Average Rating: 
Rating: - Awesome Operating System
I have gone through every single operating system (for home) and also through 2000, and this is the best one yet. As soon as I heard that the first 1,000 people to sign up for the RC versions would get a free copy of the beta, I immediately put my hands on the offer. Microsoft improved it dramatically from Beta to Final Version. Then on RC2, it only lasted 30 days(even though I activated it) so I complained to Microsoft and they sent me the full version for free. I don't get why people complain about Microsoft if they were nice enough to do that. Well anyways, I installed XP Pro the first day I got it, and I was amazed by it. It only took me about 1 hour 15 minutes.
My specs for comparison:
800 mHZ PIII w/ Speedstep
20 gig hard-drive
128 MB Ram
15" TFT XGA Active Matrix
I runs alot faster than the Windows Me I had on here which is great. Boots up a lot more faster also(except for the amount of time required to type in your password). Desktop is nice and full, but I recommend that you have 1024 X 768 for best resolution on XP. The start menu is also very nice and I don't have to search though all my programs to look for the one I want, all I have to do is open the start menu and my most frequently used programs are there. Another nice and overlooked feature is the hide feature on your taskbar. This is so you don't have a huge line of icons on it, but only the ones you want. Also when a program wants to tell you something, the taskbar just flips up. This is good because if you have your volume on mute (for example) and you have AIM on, it tells you if you have a new instant message. Also if you have a lot of programs open, the taskbar clusters them into groups for you so it doesn't get so cluttered. Over all this is a nice operating system, but there are the problems such as you can't not have an automatic log-on in the beginning and it takes a little longer to shut down. Also sometimes when I open Compuserve, it does this network configuration thing that takes a little time to complete. But otherwise this is a good, solid operating system.
Rating:  - A solid operating system
For the first time in many years I have been pleased with a Microsoft Windows family OS. When Windows XP came out I obtained what I was really expecting, a very solid, stable and enhanceable system.
Windows XP is based on the Windows 2000 code base with several major multimedia, administrative tools and security enhancements among other things.This is really the closest you can get to a truly standard OS for all types of users, except system administators obviously. We are getting closer to not having different Windows flavors running around anymore. The acceptance of this OS will gradually relieve developers from having to design multi-platform applications, a major headache in the past. As of this writing, Windows 95 has almost been phased out, and almost every piece of software is written for Windows XP (Home and Professional) I've tested this OS on my personal laptop (Thinkpad T-21) and several Pentium family desktops (P-III 750Mhz and P-IV 2.4Ghz) with many different software and hardware combinations without major issues. Software drivers are becoming quickly available for all types of hardware. In terms of software applications, I had to wait a bit longer for a few applications to become XP compatible. As with any OS, the compatibility issues were higher when the OS was released, but now you will not find as many, unless you still own very old pieces of hardware and software. This is in my opinion the primary factor when deciding wether to upgrade or to stay where you are. I will not get into the features of the OS, as they are very well described by Amazon and other reviewers, what I can tell you is what I consider the major highlights of this OS: * Great multimedia features - MovieMaker, Media Player. Windows Explorer has also been expanded with options to manage digital media such as pictures and music. Multimedia devices are installed and configured easier than ever * CD Burning options built in - Creating a music or data CD is as easy as drag and drop. It may not be the most efficient burning system, but its a good place to start * Administrative Tools - The Disk administrator, along with the disk defragmenter are two enhanced tools that I rely on with XP * Windows Update - Microsoft has been updating the OS frequently with many security fixes and tools updates and enhancements. You can set up XP to update your system periodically * Networking - Setting up a network is much easier now. A firewall is also built in as part of the network security features new in XP * System Help - The help tool has been enhanced to search not only locally on the PC but through the Internet as well. General Help Topics are very detailed and descriptive with many illustrations. Great improvement here. * Wizards - Many more settings are performed with wizards. Is like filling an electronic questionnaire, then XP takes over the rest of the configuration steps based on your answers. And simply the looks. Icons are more colorful, and they take advantage of higher end video cards with more color options. You can select display settings to look like the old Windows or the new XP look. In terms of performance, I admit that Windows by design, does not consider low end machines and it may seem slow on low RAM machines. I would definitely recommend having more than 256MB of RAM and a high end Pentium processor (P3 and up) for acceptable performance. Fortunately, there are options to tweak performance settings by eliminating the sometimes unnecessary display effects. I think at this time, you may be assured that Windows XP will be the best choice for you. Don't hesitate to buy it, taking into consideration the points I mentioned above. Recommended
Rating: - Great with a few exceptions
I'm coming from Windows NT 4 so my impressions may sound old-hat. I like XP for the following reasons:
- Integreated .zip file support (goodbye winzip)
- Native cd-burning
- Native support for pppoe (adsl w/dynamic IP address)
- Much more powerful installer function (easily install into primary partition number 2) and apparently built-in support for mult-booting with previous versions of NT/2k.
- When I installed it actually found my NIC, printer, sound and video card (3dfx). If only it could tell my mouse was wireless...
- One minor improvement are the control panel applets such as display showing up on the alt-tab tasks list.
- Programs seem to load quickly and the OS loads in about 27 seconds which is 3 or 4 seconds faster than NT 4.
- One amazing feature is mounting a second hard drive into a folder on a drive letter. I'm sure this was a 2k feature but I like it. Also you can assign any letter or no letter to any drive/partition (but don't do this to the partition the OS is installed on).
- Use the policy program (gpedit.msc) to easily change the Windows shell if you don't like Explorer (search for LiteStep for what I mean)
- An amazing thing: by default everything seems very minimalist. For example when you first come in to Windows the desktop has one icon: the recycle bin. And the start-up/shutdown etc sounds are very short and to the point. Problems I have:
- Activate within 30 days. I re-install my OS a lot and add hardware often. This could be a problem.
- I also managed to mess up my settings some how so every time I shutdown it reboots instead. I simply re-installed to fix it.
- You can easily revert to "classic view" and apply a "windows classic" theme for a regular start button but the million-and-one helpful pop-ups gets a little old after a while as does the showing off of fade-in/fade-out. Alright already you have transparancy. (I'll just turn it off)
- The built-in DVD player software didn't recognice my drive as a DVD drive.
- The above mentioned PPPoE "dialer" seems to report my speed as 100Mbs for some reason (I get a lot less then 1.5Mbs).
- Properties of the connection doesn't report how fast my connection actually is while downloading (my ISP's propreitary pppoe software can do this). Over all a very good OS and to say the least light years beyond WinMe (which I haven't used a whole lot).
- Yes the default theme has buttons and title bars that seem to have been inspired by fisher price. I sure grandma will love it though.
- Do I really have to have MSN Messenger? Forcing it on my is as bad as netscape and AOL IM...
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