am running XP pro at home and haven't had the slightest problem.

I want to give SuSe Linux a try over the summer.

 

[Willing and Unsure]

i use mine a lot. i use lots of programs for programming (telnet), writing documents (word), playing music (winamp), doing math (excel), watching movies (windvd), downloading (kazaa and mirc), chat, internet, all sorts of other things that i cant think of right now since i'm starting to get prepared for an exam that i have to leave for in about 15 minutes. but i do lots of cool things with it, including using it as a test subject, in a sense (its a comcrap and they told me i cant use this os on this machine... but i do it anyways). not to mention that i fix it whenever it doesnt work right or breaks

 

[LordMagicMan]

An operating system is what it is.. Sometimes they work sometimes they dont.. Sometimes they dont like your sound card and sometimes they do... Sometimes they like to eat your system and not tell you, sometimes they dont... Thats just what happens when you run operating systems... Operating systems are just a layer of the computer... They arent actually connected to the hardware, you dont really Windows to make your computer work... Its just an interface and with any interface there can be problems. Its kind of like floating on a lake and trying to communicate with the bottom, most of the time an operating system is more reliable, but sometimes it cant find where it needs to connect to...

Just like any new thing Windows XP will take a while to work out all the bugs, probably within the next few months. Every Operating System has its woes at the beginning and then stable out.. From what I've heard lately, if XP runs on your system then use it because it is the most powerful version of windows to date... Alot of the security issues come from people not implenting the security options of XP correctly.. And any bugs found in XP are usually corrected within the week.

Even though I personally still run '98 on one of my computers and ME on the other I still think I would try XP if I had it... Would I ever pay for an operating system? Not likely... Just my 2 cents.

Want something free and stable? try linux...

 

[Carl East]

Hi CelestialBody, you completely lost me on that last question, I don't recall asking about security issues. Since Microsoft got caught out with these issues however, I think they've been very quick to respond with updates.

Carl

 

[Spinaroonie]

Re: My 2 cents on Windows XP

XP is so graphically stunning that it hogs most of the system resources just to make itself run.

And it almost looks like a Mac.

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[AzureAngel]

XP has been the most solid OS on my computer to date of 98, 98SE, 2k, and XP. By far. 98 and 98SE, obviously, have stability problems if you leave your computer running all the time. No point in explaining that headache and the joys of reformatting every few months.

2k was horrendous. In truth, it was great for the first week, it crashed out of the blue and would no longer boot into Windows. I tried to run a scandisk, but the only way I could find with 2k was the typical "Bootup scandisk" in 2k. However, the bootup process would never GET that far, so I was a little screwed. Maybe there's a way - I couldn't find it, so I ditched 2k.

I've been using XP since January, maybe earlier. It's been fantastic, in so far as MS OS' go. I'm able to leave the beast up and running for more than a week at a time, if I like... I can run Photoshop 20 different times and not worry about my ram being sucked up by it. I haven't had any issues with applications not working with it. It's been good to me.

But I don't know anything technical. So maybe I'm just stewpid. My gauge is, "Will my computer keep running? Running well?" XP has been the only one thus far that has been able to answer "Yes" to both questions.

 

[Carl East]

To see if others thought the same as myself, that it is the best os, I can tell now though that my thoughts on this os are not shared by everyone.

Also, if you think I poo pooed everyone as you put it, you must be easily offended, because I simply made comments, which were never meant as anything other that what they are comments.

Sorry if I offended you.

Carl

 

[riff]

Guess what- I just got my hands on SuSE Linux 8.0 Pro!

 

[riff]

Here we go. See yall this evening, will report on stall progress.

SuSE Linux Pro 8