Glad you got down to the sunny, warm South. always glad t have you down.
XP: for those leaping from Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition its a big change. XP relies on the newer, crash-resistant foundation of Windows NT and Windows 2000. I'm running Win 2K and don't have to worry about the kinks in XP. for those of us who format and restall drivers(recommended for optimin performance) it can be a real headache with XP and its "tracking" features.
here are some lacking features(unless the newest updates have corrected it) that keep me away from XP at least for now.
from a Washington post review article on XP:
XP's Windows Media Player omits an MP3 encoder, so users who don't like Microsoft's Windows Media format will need to pay $10 or so to add one. With no built-in DVD-decoding software, XP must rely on whatever code manufacturers have loaded on their PCs. On the Toshiba, things went awry, and Windows Media Player played only the audio in DVD movies. (XP's system-repair tools, which can undo driver installations, didn't help.)
And XP lacks a "virtual machine" to run Java programs. Some manufacturers will include one with XP PCs, but others, such as Gateway, plan to leave it to users to download this free, 5-megabyte addition.
Tinkerers should be aware of how XP tries to stop software piracy. After you install XP, it must be "activated" over the Internet or the phone or it will stop running after 30 days. This activation then binds that copy of XP to that computer -- as XP sees it. Replacing as few as four components within 120 days could cause XP to think it's on a new machine, requiring a call to Microsoft to get the computer out of the impound lot.
The ugliest part of XP, though, is Microsoft's self-promotion -- of its MSN Internet service, its Windows Media format and its ".Net" initiative. The last is an ambitious program to provide users with a single Passport sign-on -- stored by Microsoft itself -- to multiple Web sites and services, starting with Microsoft's Hotmail and Windows Messenger. Before you sign up, please ponder this: Do we need to cede yet another quadrant of the computing universe to Microsoft? |
