Which XP do you use or prefer?

[pr-man 1]

Whats your flavor?

[Wetling 0]

Screw XP

[Wetling 0]

It's a crappy firewall though. It doesn't block outgoing packets. Yout still need ZA. The CD burner doesn't burn ISO's so you still need Nero (or whatever you use). Half assed features don't make it better.

[ThC 129 0]

XP runs better for me than 2k did, and more out of the box fixes than 2k has. Remote Desktop is nice in itself to really make me want to use the OS.

[Atreyu 0]

A-Men

 

This review was posted on the front page yesterday:

 

XP Review

 

Here's what I've noticed about XP reviews. All the reviews that proclain XP as the most wonderful operating system in the world focus on the unimportant things like the new start menu, the new GUI, and most of all, its comparision to Windows 98SE. Well of COURSE it's going to be more stable that Windows 98SE! Doesn't take a genious to know that. These reviews are using a VERY bad frame of reference for judging XP. Now if you compare Windows XP with the all mighty Windows 2000, you come up with quite different results. A REAL analysis of XP vs 2000, shows that XP in many environments runs significantly slower than 2000. THIS is what matters. Screw all the ugly buttons and the little animated dog in XP. Too much garbage, and it slows down the OS and makes it feel very sloppy.

 

People say, well it boots in NO time!! This is true, XP boots ver fast... but so what? I mean, I certainly don't lose any productivity in the extra 15 seconds that Windows 2000 takes. And considering Windows 2000 never needs to be restarted unless you install some poorly written software, boot time makes no difference. That should be the LAST thing somebody is concerned with.

 

So anyways, XP is aweful, remote desktop is cool but not worth the change if you are using Windows 2000's Terminal Services (which is the same thing but works slightly different). I've been insisting that all of my friends who want to change.. do not. I plead with them not to, tell them why, and insist that if they want to upgrade, to upgrade to Windows 2000. All Windows XP is, is Windows 2000 bogged down with skins and all that other stuff. You can even read statements on the Microsoft home page that verify this (but not in so many words :-)). Theres also a very interesting page on Microsoft's home page that compares XP to 98se and 2k. Well obviously it kicks 98se's butt, but nearly all the numbers are identical. Anyways, i need to get ready for work.

[BladeRunner 0]

Oh my god.

I wish I had bothered to read the review on the front page now, just so I could totally rubbish it.

Of course doing a comparision between Win98/ME & WinXP is the way to go because some 80%+ of the WinXP upgraders are going to be Win9x users.

The majority of Win2k users know full well that WinXP is basically Windows 2000.5.

I'm upgrading from Win2k to WinXP yes, because it's basically a serice release for Win2k and is a little friendlier with games.

Also software companies will now officially support games under WinXP, something most didn't under Win2k.

 

Anybody who knows the slightest thing about Win2k/9x/XP knows that what new WinXP users are now experiencing, us Win2k users have enjoyed for the past 18+ months.

[pr-man 1]

Hmm I though alot more people would say that Win2k pro was better.

[Wetling 0]

Me too because IT IS!

[DrX 0]

You guys are deluding yourselves. Windows 2000 Professional is designed for a business environment, with more stability in mind over speed. I don't care what you say, for games and *most* applications, Windows 9x was faster, albeit more unstable and buggy and riddled with problems that made it absolutely ridiculous to run if you favored a stable OS over a minimalistic one.

 

Windows 2000 has a lot of problems, even most users now are observing this with the SP2 issues that plagued games and VIA systems, not to mention the fact that it had crappy as hard drive controller support, limiting transfers to ATA 33 with a patch to up this to ATA 66 in SP2. DOS VM support was minimalistic and buggy, the "Application Compatibility Packs" seemed to support every program and game BUT the ones that I had, I couldn't run Need for Speed 3, or 4... Took me WAY longer to load a Counter-Strike map while running Windows 2000, and games in DirectX overall had a slower feel to them and weren't as responsive.

 

Windows XP changed all that. Now that it's targetted for people that are actually supposed to be playing games instead of those that are supposed to be working or writing reports or doing telemarketing or whatever the hell it is that corporations do, you can expect much more support from developers and Microsoft itself. They'll work hard to make sure that games get a high priority of support, stability and efficiency will now have even trade offs, not to mention all the *little* things that make XP a much nicer OS to have. I'm not talking about the pretty GUI (or crappy?) or whatever it is you 2000 users seem to think us XP people like about the OS, I'm talking about functionality here, like taskbar grouping, system tray icon hiding, auomatically calculating what programs I use most and keeping those accessible for me, automatic up[censored], better sound support, automatically synchronizing the system time with an atomic clock server without using a third party application, native sound in DOS games, WAY faster bootup and shutdown times, fast user switching, CLEARTYPE FONTS (HELL YEAH!), better ACPI handling (doesn't bog down your system), native support for VIA chipsets... all in all, many many things that help me and others like myself have a much more enjoyable and productive experience in an OS that doesn't sacrifice speed for stability and seems to look purty doing it too. I have used Windows 2000 Professional before, for MANY months, and for those of you still intent on using 2000 because you're afraid of change, to those I say:

 

[Xiven 0]

NOTE: These are my personal preferences only. You may disagree, but that's your choice.

 

Quote:

Originally posted by DrX

I'm talking about functionality here, like taskbar grouping,

 

I hated this in Linux/KDE and I still hate it in XP.

 

Quote:

system tray icon hiding,

 

If you have any icons in your system tray that you don't want, consider uninstalling some programs. I have only 5 icons in my system tray and I use all of them. I certainly don't want windows deciding for me which ones I *might* want hidden.

 

Quote:

auomatically calculating what programs I use most and keeping those accessible for me,

 

That's available in Win2k as well (personalised menus) and is also very annoying. XP also has that start panel showing recently used programs but that has some serious UI problems (menus from the left pane overlap the right pane making it hard to select stuff in the right pane).

 

Quote:

automatic up[censored],

 

Hmmm.. why is my 56k modem connection going so slow? Oh yeah, Windows is downloading a 7MB OS update for me. How nice of it. Shame I'm only going to be connected for a minute so the entire download will be cancelled.

 

Okay, for a cable modem or DSL connection, it is nice, and means that people who don't know what they're doing (people who haven't heard of windowsupdate) will still have a nice up-to-date OS.

 

Microsoft does seem to assume that everyone has a fast internet connection, which is far from the truth.

 

Quote:

better sound support,

 

In what way exactly?

 

Quote:

automatically synchronizing the system time with an atomic clock server without using a third party application,

 

Useful, but can be done in Win2k WITHOUT 3rd party application using the net time command. XP wins on this one though.

 

Quote:

native sound in DOS games,

 

Fair point. I don't play DOS games, but I'm sure that for those who do this will be very useful.

 

Quote:

WAY faster bootup and shutdown times,

 

True. Though I don't reboot very often, it is nice to see it boot much faster when I do.

 

Quote:

fast user switching,

 

Consumes a heck of a lot of memory (memory is cheap now though). Might be useful for a multi-user machine I suppose.

 

Quote:

CLEARTYPE FONTS (HELL YEAH!),

 

Turned these on and it just looked ugly. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Quote:

better ACPI handling (doesn't bog down your system),

 

Makes little difference if you have a decent motherboard.

 

Quote:

native support for VIA chipsets...

 

Yet VIA are still releasing their 4-in-1 drivers for XP. Admittedly though, WinXP does not have the same problems that win2k had pre-sp2 with VIA chipsets.

 

Quote:

all in all, many many things that help me and others like myself have a much more enjoyable and productive experience in an OS that doesn't sacrifice speed for stability and seems to look purty doing it too. I have used Windows 2000 Professional before, for MANY months, and for those of you still intent on using 2000 because you're afraid of change, to those I say:

 

 

Well maybe, but I say AmigaOS 3.1 oWn5 j00 4ll

[Brian Frank 0]

Basically, XP is more work than it's worth, though I'll end up doing running it eventually ;( I'm just BSing for now. All the games I want to play run just fine in 2k. XP is no more stable than 2k. XP has crap I don't want (Movie Maker, Windows Messenger, more newbie targeted stuff to turn off) and have to "hack" the OS to remove them.

Product Craptivation...'nuff said.

 

Microsoft: XP is the best Windows yet!

Me: Compared to what? ME? Of course anything is better than ME, Windows 1.0 is better!!!!

 

WinXP is Win2k with more bells and whistles; that's it folks. For 9x users, it's the best thing since the wheel; for many 2k users, it's a purty GUI.

 

Man, JDul would be mighty pissed if he was still here (thankfully, he's not!)

[DrX 0]

Better sound support... Let's recap.

 

Windows 9x used a native MME driver for sound events. Remember mmsystem.dll? Windows 2000 was different in the sense that it had a native DirectSound driver but that its implementation had certain problems with stuttering and clipping on many sound cards that had mediocre drivers.

 

In XP, the DirectSound engine is completely efficient. I'm talking you can overload the crap out of it and it won't stutter unless you're using an SB live or some other crappy sound card with crappy drivers... I love my Santa Cruz and even though my VIA 686B southbridge has problems with sound they were apparently completely ironed out in XP so long as I didn't use an SB live.

[Wetling 0]

But you need third party software to copy music files to MP3. XP only supports WMA.

[Bursar 0]

Quote:

But you need third party software to copy music files to MP3. XP only supports WMA.

So could you do this natively in 9x/ME/2k then?

[OLEerror 0]

I still find it funny when people complain about things that a Windows OS won't do. Almost invariably these are the same people that complain that it is bloated with features. XP doesn't allow you to burn mp3? Well shucks. If it did allow it, someone would come along and whine that this was more bloat that wasn't needed. Personally, I prefer wma. So the lack of mp3 ripping doesn't bother me in the least. If you want to rip mp3s, just use a third-party application or one of the plug-ins for WMP.

[DrX 0]

No you need a third party DRIVER. And there's one floating around that's free, albeit illegal I think because it's a modified Fraunhofer. But why pirate it, it costs like 10 bucks!

 

-Rev

[Wetling 0]

What I'm saying is that, yes, XP has all these features, but you still need all the same software you did before.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

No you need a third party DRIVER. And there's one floating around that's free, albeit illegal I think because it's a modified Fraunhofer. But why pirate it, it costs like 10 bucks!

-Rev

Any suggestions as to where I can obtain this driver? I am interested in seeing how it works. I checked www.fraunhofer.com and www.fraunhofer.de, and I didn't see anything on either site alluding to sound handling software.

[Greg S Trouw 0]

MSDN subscribers get both the Pro and the Home CDs shipped via UPS, and the subscription cost (before anyone says bah, you got it for free....the yearly MSDN subscription cost is not free, and now.....is actually going up again) doesn't change regardless of which we use.

 

Ironically however (or perhaps there is no XP server) with win2k we got both Server and Advanced Server, but now, there's just Home and Pro.

 

We did get win64 (yes even in beta 1, there was winXP for Itanium), but it's of little use to me, unless they come out with a version for the AMD Hammer next year (as a Hammer I would upgrade to, but an Itanium, to run all my software in x86 emulation mode, no thx).

[Atreyu 0]

I'm starting to realize it....

 

It happened this past weekend, when two of my friends started IM-ing me with questions about XP. They were having security problems with a file I sent them (because the SIDS of the users who had rights to the file were foreign to their machines), so being the one they ALWAYS come to with questions, they came to me. I was trying to explain to them what happened, not that it mattered. I then tried to walk them through the process of fixing the security so that they would be able to use the file.

 

I told them to right click on the file, go to properties, then go to the "Security" tab. Welp, there was no "Security" tab. Eventually we found it, and the whole interface was changed. I had a slight image of what it looked like still embedded in my mind from the last time I tried XP... so I was able to chug my way through and help them out. I also had a friend ask me about Remote Desktop, and where to find the normal desktop settings (e.g. resoultion etc), as they are now under an "Advanced" button.

 

I figure... if I'm going to continue being up-to-date with today's technology, and continue being helpful to both my friends as well as this splendid forum, I may need to bite the bullet and make the switch. Sorta like trying beer for the first time. It tastes aweful, but over time you grow to like it quite a bit

[moregee4u 0]

I want .NET server... But i'm using XP professional

[clutch 1]

I would just like a fully functioning adminpak.msi from .Net server that will manage the AD objects in a Win2K domain. That would be REALLY handy...

[Brian Frank 0]

Quote:

Screw XP

Well put. Win2k runs all the games I want it to, and runs them very well. I've tried XP, and IMHO it's a yawner.

[Uykucu 0]

Microsoft has been claiming it's new OS is faster, better more secure since version 1.0. (Check the archives if you do not believe me!)

 

Well, in my opinion W2k was the only one that delivered up to a point...

 

I have received XP like most of you the day it was released both the home and professional. But quite frankly had no wish to change. I remember when 2K came out I was the forst one to switch but now I am thinking why???

Anyway, an OS having problems with certain HW is not OS's problem. (ie. Via etc) It is usually the HW Designers or the driver developers idiocy!

 

I don't think 2K sacrifices speed for performance. give it enough memory and watch it fly! (512MB +)

 

PS. 2 of my mates who hastily switched to XP for games are already restoring their ghost images of W2k!