When windows XP first came out I basicaly ignored it - knowing that it had a pretty good way of not being pirated. Between now and then I have heard positive and negative opinion, in almost equal measure, about it.
I recently realized - Now I have a good job, so I can buy it without hurting my pocket too much. It took me a while to realize that; as habitual thinking is far more superior to logical thinking (In otherwords I still thought as a pennyless student even when am not anymore). And If I bought it I wouldn’t have to worry about it’s anit-pirating abilities.
So is it worth buying?
(bear in mind that I am heavy games-player, and also experiment with programming with directx8)
Would I still be able to write software using Borland C++ Builder 4? (which was written for earlier versions of windows)
One of the negative opinions that comes to mind is that it’s too fool proof. in other words it does things that an advanced user would prefer to do themselves, it takes too much control, and it is over-protective (it might compromise memory in favour of stability)
if you’re adept at heavy crash recovery, use it. (trying to use dos to recover a crashed WinXP machine is an art)
when it works it’s better than other versions of Windows, but when it crashes it’s really bad…
it’s also very finicky about the hardware it runs on… so confirm from the ms site that all your hardware is compatible and that all software required to run your peripheral devices have updated drivers available…
Windows XP is a lot better than 95, 98, and ME. There isnt much of a difference between XP and 2000, though. I havent had any bad crashes (crashes are rare). The worst thing that has happened to me is a game locking up the system. And if something does fuck up, you can use the recovery feature.
Go for Windows XP. I haven’t had a crash on it, my friends haven’t had crashes on it, and it runs like a friggin’ wet dream. The only problem I’ve seen with it was on my dad’s computer, where it randomly stopped recognizing the DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives (one day it saw 'em, the next day it didn’t… 'twas confusing). But we ultimately got that squared away without too much hassle.
But take heed to Xash’s warnings about trying to fix XP problems through DOS. Gone are the days of “Oh, there’s a problem? All right, Boot Up In DOS Mode time!” If you do get a major crash in XP, my first advice would be to just download one of those XP boot programs that you put on Floppy disks, use them to format, and reinstall.
If you can afford it, go for it. If you like playing around with DirectX, you need to. If you don’t mind the odd search for a driver that will work with older hardware… Well, you know. Go with the dual boot, and consider another OS
Other than having your computer actually work right for a change - probably not. For chrissakes get rid of that worthless bane of human existence known as Windows ME, which is without a doubt the worst OS ever written. It is unstable, buggy, incomplete and just generally unusable (in my experience, anyway).
I bought XP for $85(US) from Staples and it was worth every penny. My previously useless computer now runs for months at a time between reboots and hasn’t crashed even once. All my settings stay where I want them and gasp both of my printers work.
If you do decide to buy XP be sure to use the clean install option (which is available on the upgrade, BTW). This formats the drive before installing XP. You will have to install all of your other programs and backup your old files, but it is worth it, IMO.
Before you get it, be sure it has drivers for all of your software & hardware. That’s why buying
it on a computer already is better, you know it works with everything already. Since you have
a nice job, how would you like the pro version for $39 direct from microsoft? Yep, you get some
toys & gum with it (yes). Im not kidding. You need a company to order it (sort of).
Here ya are & for this price I would buy it: http://www.microsoft.com/partner/campaign/Winpro1.asp
Get it. If you were running Win2000, I’d probably say otherwise, since that’s such an excellent OS. But from the Win95/8/Me line, it’s a no-brainer.
I disagree with the claim that you need the Pro version. There are only a handful of differences between Home and Pro, and those have to do mostly with corporate use. Check it out at the MS web site and make sure it’s worth the extra $100. Home and Pro are both essentially the same–the successor to NT/2000.
My experience is that XP recognizes most older devices remarkably well, and that drivers are available for almost everything at this point. I’ve had some trouble with CD burning software and wireless networking, but it’s all getting better. I use my system for animation and design–Photoshop, After Effects, 3D software–and it’s a rock. I run it for weeks at a time between reboots.
Another call for making sure you use Microsoft’s tool to go through your system and check everything for compatibility. Anything that it flags, hunt up and see if there’s someting that will make it compatible with XP. Add the cost of bringing anything that isn’t compatible up to speed to the cost of getting XP, and then you’ll have at least a monetary amount to consider.
But otherwise: I’d go with XP if only for the reason that Microsoft will phase out the Win9X/ME line, and I’m already seeing a few things pop up on the market as being only Win2K/XP/NT compatible.
If you’re worried about ‘older’ games not running under XP: make sure you get all the compatibiity patches for XP, those actually do help (wonder of wonders), and try running it in compatability mode. Worst case, set up a dual-boot system.
I wish I could say that WinXP is rock solid… I generally crash it a couple of times a month, which is on par with how often I crashed Win98. (Hey, what can I say. If it’s a reproducable bug, I won’t be able to reproduce it. If it isn’t a reproducable bug, I can. Heh.)
to answer your previous question, yes, it is a lot worse than previous versions of Windows, in my experience, when and if it does crash. But a whole lot better when it works.
again, i want to stress that WinXP is very sensitive to hardware, so while it may work perfectly on one machine it could be a nightmare on another. And also, a machine successfully running Win 98/ME may report a hardware failure when updated to XP, even though you are using the very same hardware that was working perfectly with Win 98/ME (e.g. the NMI parity error, where suddenly XP doesn’t like your existing RAM chips) This is because XP pushes some hardware components closer to their operating limits than other versions of Windows have been able to, which is a good thing, performance-wise.
Now that people are deciding for you that you should try out XP, i strongly recommend using ERU NT:
ERU NT along with a DOS boot disk that is setup to mount NTFS partitions (assuming you choose NTFS over FAT32 in your install options for any hdd partition, which you should) in DOS will be your lifeguard, lifeboat and flare.
With the way you install it and with post-installation tweaks, you can disable a lot of these features.
On my desktop, with which I record music, I replaced ME with XP pro. It took a bit of work to get my system to where it is now, but now I’m very happy with it.
One of the keys here is that you are a heavy game player and that you are presently using a version of windows from the 9.x line (95, 98, ME). In my experience, XP has yet to crash on me, runs internet applications better than older versions of windows, BUT has a lot of issues with hardware compatibility and won’t run about half of my software.
The thing I had the most trouble with was games. Unreal would run but only in a window. I could never get it to go full screen (I’ve heard from others who had it go full screen with no problem, so I don’t know what’s going on there…). Duke Nukem crashed instantly. Heavy Metal refused to even install. I’ve been able to get a couple of old dos games to work but not with sound, even using some of the add on programs specifically to make sound work on NT/2K/XP with dos games.
The dos games don’t bother me so much. XP is, after all, a version of NT and NT and dos are incompatible from the ground up. What really bothers me is the large number of windows applications I’ve found that don’t work properly, even when using the so-called compatibility modes of XP.
On the plus side, for what applications do run on XP, it seems to work better than previous versions of windows. I do almost all internet stuff on XP. Even notoriously bad internet applications that love to crash and would often take down 98 completely don’t bother XP much at all (although the application still does crash and you get to send a nice debug report to microsoft). It’s just too bad that XP won’t run so much of my software.
