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Microsoft

Windows XP - The eXPerience Thus Far? 106

Posted by Cliff from the hope-it's-been-a-good-one dept.
An Anonymous Coward asks: "So Windows XP has been out long enough for those of us in the IT field to have our managers, users, and vendors hitting us up for it (Redmond's marketing apparently worked). So, how has Windows XP affected your IT department and company thus far? Are you using it, or planning on using it? What made you decide to migrate? What problems have you run into, and what features have you found beneficial? Please leave out the anti-MS/pro-Linux rhetoric unless it is directly related to an issue you have with XP. Thanks!"
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Windows XP - The eXPerience Thus Far? More

Windows XP - The eXPerience Thus Far?

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  • My eXPerience with it (Score:5, Informative)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis@@@ubasics...com> on Friday December 14, 2001 @07:27AM (#2703492) Homepage Journal
    I've been on the beta program since April, and can say that the only real reason to upgrade over 98/me is stability. I wouldn't bother upgrading win2k computers. the extra features are nice, but most of them are either 1) new, and therefore not full-featured (or fully tested/trusted) compared to alternatives (compare PCAnywhere to the Remote feature) or 2) available for win98/me and 2k.

    I'm not going back. Sure, it doesn't work with my older web cam, my opti931 sound cards and a few other *low cost* pieces of some computers I've put it on, and the software that came with my $250 cd burner (also purchased in April - CD Creator 4) is also unusable (the only real loss I have with it - I can only use the built in CD burning functions right now) but I've had about 4 stops (when the system halts, dumps memory to the HD and reboots because of some hardware or software issue) in this entire time, and I only reboot when I install software (which was something that was supposed to be fixed, but oh well)

    Having said that, I should also say that I'm not going to upgrade the office I work for. Sure, the benefits would be great, but we can't afford the $99 per computer when win98 works for us. Even if we had crashes on each computer daily, we still wouldn't save enough time and money to make up for the cost of the upgrade to the home version, nevermind professional. So it's installed on one computer which has to be rock solid - it's the one I dial into when I'm away from work (I work at home 3 of 5 days a week) and also serves a simple PHP/APACHE site which shows some MS access database information, but isn't worth a full blown server.

    So the only thing against it is the 'MS Tax' and the only thing you're getting for that money is the stability we all should have gotten 10 years ago from MS.

    -Adam
    • As for your Easy CD Creator 4, why not just run it under XP's Compatability mode? You can choose which operating system (95, 98, NT, and 2000) to run it under. It seems to work fine for me. Just right click on the program file or the shortcut, and change it. Goodluck!
    • not full-featured (or fully tested/trusted) compared to alternatives (compare PCAnywhere to the Remote feature)

      Microsoft's Remote Assistance is just Microsoft's Terminal Server, with a few adjustments to prevent multiple concurrent users. It's a well proven bit of software that's been used since Windows NT 4, and is used by other software vendors (namely Citrix) for their thin-client products. It uses the RDP protocol. Read up on it, very interesting technology.

      CD Creator 4 is also unusable

      Microsoft released about a week ago updates to Windows XP that include compatability for EZ CD Creator 4. If you go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, it will automatically be selected for installation.

      Just a few things to chew on.
      • Microsoft released about a week ago updates to Windows XP that include compatability for EZ CD Creator 4. If you go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, it will automatically be selected for installation.

        Cool! Now I can uninstall that w@r3zed Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum that I had to "upgrade" a relative's computer with. He purchased a new CD-ROM drive after the release of XP, and it came bundled with the unusable version 4. Do you think Roxio had a free or nominally priced upgrade? Yeah, right. So I had to turn to Usenet to get him what he had already paid for.

        • Tread carefully. When I uninstalled (a legal copy of) EasyCD 5 from a Windows 2000 computer it deleted some device driver files it shouldn't have and my computer wouldn't boot until I booted 2000 in CLI mode off the CDROM and manually fixed the mess the uninstall caused. This is a known problem among users (check out Usenet) but Roxio has largely been sweeping it under the rug and not acknowledging this!

          I don't know if it applies to Windows XP, but beware!

  • Zero Use at My Client Site (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My current client has almost zero deployment of Windows XP. The only people I know who have it are all the MCSE's.

    The corporate PCs stay at one operating system from the moment the leased PC is placed on the users' desk until the PC goes off lease. Upgrades to existing PCs are rare and hard to acquire, with extra memory being about the only thing you can get. And even then, they __lease__ the RAM modules (dumb dumb dumb).

    There is still a large deployment of Windows 95, and of Windows NT. Maybe 10% of the corporate desktops are Windows 2000 -- but I think the number is closer to 5%. (roughly 75,000 user population) The software deployment I'm involved in drew protest howls from locations that have Windows 95 on Pentium 100's with 32MB of RAM.

    Can't put XP on those babies.

  • No 'eXPerience' yet, thanks anyway (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xenex ( 97062 ) <xenex@noSPaM.opinionstick.com> on Friday December 14, 2001 @08:23AM (#2703563) Journal
    I work for a company involved with the deployment and support of Windows 2000 (and to a lesser extent now, NT 4.0) systems.

    We've sworn off Windows XP for at least 12 months.

    No matter what the Microsoft marketing says about XP Professional being the client of choice for Windows 2000 Server, there is no reason to move away from the (relatively) proven Windows 2000 Professional. The supposed 'benefits' (updated GUI that the majority turn off, a few apps, and a whole bunch of Passport crap) are not justified by the issues introduced with the 'upgrade'.

    The little we have actually dealt with it in a work environment (smaller clients that have set up their own computers) have been nothing but trouble. Callouts because they can't activate it themselves. Yes, it's a three-click operation, but some of these people are scared of the computers enough, let alone when the operating system they have paid for decides not to work anymore. Software (both obscure and not) that has decided not to work, even between 2000 and XP. It's hard to explain "Well, your new computer that you've bought can't do that. At all."

    So, supporting small clients is harder, and no-one in their right mind rolls out a two month old unproven OS for large clients. We are using Windows 2000 now, and will be for the next 12 months.

    Perhaps we'll look at XP Professional again in 2003...
    • I've been using XP for two monthes now, and Office XP Professional, and I've been pleased.

      I haven't turned off the new interface, and I enjoy it. A lot of people complain, but it was the same when Microsoft upgraded the interface from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. It just takes some getting used to.

      I've turned off remote assistance and I have both their included firewall and Zone Alarm running.

      I'm indifferent to the integration of the Passport materials, and I'm certainly not loading my financial information into Passport, but Microsoft has obviously put a lot of thought into trying to integrate the network and PC into a single cohesive unit. Sun said originally "The Network is the Computer" but Microsoft has really started to make that vision a reality, like it or not.

      And as far as running software, I haven't had any problems, not even running old Windows 95 games that wouldn't run on 2000.

      I'm very happy with Windows XP and glad I made the switch.
    • People always say this...

      6 months ago, you would have said that Windows 2000 was an unproven platform an NT 4 was a safe bet.
      • Not at all.

        We've been using Windows 2000 since late 2000. And it is a step beyond NT 4.0, and well worth the update. We wouldn't rollout an NT4 setup anymore.

        Windows XP Pro, however, has no benifits over Windows 2000 Pro in a corporate situation, requires a more powerful system, and offers virtually nothing of practial use that Win2000 Pro doesn't. There is no real benifit in 'rushing' the use of XP over 2000.

        The general rule of thumb with Microsoft stuff (which you'd probably have heard) is to at least wait for the first service pack. Perhaps we'll look at XP a bit more then...

        Oh, and for the record, I do NT/2000 stuff because it's my job. I'm still at uni, and this is a good job to get industry experence with. I don't think it's the greatest operating system for every situation however... ;)

        • Having a remote-control solution that utilizes Domain-level security is a major benefit for larger organizations.

          At my job, our NT group supports about 50,000 users spread over about 850 sites, with skillsets ranging from Software Engineers to contract clerks.

          Currently the only RC solution that meets our needs is Tivoli Remote Control (because it supports distributed security) Tivoli uses an PcAnywhere-like remote control service that does not perform nearly as well as the RDP service in windows xp.

          I don't think the service pack stuff really counts here either. Windows XP is more like Windows 2000.5 than a new OS. As long as IE 6 doesn't break any intranet apps, there isn't an overwhelming reason to avoid it.
        • The built in 802.11b support is real nice, however I do agree that most of the features added to XP Pro aren't necessary for a company already running 2k on their network.
  • not enough to miss it now that I went back to 2000.


    At my office the usual response from our 'Wintel' group is, "We'll deploy it once they release Service Pack 2."


    I also found out that, althgough there are XP 'drivers' available for many wireless cards, because of the wireless integration in XP, they don't work so good. It seems that companies have just updated their drivers, but with all the built-in configuration abilities of XP, they'll need to write _new_ drivers, not just update old ones.


    But I guess XP is the windows future. Now, if Microsoft would just release a Remote Desktop Client with 128-bit encryption for linux, I'll be all set! Yeah, and we'll all be living on Mars by then!

  • Geez I've had great experiences (Score:4, Informative)

    by redhotchil ( 44670 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @09:13AM (#2703636) Homepage Journal
    My experiences with XP are close to perfect. It has yet to bluescreen or take me down to restart because of error (even linux has done that in the past). IE is super fast and works everywhere. The interapplication communication and drag-and-drop are a great timesaver. The only complaint I have is there is no driver written for the Samsung Uproar 64 meg mp3 player/cellphone of mine. Oh well, I just use my laptop... Also, I have yet to find an app that doesn't work with XP that I need...

    As far as I am still concerned, Windows still wins in the desktop war.
    • Our company's virus scanner doesn't work with XP. We use Trend Corporate Officescan which automatically updates all clients every day, and has a really nice web interface. However, they are just now BETA testing the XP version. I couldn't even get the machine to boot after installing the program. It froze on a black screen during the first restart. The only way to recover was to boot to Safe Mode, then uninstall the program, and I had to call tech support to help me fix some key registry entries. Overall, XP seems like a nice system, but I'd advise anyone that makes purchasing decisions for larger companies to hold off until all the apps are updated for it.
    • (You're being paid by MS, right?) Most of my old hard/software that I've installed, as well as a large amount of my NEW hard/software, just loves to crash my system. I've seen the TaskBar not respond! I've seen MyComputer not respond! I more than once "XPerienced" a program crash so hard that I had to FORCE POWER OFF the computer (hold the power button). I could get out to a partially redrawn DeskTop and could move the mouse cursor, but no matter what keys I pressed or what areas of the screen I clicked, WinXP wouldn't allow me to interact with it. Does anybody need a OS that randomly reboots itself when you hot swap USB? It looks nice, I'll give it that. But the fact is, I spend more time looking for updated drivers and cursing at XP than I do actually using the @#$% thing! Call me an old fashioned tech, but I have always hated how "helpful" MS products always try to be--and how utterly they fail at it! XP only gets on my nerves when it keeps asking me the same question that I've answered over and over again. Save your money. Microsoft has not created anything close to the perfect OS!!!! At least mine reboots quickly!
  • version :)

    There was NT3.0, then 3.5 then 4.0 then 2000 (5.0) then XP (5.5). So as you can see, XP is only a small update.
    • When I looked at a release candidate, XP was version 5.1.nnnn where nnnn was the build number.
    • You can't be serious? "Small Update"?
      • 3.10 Windows NT: Win16 hacked onto OS/2 1.3. Some 32-bit support.
      • 3.50 Windows NT: Support for Win95 style 32-bit code
      • 3.51 Windows NT: Win95 style shell.
      • 4.00 Windows NT: Rewrite of lower levels. Mostly supports NT 3.51 stuff. HPFS still works, but not supplied. Some utilities from this work under Win95 and 98.
      • 5.00 Windows 2000: Win98 style shell, with IE integration. OS/2 subsystem still works, HPFS does not work. Bitmaps are the same as v4
      • 5.01 Windows XP: New shell, better DOS support, but no OS/2 subsystem. This might work if copied from Win2k. Bitmaps are same as v4. Version Nr according to JPSoftware [jpsoft.com].
      Upgrade from 5.00 to 5.01 does not sound like a big upgrade.

  • it's not that great (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrDingDong ( 192786 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @09:26AM (#2703695)
    First of all, where I work, we are still discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would guess.

    I have installed it clean on a machine I have at home and I am not all that impressed with it. I use Yahoo Messenger a lot, and I have frequent hard system lock ups, where I have to power cycle the box. I also have a disk on the same box with 2K on it and I don't have the same problem, even though I use Yahoo Messenger about the same under both OSs. So my experience has been that XP is *less* stable than 2K.
    • >First of all, where I work, we are still >discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. >We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would >guess.
      Ha! Me too. I'm still NT and *nix on my desktop...

  • Been forced, but havn't had any problems. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@@@gmail...com> on Friday December 14, 2001 @09:33AM (#2703722) Journal
    I work for an office connected with a major university. I've hand built a few high end workstations recently, in which I was planning on installing 2000, but the university and its license agreements won't license 2000 anyways. So we purchased XP licensed, and figured we'd give them a try, and install 2000 without a license if they didn't work (cause in my book a 2000 installation with an XP license isn't stealing from nobody.) Anyways, so far the XPs have been running great. Turned off the neato graphics to speed them up, and they have been crunching databases doublegood.

  • Windows XP is good! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by claydean ( 230881 )
    I was using Redhat 7.2 as my desktop until Windows XP came out. Gave it a try and now I am fully switched over. I still run slackware on my servers, but I think that for all Microsoft has done wrong, they finally got something right.

  • slow, not for novell networks (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Our experiences here have been that it is too slow for computers under 600 MHZ. Also the Novell Support, which has gotten worse at every release of windows, is now so bad XP clients can break Novell Servers by copying files to them. If you run Novell Servers it would be best to replace them with Windows servers before upgrading to XP.
    • Sounds to me like M$ achieved another goal.
      The destruction of a competitors software...
      By taking Novell out and putting M$ in, they win.
      Did you consider Samba?
    • Haven't seen anything to that effect on the Novell forums, although the bundled MS Client for Netware has always been pretty poor.

      The proper Novell Client for XP is available from http://download.novell.com/sdMain.jsp
    • Running Beta 2 of Novell's Client for WinXP (v.4.82) - no problems whatsoever connecting to both NDS 7 and eDirectory 8.5 trees, IPX and IP. This is basically NWClient 4.81 for NT/2000 with XP updates. I installed it on WinXP Pro, although it will also happily work on WinXP Home edition. No servers were broken in any way during this exercise.
      Client hardware used: Dell OptiPlex GX1 (PIII-500, 128MB RAM, 6GB HD).
      This machine also had a test of Office XP Standard installed on it, and the machine seemed to be reasonably responsive (you could work on it without noticeable slowdowns), although I think this setup would definitely benefit from extra 128MB RAM.
      News Break: Final version of Client 4.82 for WinXP has been released on 12/12/01. You can download it here:
      http://download.novell.com/sdMain.jsp

  • Staying with 2000 (Score:2, Informative)

    by aminorex ( 141494 )
    I reverted my test boxes to win2k because
    1) XP requires too much CPU and memory.
    2) XP devices drivers don't work for my wireless cards.
    3) I did not have patience to get Zone Alarm over the hurdles.

    Win2k handles desktop very well for admins and
    managers. The techs tend to run RedHat or Mandrake or Solaris.

    Of course, none of our servers run any variety of Windows, nor ever will. I'd rather spend time on
    bizdev than in court with ex-customers!
  • I get these PC-Chips 810 LMR all on-board (video/audio/lan/modem) mobo's. They aren't great, but they're cheap and they work for Win9x/NT/2000 and Linux (Mandrake 8.0 works just fine). I stocked up our company's testing department with them, and now a client wants an XP compatible product developed. "No problem." we say.

    No problem except that the SIS900 ethernet controller on the 810 doesn't have an XP driver. Networking is a must for the project we're developing. I've got five identical test machines that I can't put XP on. There's a spending freeze till the end of the year thanks to the crappy economy and I have to rob production machines to build an XP compatible box. Doh!

    You'll note of course that this isn't so much XP's fault as mine for relying on one hardware config for testing.

    'Course a frickin' SIS900 driver would be nice.

  • Doesn't work as advertised (Score:4, Funny)

    by uslinux.net ( 152591 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @10:50AM (#2704084) Homepage
    What made you decide to migrate? What problems have you run into, and what features have you found beneficial?

    So far we've had three executives upgrade for the Microsoft Personal Flight(tm) feature. Unforunately, all three have plummeted to their death when leaping from the building. Microsoft claims that will be fixed in SP2. In the mean time, we're hiring to fill their positions.

  • The best Windows, but not the best OS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @11:05AM (#2704170)
    IMHO it definitely leaves things to be desired. It's designed for the computer illiterate, evident in its improved (though not spectacular) user interface. I use it primary on my laptop, and run Linux on my PC as a networking gateway (and to watch TV).

    I see plenty of features with which Microsoft has gone overkill. For example, they store a backup of all your system DLLs in \windows\system32\dllcache (assuming you have the default installation path set). This includes files for Internet Explorer, Movie Maker and Messenger. It also installs MSN Explorer by default, and you must manually remove it from your system through the control panel.

    One of the biggest difficulties with migrating down to Windows XP is using old applications. Most work, though I do a lot of Windows CE development, and their development tools don't work. ActiveSync seems to go crazy, and won't establish a connection with the eMbedded Tools IDE. So much for backwards compatibility. Device connectability has always been a problem (with ActiveSync and the embedded development tools) but it's even worse on XP.

    The memory footprint is huge - don't bother running it on any less than 128MB of RAM.

    The Remote Assistance tool is reminiscent of *nix X Server/Client interface. I also find XP more stable than Windows 2000. You shouldn't be misled by the migration from Windows ME to Windows XP. They're designed under entirely different code bases. I think that may be the reason why Microsoft chose to rename NT5 to Windows 2000, to eliminate the first-glance impression that 9x and NT are two entirely different operating systems - which they are, but not for the benefit of marketing.

    So much for open competition. If you have MSN Messenger on your system (ie: you haven't found a way to delete it), Outlook and Internet Explorer will launch it automatically. You must exit these two apps before you can close MSN Messenger. Alternatively, you can read-protect the file through the NTFS security features to prevent even the system from accessing it.

    Microsoft also wants to dictate where you should store your files. If you save a web picture to a directory outside of your "My Documents\My Pictures" folder, this will be the default path until you re-open Internet Explorer. Then you have to navigate out of "My Documents\My Pictures" yet again. So much for the intelligent operating system.

    I think the keenest feature is the font smoothing - You can enable ClearType font smoothing from the desktop settings panel, and fonts will look oh-so-crisp on laptop displays - even regular CRTs.

    And .NET Passport? Yeah, it's integrated into Windows XP. Some of my friends are on MSN Messenger, so to chat with them, I have to integrate Passport into my Windows XP "experience". Of course, I already had one when Microsoft "upgraded" my Hotmail account to a Passport account.

    SO... if you've been stuck with Windows ME, it's time for an upgrade. For all intents and purposes, XP still seems like the next step forward in the NT-branch of Windows OS's. If you're happy with Windows 2000, stick with that. Don't give up your limited freedom of choice by installing XP and having it force Internet Explorer, Messenger and Movie Maker on you. If you're thinking of going to Windows XP for its user interface configurability, don't bother. It comes with only the new "XP" theme, and the old Windows 2000 theme. You have to buy Plus! to get any more, and even then, there are only 4 cheesy themes that come with it.

    Bottom line - if it works, don't fix it.

    Don't by an X-Box either [/me runs for cover].
    • You can disable how Outlook opens MSN messenger automatically through Tools>Options. Somewhere around there, methinks. Just poke around a bit. I do agree, though, for more advanced users, it may feel like you are being pampered. But for people new to computers, it really brings it all together. MSN Explorer can bring email (if you have hotmail or msn account), multimedia, and the entire internet experience together in one big thing. I also liked the way Windows Media Player Plays dvds.
  • I'm running win2k at home and XP at work. Though I don't see any reason to upgrade to XP from win2k, and have quite a few reasons not to. One of the most compelling reasons not to upgrade is that the new "pretty" interface which seems to run slower then old people ****.
    That being said, I couldn't be happier with M$'s WinXP release. An unintended consequence is making my win2k life much more pleasant. I have and oldish machine at home which started its life as a win98 box. I upgraded to win2k soon after it was released for stability reasons etc... But had a nagging problem with third party driver support for my older hardware. Since the user base for win2k was small in comparison to Win98/WinME, and win2k was supposed to be for office use hardware manufactures could get away with not releasing new drivers for old hardware. Since WinXP's release, all of a sudden; there appeared new XP drivers for a lot of the old unsupported hardware. I instead these drivers for win2k and all of them have worked so far. I would recommend that anyone who has unsupported win2k hardware, check the manufacture's site to see if they are releasing XP drivers. If so you may be able to revive some of your old hardware from your pile of outdated computer part.

  • XP is smooth (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cpfeifer ( 20941 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @11:29AM (#2704270) Homepage
    I've migrated from NT 4.0 -> Win2k -> XP over the past 3 years and the XP install was by far the easiest, most trouble free and most painless.

    My very vanilla config:

    Intel 866EB
    512MB RAM
    10GB storage on 2 older UDMA drives (I know I should upgrade since drives are so cheap, but if it ain't broken...)
    52x CDROM
    Voodoo3 3k
    Viewsonic 17"
    NetGear 10/100 NIC + DSL
    HP 5L parallel port

    When I installed XP it properly detected and installed ALL of my devices (including my printer and my NIC/DSL connection) the very first time. From the first time it booted after installing, everything worked. I remember having to struggle to get devices (printers, NICs and modems most notably) to work under NT4, and I was thrilled to bits not to have to go through that circle of hell again. XP just works.

    When my wife got a laptop and wanted to use the printer from her machine via our home LAN, all I had to do was click "share printer" and magically she can print from her WinME laptop. XP just works. I didn't have to fiddle with any config files in /etc/bin/usr/local/conf or any of that crap.

    The last time I rebooted my XP machine was when the power went out about a month ago. I have had zero systems problems since installing XP.

    I'm not saying that XP is better than Linux, or that every company should run out and upgrade, but I am saying that I have had a significantly lower cost of administration and higher reliability on my home development machine with windows XP than with any other OS I've ever used. And yes, I've used Mandrake 6.0 and RH 7.0 distros, and yes, they did finally work once I read many howtos and books. JWZ said it best [jwz.org]: "Linux is free if your time has no value."
  • I'm one of the Macintosh guys here at the college I work for, and the Windows group seems to be taking the same tack with XP that I am with OS X -- don't deploy it anywhere essential just yet.

    Both operating systems will probably be installed on the "Internet Stations" and other non-critical student systems in the next few months just to test the reaction. But a full migration won't even be discussed until at least summertime, which means implemented at the beginning of 2003.

    There's a lot of institutional inertia, you know?

    --saint

  • XP breaks my Group Policies - no backwards compat (Score:5, Informative)

    by Llama Keeper ( 7984 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @12:05PM (#2704473) Homepage
    I consult for a group of medical facilities that has an uber-paranoid security model. We run an completely win2k office, I tried an XP client on my test network and 1/2 of my group policies failed to work. Friggin Internet Explorer always loads, I can't remove the icon from the desktop like in Win2K (these machines are not and never will be connected to he internet), and roaming profiles and dekstop redirection are broken. SO I will not be upgrading till about 2006 or so.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @12:05PM (#2704481)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • XP (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I am running XP on a PC at home and we run Win2K Pro at work. XP is a huge step up from Win 9x but not so much from Win2K. It seems to be Win2K + new features such as remote control + support for DOS and Win9x software such as games.

    In a business setting I'd say a standardized OS environment is much more important than any new XP features. I'd hold off on XP until I was ready to move every desktop to that OS. Standardization is an accepted best practice in IT administration.

  • My real problem with XP is that it essentially bundles Enlightenment with the 'doze, you know?

    They're stealing our memes!
  • I put XP on my new ThinkPad T23 as soon as I got it. It's working wonderful. I use that system every day from home to work and it is NEVER rebooted. The system has not crashed a single time. When it's not plugged in I take it in and out of standby all the time and it works every time. I've had a lot of trouble with Win2K and standby on notebooks, but so far XP is rock solid.

    I'm not deploying it at work until we do more application testing with it, but if the apps work I wouldn't hesitate at all.

    It really is good stuff.
  • I've been running XP for the past two months and have had several compatibility issues with my day-to-day software - including Outlook/Exchange 2000. I wasn't too surprised to find that XP is much more vulnerable to viruses than 2000. I feel that microsoft has a little more control over my use of XP - passport, sending bug reports everytime an app halts (even non-ms ones).

    If I had some extra time I would move back to 2000 until XP matures a little more, although it is considered Windows 5.1.
  • I work for a large un-named company that has thousands of desktops running windows all over the world. We have decided that XP is not compelling enough to upgrade at this time, except for new desktop rollouts. We will continue to use Win2k and finish replacing the few NT4 desktops that we have left this year and will not upgrade to XP untill just before microsoft stops supporting it in late 2003. We also are exploring Linux as a viable alternative due to microsofts increasing price of their licensing contracts. That is how i feel a lot of corp stratagies have been decided considering the economic downturn and the presure IT departments are under to cut back on spending.

  • An upgrading eXPerience gone terribly wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lawmeister ( 201552 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @05:05PM (#2705644) Homepage
    The following post is from an email I received from one of our contractors, all identifying references have been removed to protect the guilty.. ;-)

    ----
    Initially we installed XP on workstations within an NT 4.0 domain and had no
    problems other than mapping network printers was not straight forward. If
    we used the Add Printer Wizard on the XP workstation, we could not see any
    network printers. If we dragged and dropped a network printer from Windows
    Explorer to the printers window, it would install - not a big deal we
    thought, which is why we decided to move forward. However, when we tried to
    convert our Windows 2000 network workstations, we started encountering
    issues with the network trusts between the workstations and servers. One
    minute the trust was there and the next it was gone and had to be manually
    rebuilt. Also, we were constantly getting error messages that the
    workstation time and the server time could not be synched so network logons
    were denied, At one point the local admin could not logon locally because of
    this time issue. Share permissions would drop randomly and had to be
    re-established. User logon scripts would not run. Network printers would
    not map correctly and in some cases, workstations could not even see a
    network printer that was visible to other workstations. We tried connecting
    via a Workgroup instead of a Domain and that almost worked but we would have
    to manually create network share connections for each workstation and we
    never could get a network printer to work this way. XP also would not allow
    our Adaptec CD burning software to run - it outright disabled it after it
    blue-screened twice on boot up and it's built in burning software just plain
    did not work at all. There is no patch for Partition Magic 6.0 (which we
    just upgraded to use with Windows 2000) so we had to purchase 7.0 ( we have
    some dual boot machines). XP would not recognize our scanners, mind you
    they are 3 years old. Another big thing that concerned me was, on a couple
    of machines we turned on automatic update and noticed that just about every
    day, Microsoft released patches.

    So after spending 3 days converting to XP we spent another 3 days converting
    back.

    While I do not profess to be an O/S expert, I think I'm going to wait for a
    while. In my opinion this is not a step forward from Windows 2000 yet
    however it is a diagonal step from Windows 9X to a unified code base. My
    daughters are using it on their home computers and it works well for them.
    I still have it on my laptop and as long as it stays away from a network - I
    kind of like it.
  • I don't use WindowsXP, but while a friend and I were working on something that used a 2MB dictionary file, we tried opening it in NotePad and to our surprise it worked. I used to hate the size limits for NotePad, and I'm glad to see they have fixed that by now, even if I don't use windows anymore.
  • BAD
    1. Filesharing sux. WinXP-WinXP sharing almost always fail. I do not understand why.
    2. GUI can be buggy at taskbar sometimes.
    (3. Default skin uses too much space.)
    4. The control panel just has TOO many buttons to click. Too user-friendly.

    GOOD
    1. I like it.
    2. It has many nice features that makes general use more logical.
    3. It's very good to remote control (terminal services included even in winxp pro).
    4. All my games work.
    • Filesharing sux. WinXP-WinXP sharing almost always fail. I do not understand why.

      Do you accounts have passwords? If not, XP's new default is to prevent network logins with these accounts and file sharing fails.

      You can play around in the local security policy

      Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security options -> Accounts : limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only.

      set this option to disabled
  • This may go a bit against the grain, but after replacing windows 2000 with XP at work, my computer actually seems faster. I know, I know, performance tests have shown that it really isn't, but what matters to me is how it feels. And I also know that just clean installing the thing probably would have sped my computer up anyway, but even on this ancient box, everything works just fine.

    Most unexpectedly, my network throughput is dramatically better. A simple search on our sourcesafe tree, for example, used to take 15 minutes. Now it takes 2 or 3. Other tasks are similarly improved. I can't say for sure why.

    As far as Microsoft's theme limitations, a quick trip to http://www.themexp.org to get style xp and I've been playing around with themes WITHOUT getting the cheezy plus pack. :)
  • 'XP' stands for 'eXPerience', eh? Let's come up with some more meanings! How about:
    • 'eXtra Painful', considering you have to call Microsoft most everytime you want to install it/change hardware.

    • 'eXPensive', seeing as it almost requires a fast processor and lots of memory (not to mention just buying the darned thing).

    • 'eXtraordinaryly Pudgy', when you see that a default intall uses 1+ gig.

    • 'eXtremely Picky', when you have to open up your box to get just the right model number for your sound card (it has to be just right mind you, no using a slightly different driver, that would be BAD).

      Can you think of any more? :)

  • hmm? what? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 )
    So here I am sitting at one of my computers, reading slashdot, trying to fix a bug in some rebol code and listening to losslessly-compressed Destiny's Child, and I suddenly think to myself: "What fucking operating system am I running at the moment ?"

    It turns out that it's RH 7.2, but the important point is that it could have been freebsd 4.4, win2k, winxp or some flav. of linux. I have all these systems on various computers at home and they all have a decent web-browser with AA fonts (konqueror or ie6), the gui programming whatsit REBOLView and a media player that supports FLAC (xmms or winamp).

    The only thing that would require using a specific os (at least for me at the moment) would be games, for which I would need a flav. of Windows, but then I have WinXP installed on one certain computer anyway and the reason is that it's the fastest processor, best gfx card etc.

    I find it interesting now that I think about it; It seems that if you fall into the /. "target group", i.e. some sort of cross between a programmer and a "consumer computer-user" (music, video, web-browsing, email etc.) then you can do everything you want to do with any OS.

    Lots of unix things are available for Win32: vi, emacs, the gimp, bash, plus you have all the things that are available for multiple platforms e.g. REBOL, java, clisp and lots of my other fave. programming languages, plus all the great programming libs: readline, gc, regexp etc.

    Then you have the other things like the fact that KDE is constantly trying to become Windows in look and feel, ssh and telnet work in both Windows and unix and both VNC and X-clients work anywhere ...

    Honestly, is it any wonder that I find it hard to tell which operating system I am in any more ?

    The upshot of this is that for a large group of people the os is irrelevant and they can either pay for Windows or have a flav. of unix for free if they are willing to spend a little more time setting it up. (Don't bother flaming me for that- it's just my experience- your distribution may vary).

    graspee
    in redhat 7.2
    (apparently)
  • My office has had no deployment of XP, and for now we are sticking to 2000, but being a very Microsoft loyal office, I am confident they'll move to XP soon. Users will be confused to no end by it, and bundling with MSN messenger just creates more work for us to remove it. Despite this, I think that XP will reduce the TCO due to it's stability (and it is REALLY stable), less vulnerbility to virii, and the speed of the new GUI.

    In the home, I have XP on my machine and am thouroughly impressed. I don't hate microsoft just for the purpose of having something to post about on slashdot. XP has really moved me back into Windows from Linux. I still use Linux, and think that GNOME is a great interface, but the interface on XP is immaculate. Before XP, I thought Mac OS X was the perfect interface, but this even beats the Mac at its own game.

    The file navigation on the new explorer is fantastic. The organization of my pics and movies is very useful, and gadgets like that rarely impress me. I havent ever seen this crash, and that's something I can't boast about any other OS I have used.

    In conclusion, Go Linux Go, but watch out, Goliath just got a whole lot more attractive and friendly.

  • Some friends of mine in residence at school have Windows XP, and a buddy of mine has Mac OS X on a nice G4 system. As such, I've had a chance to play around with both. Seems to me that with every release, Windows looks more and more like a Mac OS.
    I gotta say though - it's not nearly as slick and intuitive. Not by a long shot :)
    I couldn't compare either in terms of stability. Havn't used them that much. Although my friend with the Mac has never complained of stability issues. The Windows XPers have only said it's more stable than previous releases, to which I replied "It doesn't take much."
  • Well, after fighting for a few hours with the Windows XP installer, finally bothered to search the net. Seems the installer has a graphics conflict with the GeForce2 MX series graphics cards.

    The installer will run normally, load all the drivers, then freeze. nothing works, no work-around besides using another card.

    This forum (http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid= 13&threadid=338) has more info.

    Macros

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