After several years in the saddle with XP at this point I’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty decent OS. Not perfect by any means, but certainly much better than the DOS/Win 3.1/Win 95/Win 98/ Win ME operating systems before.
Thanks Microsoft. Job well done!
Really. I’ve used every OS you listed except ME, plus Windows 2000, and XP is far and away the best. The only complaint I have is with Internet Explorer. I hear they’re coming out with IE 7 soon, and from what I’ve heard I suspect that it’s based heavily on Firefox, so hopefully they’ll have that taken care of soon. There’s only ever been one program that caused me much trouble, and that was a level editor for a game which was inherently unstable. (The editor for Thief: the Dark Project, in case you’re curious.) Overall, I’m happy with XP.
Plus, XP seems to have built-in drivers for everything I’ve ever plugged in. God bless USB interfaces and plug-n-play technology 
'cept it’s a bugger to get all of my old Win 95/98 games working again (System Shock 2, I’m looking in your direction!!). But that’s not strictly Microsoft’s fault.
I’ll cop to it being well better than ME, at least my keyboard doesn’t disappear each time I log off of the internet, and I’ve not seen a BSoD in my whole time using XP. And it’s miles better than the NT rubbish we have to use at work.
So yeah, on the whole it’s pretty okay.
I agree, XP has worked pretty well for me, pretty intuitive in most instances and pretty stable.
Computers are like air conditioners - they don’t work when you open windows.
Computers are not like air conditioners at all.
I consider myself more of a “power user” than most (I use PC’s for heavy audio and video recording and editing), and XP has been an enormous improvement in stability and performance. At any given time, I’m using multiple PCI cards, several hard drives, and external equipment via firewire and XP performs remarkably. This stuff used to be an ENORMOUS headache.
My only complaint is that XP seems to be designed for flashy appearance over performance - there are a ton of little CPU-wasting things like window animations that need to be disabled for maximum performance.
I can’t wait for Vista!
I’ve loved XP. I basically think XP was what Microsoft intended back when Windows 95 came out. I was let down with Windows 95, thought Windows 98 was a huge improvement, and have really loved XP over the past few years.
Another big fan of XP checking in. I’m the first one to bash Microsoft when they deserve it, but XP is a great product. I just reformatted a laptop which was running ME (Gasp!) and installed XP. Such an improvement!
XP has been terrific. Sometimes I think I would like to switch to a different platform, but I have some profession-specific software that only does Windows. 98 was good (well, better than DOS…), but then I started getting video stuff (DVD player, dig. camera/camcorder), and the old system went down the tubes. All of it works great on XP, plus the old software and hardware seem faster.
So you’re comparing it to;
a/ Win ME, which, it is universally agreed, is a pile of poo.
b/ Other operating system over 7 years old.
:dubious: Faint praise indeed.
While stability has improved to near the levels an OS should have been at 20 years ago (ahem!), the security aspect is absolutely amazingly horrid.
Sure if you compare MS OSes, it’s okay, but compared to just about anything else…
Windows 2000 was my fave and it’s not even listed in the OP.
Oh, and, hiya astro. Where’d you get off to these last few months?
Hello yourself UrbanChic! Just taking a break from the boards.
You too, huh?
And yeah, I agree, XP has been pretty good. I’ve had very few serious problems and even those were fairly easily addressed with System Restore (Og, I love that feature). From what I’ve read, Longhorn, the next major revision of Windows, is not going to be a significant improvement in most aspects of the OS, other than graphics. Longhorn is all about appearance.
Likewise. I use mine for music - multi-track audio, midi, virtual synths - and I couldn’t get my system running reliably until XP came down the pike. ME was a nightmare. I had to do a bit of tweaking to XP - disabling this and that - but now it’s great. I’ve thought about getting a faster box, but I don’t want to mess with it.
I’m a Mac person so I only run into it in passing, but yeah, XP seems praiseworthy. Nice to see you folks off that elderly Win95/98/ME track and onto the NT kernel family. And in contrast with NT, the networking seems to configure itself instead of requiring you to know and enter all that NetBIOS configuration shit, that’s got to be nice for anyone using it on a regular basis. And it seems faster, based on my limited experience in Windows.
The only thing I can see to complain about is the XP Home / ET call home stuff: semi-crippleware at the low end and lots of irritating hassle when you try to legitimately transfer your OS to other hardware or modify your hw, etc. … and if I understand correctly, folk in a corporate environment with department-level purchases of XP Pro don’t have to deal with any of that.
I’m a solid Microsoft guy. I love to bash them on nearly any issue however, it’s become a habit for us IT guys. I find very few issues with XP from either a user or support standpoint.
I refused to support any Windows ME installation (like Debaser’s fiance’s laptop), but I’m more than happy to support the XP installation.
I have had exactly the opposite experience. I upgraded from 98 to XP and it’s been nothing but trouble. I’ve lost a considerable amount of functionality I had with 98, and I ended up having to completely abandon Norton AntiVirus, despite having a subscription that expires next February, and switching to Trend PC-cilian (which was kind of confusing to set up, but it actually works very well). Maybe some or all of that is due to my level of computer knowledge, but I am not a satisfied customer.
I’m currently shopping for a Mac.
When I bought my Dell in 2001 it came with ME. I became all too familiar with crashes, system restore efforts, missing kernels, etc. I finally upgraded to XP in early 2003 and don’t think I’ve had ANY kind of problem since (knock on wood).
How possible that in 6-7 years people will say that Vista was a disspointment and that XP is actually still the superior OS?