Windows XP impressions and experiences

[natedog]

Well, I just installed a beta of XP the other day and thought I would come here to look for some experiences other people have been having. Oddly enough when I looked, all I saw was people arguing about how MS sucks and threads going off topic about digital music formats...

The purpose of THIS THREAD is to post the experience you have had with XP. If you don't use XP, or you think XP sucks, or whatever, just go away, you aren't needed. It would also be useful to some people to post what OS you are coming from prior to XP, and some system specs. Now for my impressions...

I'm coming from a 6 month install of 98 SE and thought I'd try out Xp. I have a 1 gig tbird, 256 mb ram, 60 gig hd, geforce 2 gts, and sblive value. I'm dual booting just in case it sucked or screwed stuff up. Well, I can say it hasn't. I have build 2464 or something. After partitioning off a couple gigs for XP, I went to install. All I can say is this is the EASIEST install I've ever had. Booting off the cd it formatted for me, and then installed windows. It didn't ask me for a single driver as it installed. This is good and bad as I'll address in a second. Everything was going good, except with 4 minutes to go it froze up and I had to reboot. Instead of recovering it started over completely. The second time though it installed fine. Now on my screen I saw Xp running...

First lets talk about drivers and compatability. When you look at the drivers running they're all from Microsoft. I only care about drivers for a few things, mainly my geforce 2 gts and sblive, and they both had drivers with microsofts name on them, so not sure what they were really using. Well, I went out to nvidia and creative and got their 2000 drivers and installed them without a problem. Of course xp complains about them not being "signed" my microsoft or whatever, but I'm sure these major companies will address this once it is really out. Doesn't matter anyways...

First thing I dead was right click on the task bar and get my quick launch bar. Have to have my show desktop button. Then I started playing with the visual look. Many people have complained about the new look, but let me say you can set it to a classic windows, and you can adjust almost EVERYTHING you see. Here are some examples: desktop icon size, color schemes of course, the size of the title bars of windows, the size of the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, the scroll bar size, shadows for the mouse and desktop items, and the list just goes on. The start button has a new interface, but of course you can pick the classic look from the old windows, which I did. The only thing you can't change which I wish you could is the start button. Why green?

Ok, now some gaming experience. I've tested counter-strike and quake 3. First of all neither of these games run great with vsync off. I'm not sure why. I've heard there is a refresh rate problem similar to one in 2k which a fix came out for, but no fix for XP yet. So I ran both of these with vsync on. Counter-strike ran fine, but quake 3 wasn't as good as on 98. Just not as smooth. I was too lazy look at fps, I forgot the console command.

My final comment is about some of the networking options. I have two computers in my house and just run a simple network for file and print sharing, and to share a cable modem. Previously we had used SyGate to network them. It was annoying and would die after long up times for no reason. I found internet connection sharing on 98 to suck for the most part. Well, Xp is amazing. Through the wizard it setup my computer, then it made a disk for me to run in the other computer. I go to that computer, run it, and like magic they are now networked and sharing internet at great speeds. I don't know if this was available in 2k or not, but all I can say is cool.

Well, those are my comments. Would love to hear what you guys think of it from YOUR EXPERIENCE. Especially gaming stuff. I never went to NT or 2k for the sake of gaming on 98, but I'm hoping XP can change that. Sorry this was so long, just too much to say!

Nate

 

[lucidguy]

So let me get this straight. You went through the trouble of acquiring and installing WinXP. Then you spent hours installing Win2k drivers on it and making the desktop look and behave just like Win2k.

Why didn't you just install and use Win2k and save yourself time?

 

[natedog]

XP is prettier.

And I wouldn't call 5 min that long. My friend got me a copy and downloading drivers is easy. Thank you for ignoring the part of my post that was directed at you lucid. Then again, we're used to ignoring you.

Hope someone else finds this useful and would like to make an intelligent reply.

 

[whalen]

He's cool?

I'm running XP also. I really like it so far, as everything is working except for my Turtle Beyatch Santa Cruz. I fired up a game of Q3, and it seemed ok to me with my Radeon LE. Anyway, my initial thoughts about it was a combo of Windows ME/2k/MacOS...

1)Recognizes hardware as well as ME
2)Rock stable like 2k
3)Gay (default) look like macOS

Overall, I love this OS...now if only i could get the Turtle Beyatch working...hehe

 

[konichiwa]

<< If ... you think XP sucks, ... just go away, you aren't needed >>

Sounds wonderful! Let's have a discussion about our impressions of Windows XP, but not let anyone who dissents from your opinion in the thread! What a great way to start a clever and thoughtful discussion. To quote the oh-so-eloquent Jaraxa (sp?) from the other XP flamewars thread:


<< The behavior I've seen in this thread is completely apalling. I am truely disgusted. The internet is about sharing ideas and information ... and in this thread there are people telling other people to shut-up and get lost.

These boards are going to crap. You may not like what someone has to say. If the information is incorrect, then correct it. If you can't find hard facts, then agree to disagree. But to get rid of the opposing side because you don't like it ... well what's the point of discussing the material?

While I don't completely agree with the extremes that lucidguy is talking about, I personally do not like the activation. His arguement is similar to those posed by the &quot;right to carry arms&quot; group. My thinking is &quot;yeah right, like the government is going to take over ...&quot; but it IS their right. You may not be paranoid, but don't take away someone elses' right to be. ;-)

Again, I can't believe some of the attitudes I've seen on this thread ...

/me walks away disgusted. >>

 

[natedog]

you miss the point. The whole reason for this thread is to talk about personal experiences with windows xp. We don't need you and Lucid to come in here and bash. Why? That has nothing to do with the topic. You guys have made your points perfectly clear in the other threads, now let the rest of us talk about it without having to shout over you.

 

[konichiwa]

I never bashed anyone in the other threads (besides stalinator, but not because of what he was saying, but because he was a troll) -- that is, unless you consider dissenting from your opinion &quot;bashing&quot;. Sheesh, turns out &quot;troll&quot; is a much wider term than I had thought. Oh, and I'll have you know that I do have quite a bit of &quot;personal experience&quot; with WindowsXP. Not that you give a rat's ass about my opinion, however.

 

[natedog]

Well why don't you offer it instead of constantly bickering and picking fights. Please, tell us YOUR experience with XP. Maybe I should rephrase the first post. It's not that I don't want people posting who think XP sucks, I just don't want people posting to bash XP just for the hell of it. So seriously, what did you think of it? I don't care if you think it sucks, just validate your reasons.

See this is what I'm talking about. So far we've gotten one actual response talking about their experience with it. Then you had to come along and start complaining just for the hell of it.

 

[TripleJ]

Alright kids, calm down.

I think what Natedog is trying to say that he would like to hear what the advantages and disadvantages of the XP OS are. These should be supported by some sabstantiated reasons. There, is that to everyones liking? I'm quite interested in what others have to say so please make a valuable discussion worth my reading.

 

[RichieZ]

Whats to say, its a big fruity version of w2k pro. I don't like the way things are dumbed down by defaultm like no quik luanch bar, the control panel, no my desktop be default etc. Yea so its got an updated driver database, great. I've run almost everyversion from 2462 to 2499 and besides showing my friends and them thinking its cool I don't see a reason to change over from W2K pro to XP pro.

Obviously when you mover from win98suckyedition to any variant of NT newer than NT4 you're going to be impressed because its acutally stable and relatively easy to use.

 

[natedog]

Yeah, moving from 98 to XP is a much bigger jump than 2k to XP. My man issue between the two is which one will offer better compatability. Right now, and from what I've heard XP is supposed to be better games and stuff, more like a bridge between NT and 9x. Best of both worlds you could say. You think there is going to be much truth to this? I never played a ton of games on 2k, but didn't hear really good stuff about it. Ever since 98 people have been saying stick with 98 for gaming, and I'm just hoping XP will finally be the one worth upgrading to.

 

[konichiwa]

<< Well why don't you offer it instead of constantly bickering and picking fights >>

Why don't you offer a discussion where all opinions are welcome instead of insisting on employing your get-out-if-you-don't-agree-with-us nonsense?

<< you had to come along and start complaining just for the hell of it >>

If you think I started &quot;complaining&quot; just for &quot;the hell of it,&quot; maybe you need to re-read my post. My &quot;complaints&quot; are not just to stir up trouble (as hard as that may be for you to believe) they are to open up threads like this for people who may not agree with the majority opinion (myself included).

<< So seriously, what did you think of it? >>

I don't like it. I think it's a resource hog (runs considerably slower on my PIII 500 than Win2k). I think it is dumbed down so that a person with an IQ equal to that of a toaster can operate the system. Sure, this may be good for some people, but it's certainly not good for productivity, it's certainly not good for most of the AnandTech community, and it's certainly not good for me. I hate the new interface. Yes, you can disable it, but, as lucidguy said, why would you buy a NEW operating system only to try your hardest to make it look and operate like your OLD operating system?

Raw Sockets bothers me. The Register article that was pointed out is B.S., and although Steve Gibson is a fanatic, he's pretty much right about it. It's unecessary and it's potentially a major threat. I don't like the activation -- no matter what anyone says about &quot;MICROSOFT CANNOT TELL WHAT ANY OF YOUR HARDWARE IS&quot; I still have a problem with having to send a product code based on my hardware to Microsoft just because I want to install their new operating system. I bought it, I own a license, screw Microsoft and their &quot;activation&quot; bullsh*t. Another thing that lucidguy is right about, and that you people cannot seem to grasp, is that if Microsoft is employing these activation &quot;features&quot; now, what's going to happen in Windows 2008?

I don't like all the integration -- keep all your crappy software out of my system -- I don't want it. If I do want it, I'll install it myself.

 

[Shudder]

Losing a few FPS in windows 2k was a small price to pay for the added stability and peace of mind windows 2000 gave me. 98 to 2k was cake and I'd do it again in any situation. SInce XP is MORE compatible you'd be a fool not to go to xp from 98.

The biggest issue was drivers. Since BASIC CONSUMERS will now be getting an NT kernel (XP), companies will have to actually write drivers for the masses, not &quot;Business users&quot; who used 2k and happened to want to play games too. The situation with the drivers can only get extremely better in the next few months.

 

[Psychoholic]

konichiwa


<< I never bashed anyone in the other threads (besides stalinator, but not because of what he was saying, but because he was a troll) >>


How can you call stalinator a troll and not look at Lucid in the same way is beyond me. He's the biggest bottom-feeder I've seen in the past few months. While I respect the right of anyone to offer a dissenting opinion what natedog was looking for was peoples impressions of the operating system itself, not another debate. Look at Lucid aka escarcot's first post in this thread and tell me if he was trying to start his usual bullsh**.

konichiwa, I would have thought you had better things to do than defend a snail.

 

[Tako]

I agree with shudder on this. Now that MS is dropping the 9x/DOS code base, manufactures are forced to write drivers for the 2K kernel. In the long run, I think it would benefit both consumers and developers. A unified code base could mean better compatibility, better stability, and faster development times for multiplatform (Windows 2000 series, XP Personal, XP Pro, etc.). It may sound bad that MS is 'forcing' developers to go for the Win2K kernael base, but I think it will pay off.

Tako_chu

 

[skace]

The better driver support in WinXP that supposedly bridges the gap between Win9x and WinNT is a gimmick. The only reason it has good driver support is due to maturing win2k drivers. Win2k has been out for awhile, drivers are being made for it, WinXP is basically Win2k so it uses its drivers and by the time it is out the drivers are nice and mature (thats my opinion at least). The only interesting thing I've heard so far is the dos emulation for old games. But honestly, I could have sworn that in college I installed Police Quest 3 on my Win2k machine and it ran just fine. PQ3 being older than wolfenstein I think. I was also able to alt-enter and run it in a window like you see in WinXP presentations. But my memory has lied to me before &amp; since that was the time I was switching between Win9x and Win2k I could be wrong. Maybe tonight I will install some dos games on my win2k machine again and see if they run.

It just seems like WinXP is a friendly way to tell people its time to move to Win2k, with a new gui. I guess there is no problem with that - as long as the Win2k people arn't fooled into thinking they are getting their moneys worth.


Edit: Psychoholic, when I read the second post and realized it was from Lucid I almost laughed out loud... not only does he get first reply and post directly against the innitial posters wishes, but he managed to come out being right.

 

[CQuinn]

My (limited) Experience:
(watching my Supervisor install on an Eval system here, and playing with it a little
afterward)

Install:

On a generic PC (P-II 300, 224MB RAM) it installed without incident.
Nothing special to report if you are familiar with the way Windows 9x/ME/200O install.
Activation is a barely noticable change in the normal registration process.
We skipped it the first time, and I think my Sup activated later.
(One minor annoyance, because we did not activate right away there was a little
icon on the task tray to help us remember to do so. At least it wasn't clippy.)

On a specialized PC platform (that we make and sell). Failure on install.
This is a known issue - we had the same problem with the Windows 2000 install.
There is something in our custom hardware configuration that the install cannot
deal with on the first reboot. We are waiting on RC1 to really troubleshoot the
issue and figure out a workaround for the install.

Side note: This is less a fault of W2K/WXP because we are forcing an invalid
configuration in this design. Also, Linux install choke at the same point.

Personal:

It seems to me that a little more effort was spent on making the interface more
responsive to the user. I'm not just talking about the &quot;task-oriented&quot; GUI,
the default action of windows and buttons just seems a little snappier to me.
There is a slight but noticeable slowdown when opening Media Player or IE 6.
Half of that I'd credit to debug code in the programs, the other half is because
that CPU is somewhat below the minimum I would reccommend for this OS.

I kept the &quot;Luna&quot; interface on, to get a better feel for what MS is attempting to
address in interface design this time around. For all the complaints about it
being &quot;candy-coated&quot; I remember the same things were said about the Windows 95 GUI
in comparision to Windows 3.1, but along with all the bells and whistles were some
good ideas in making the interface a more productive tool for the user. I can see
that MS is trying to apply the same ideas here.

Media Player is Media Player, I changed it to the classical look. I don't need
the player to look better than the stuff I'm playing.

IE 6 looks nice (I guess), some of the standard icons were changed, but thier position
is the same - so not much of a learning curve to figure the new ones out.

For those who are interested in the real office productivity tools -
Backgammon, Checkers, Reversi, Spades, and Pinball have been added to the default games.


natedog:



<< When you look at the drivers running they're all from Microsoft. >>



Well, sortof. The drivers still come from the respective OEMs, but the approved
ones for default install are probably rebranded as MS default drivers. Did you
check the versions of the drivers before and after you installed the 2000 drivers?
Just wondering if they were actually that different a version of the drivers.

I thought you could change the start button by changing the desktop theme?
(Just tried it here and the start button changed too)
Were you changing the whole theme, or just individual components within the theme?


I'll have to wait on RC1 to install at home and report on general usage features.

 

[IdahoB]

Out of curiousity, for all those saying &quot;there's no point upgrading from Win2k,&quot; what were the HUGE benefits of Windows 98 over 95? FAT32? Oh, puh-lease.

Windows XP brings a stable kernal to the desktop home-user market, and it throws in the games and multimedia capabilities of 9x. A slight slowdown from 2K isn't bad when considering that every new OS release is slightly slower on the same setup. Haven't you anti-MS lot complained EVERY SINGLE TIME they release a new OS because it's bloatware, it's slower, resource hungry etc...

What's wrong with gradual change? Bearing in mind that XP is planned as a step towards a MS 64bit OS - a major step.

 

[skace]

LOL IdahoB, good one. Too bad I disagree. See, Win98 didn't bring much more than Win95 to the table. But it also didn't bring any added inconveniences, while WinXP DOES. Also, some people still use win95 over win98 and continue to claim it is better and more stable (I don't want to touch that argument). But, while you sit there and compare those to, what about Win ME? I don't see many people stumbling to go from Win9x to WinME... HMMMM why don't you compare those 2 eh?

Also, How is it anti-MS to go from one MS OS to another MS OS.... nice...

And lastly,
Windows 2K brings a stable kernal to the desktop home-user market, and it throws in the games and multimedia capabilities of 9x. Look familiar? Win2k is stable and runs the games and multimedia of 9x.... What did you think XP was built on?

 

[Psychoholic]

CQuinn, since you mentioned the important productivity tools, I thought I would mention that Pinball isn't really new. NT 4.0 had it.

 

[Psychoholic]

<< Edit: Psychoholic, when I read the second post and realized it was from Lucid I almost laughed out loud... not only does he get first reply and post directly against the innitial posters wishes, but he managed to come out being right. >>


He may be right, but natedog had XP to try it and he wanted &quot;impressions and experiances&quot;. There is more to XP than the candy coating, and if I made the move to XP I would have it behave the same as W2K too. I just don't go for the Romper Room look.

 

[IdahoB]

&quot;See, Win98 didn't bring much more than Win95 to the table. But it also didn't bring any added inconveniences, while WinXP DOES.&quot;

No, these &quot;added inconveniences are just propoganda and hype - activation is a breeze and is only an issue if you pirate, and what else could you be talking about?

&quot;Also, some people still use win95 over win98 and continue to claim it is better and more stable (I don't want to touch that argument).&quot;

Some people still use DOS. And it it suits them - fine - but it's got nothing to do with this discussion. There's no-one FORCING you to upgrade.

&quot;Also, How is it anti-MS to go from one MS OS to another MS OS?&quot;

Never said it was.

&quot;And lastly: &quot;Windows 2K brings a stable kernal to the desktop home-user market, and it throws in the games and multimedia capabilities of 9x. Look familiar? Win2k is stable and runs the games and multimedia of 9x.... What did you think XP was built on?&quot;

Well, Win2K obviously - but Win2K is still based on NT4 and it is not designed from the ground up as a consumer OS - WinXP IS.

 

[Rudee]

So far, I'm enjoying WinXP. Obviously, there is a few bugs here and there, but thats normal for Beta. I was previously running WinME and after I upgraded to WinXP, I notice slightly slower boot/shutdown times - whereas some are actually gaining speed in this process. Odd..

I opted for the &quot;Classic&quot; settings to remove some of the cartoonish feel of the OS, and so far I'm very pleased. Is it bloated? Sure.. Is it an overall improvement over my former OS? Hell yeah. One thing I didn't like was the colored icons they used in Outlook; Bla!!

 

[skace]

<< No, these &quot;added inconveniences are just propoganda and hype - activation is a breeze and is only an issue if you pirate, and what else could you be talking about? >>

The activation is an inconvenience, it doesn't add any benefit to the end user just an extra step, hence the term inconvenience. Also, it may be a breeze for you with your network connection but it may not be a breeze for someone else who has to call microsoft everytime they install. It definitely won't be a breeze if you end up locking the key because you installed too many times with different hardware.


<< Some people still use DOS. And it it suits them - fine - but it's got nothing to do with this discussion. There's no-one FORCING you to upgrade. >>

Actually, it had something to do with the discussion - because you brought up win95 and win98 saying why would upgrading to XP be any different than upgrading to win98. I was saying some people still havn't upgraded to 98 and they obviously wouldn't have the same stance as you on the subject.


<< Never said it was. >>

[Regarding Anti-MS sentiments]You stated:

<< Haven't you anti-MS lot complained EVERY SINGLE TIME they release a new OS because it's bloatware, it's slower, resource hungry etc... >>

In the context of your original post - this meant people bitching about WinXP from a Win2K standpoint were somehow Anti-MS, or you didn't supply enough information.


<< Well, Win2K obviously - but Win2K is still based on NT4 and it is not designed from the ground up as a consumer OS - WinXP IS. >>

Heh, I guess if you consider Win2K &quot;The Ground&quot; then WinXP was built from the ground up. WinXP is as much NT4 as Win2K is.

 

[Stark]

This tread is interesting in that it shows how consumers may react to microsoft's next consumer os, or people otherwise afraid of win2k.

These are the people MS is betting the farm on. Accept the forced registration, expose the internet to raw sockets en masse, and they think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm glad you're enjoying XP, but as long as they want to force me to submit my name to a database somewhere to ensure my copy is &quot;legitimate,&quot; it's not going on my box, or any of the other 200+ computers I'm responsible for. :Q