have been running the beta (2505) for awhile, just got the final version that Microsoft will be selling. After downloaded the only update and IE6, XP is running very smoothly and it's awesome. I love it, it's a must get!

 

Is there any compelling reason to upgrade from windows 2000 professional?

 

don't forget that if you plan to upgrade your computer in the future you will need to purchase another copy of XP because anything over a 15% change will require a new copy of the XP. If you have like 3 computers in the house you will need 3 copies of the XP. There is no other way around it unless someone cracks it.

IMO, i don't think it's worth the upgrade from win 2000, which I am running right now.

 

Some people are running corporate version (no activation required)

 

hehe, if you have connection inside Microsoft, my Windows XP can be activated for 30 times total.

 

share the wealth, brotha!!!!

 

I'm an MCSE, and I actually ALWAYS buy my own software, esp the OS and things like Office. However, I also always modify my PC, adding RAM, R&R the MB, upgrade CPUs and Video cards, etc.

I, for one, will NOT upgrade to XP until they get rid of that feature that stops you from upgrading your own PC! That's bull! Win2K works fine for me.

If they want to stop Joe Homeowner from using a single CD to do their PC, their wives, and their kids, that's OK with me. But, let me screw around with my own PC on my own terms!

This will be the FIRST MS OS that I will not buy on "opening day".

====just my rant.

:-jon

(although, lately there have been no real great improvements to stimulate a desire to "upgrade" hardware.....)

 

Was interested in XP. What do you mean you can't upgrade? That sounds odd.

 

http://205.134.182.35/release.php3?releaseid=30261

 

Went to that site... ???

 

<rant>
I for one am not going to jump through hoops just to install a license-crippled OS on my PC. Microsoft's licensing scheme has become more and more bizarre of late. I suppose they realize now that most people already own a copy of Win98 or WinNT, and that they won't be able to push yet another marginal release of their OS and repeat the huge retail success of Win95. The sluggish acceptance of Win2k and ME by the "I've got one already" consumers must be troubling good old MonopolySoft.

What's their solution? Move towards a per-use profit model. Microsoft hopes that people will "buy" a piece of software and then pay again and again just to use it at different times or on different machines. Witness their move to the license-hungry .Net infrastructure and the Passport authentication service.

I sincerely hope this will blow up in their faces. To tell you the truth, Microsoft hasn't really innovated in the last 3 years (if ever). Their software's quality and reliability has reached a plateau. This is of course predictable: nothing has become simpler or more reliable, or more standards-compliant. MS has always preferred "surface pretty" to deep design. Beneath their pretty GUI lies a hideous mass of bloated, complicated code, obfuscated and scattered files, proprietary lock-in mechanisms, standards incompatibilites and a thousand hideous ways to die (a blue screen of death).

Nothing has improved with XP. Besides their obnoxious licensing scheme, MS has added a "Come get me, Justice Department!" tie in with Passport. Pay attention now: Microsoft is bundling a global authentication service (a la Verisign) into their OS's API. They hope to leverage their OS sales to catapult them to become the primary authentication vendor for software licensing and online shopping. If this is not anti-trust material, I don't know what is.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I'm tired of the poor quality of MS's code, the unbelievably crappy innards of their products, their "my way or the highway" approach to computing, and now, their megalomaniacal licensing scheme.

This time, I think I'll take "the highway". Thanks a lot, Microsoft. Guess I'll see you again next year.

Now where did I put that Linux install CD...
</rant>

 

WELL SAID! DAVERMAN

The XP is really a Win2K with a new GUI, but a much prettier GUI. The Media Player included is awesome, has many new features such as you can burn any form of music on CD in the program. You don't even need to convert the files and burn it anymore. The new style GUI looks really good.

The reason that you can't upgrade is that when you activate your XP, it sends the information of your hardware (make, speed, etc) to Microsoft and as soon as it detects changes, it "Thinks" that you're copying the XP on to a different machine. Basically that makes the computer un-ungradeable. I do think that whatever Microsoft is trying to do will back-fire one day. For example: Voddoo... It dominated the whole 3D gaming VPU market, but as soon they bought the video card company and stopped selling their chips to other companies, there comes nVidia and ATI. O well, there isn't really a good reason to get XP unless you're bored of the Win2K GUI.

 

One of my other vendors (lexer/parser) who has a licensing scheme -- that required me to call him every time I changed the CPU and/or speed, hard disk, etc; it caused everyone so much grief, that he relented and everyone said, "Hey, are you still using that pain in the A$$ licensing system. When I called, he made note of the "troubles", grief, and complaints and came up with a "locking" system that was secure, but allowed "full" system hardware upgrading.

I wonder what the MSDN implications are (I'm waiting for certification of a dual DELL 420 with RAID) and if I can't test on more than one machine (can you say no enterprise testing, forget it – I’m not buying 3-licences of MSDN Universal ($6000) to prototype multi-tier systems for clients. I'll move to Linux and Oracle with Win2000) and not look back.

I think that anytime a manufacturer goes too far in the license BS, the people revolt.

I will comment on how sick I get seeing the "stealing" that goes on... (Just think if everyone thought it was ok to steal your Acura and they law said it was ok -- and yes, I know it isn't an exact analogy, but I've been at enough major firms that give great lip service to software licensing, but cheat to suit...)

 

I think that MS will find that they will have to "patch out" the licensing scheme after a bit. They will find that "Joe Consumer", who is unaware of the "catch", will get REAL P|SSED when he adds his Geoforce3 card and has to call MS. (or whatever). MS cannot afford too much bad press right now.

Like I said before, they should be able to sell their product without having to subsidize the "thieves" who will unevitably use their software on more than one PC. However, the legit end user should not be inconvenienced by these restrictions.

Of course, things like "Dongles" are expensive and can be a pain in the butt.

However, how about making the home version of XP $39.95! Sure, it cost them more than that to make it, but for that price, everyone should be able to afford a legit copy. If they sold 4 times as many units, they'd make the same amount of $$ and they'd have 4 times the customer base.

Anyway, Win2k is a pretty good OS, and that's what I'm sticking with, until WinXP, Second Release (the one without the restrictions) is released, which you know will come.

Remember "MicroChannel"?????

:-jon

 

oblio, I tend to agree with you: MS will have to relent on their draconian licensing scheme if they want XP to go anywhere. I also agree that Win2k is the finest OS Microsoft has produced, on par with NT and far eclipsing the Yugo-like Win9x platform.

The melding of Passport into XP is very disturbing to me on a more fundamental level. Microsoft controls the OS API, and instead of placing an icon on your screen to bundle the browser, they will place an API for a whole new product category (authentication service) right into their OS. DOJ, do your stuff!

It won't be as bad if Microsoft publishes an open authentication API using COM or something similar. Then users can use their favorite authentication authority's client software. But of course Microsoft, being the incurable monolithic dictatorship that it is, will never do something like that.

Like the old Honda ad goes: "Passport?" "Why, yes!"

 

i've been running beta something or other (my bro is the computer nerd) for a while, and it's way better than 2k cause it looks way better, def a GUI thing.

the final version is already out too - my bro said that it was leaked my Dell, and since it has some sort of oem origination, it doesn't need any activation or anything. even if it does, i guarentee that it's already been hacked - there is NEVER going to be anything in the near future that can't be hacked. too many computer nerds.

 

MS is generally pretty good at GUI icing, but it's not the GUI that I'm concerned about, it's "what lies beneath".

If you want a pretty GUI, check out Apple's Mac OS X. At least it runs on top of the rock-solid BSD Unix core.

 

one more failed attempt at installing and I will probably crack the CD right in half. I have tried to install through MS-DOS and it just hangs, I've tried upgrading my win2k and it finds programs that are not compatible and stops. I have already uninstalled everything it has a problem with and it still won't install. I just want to see the GUI and see what it's about.... it doesn't seem to be worth the hassle.

 

here are some pics. you can notice that it's obviously more colorful and does not have the classic Windows looking. The program windows are more smooth on the corners and notice the change on the taskbar, there are numbers next to the title. It indicates how many windows you have opened with that same executable. The tray icons, you can see the small arrow, it hides the uninactive icons to save some space on the bar.

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/yang1816/...c=ph%26.view=t

 

Wow! It looks great. I must admit.

I guess we'll have to see how it does in the marketplace.
I don't think that people will be lined up outside of CompUSA at midnight the day it goes on sale, but then again, they might!

Thanks for the "peek"!

:-jon

 

You want more inside info on Win XP?
http://www.intenseghetto.com/

 

one more thing, the Media Player on XP is AWESOME. You don't need Winamp, don't need the programs that convert .CDA to .MP3 or vice versa, the Media Player does it all! If you have .MP3, it converts it to .CDA AND burn it onto a CD for you. It plays DVD well too, I was really surprised. The Spider Solitaire is one addictive game also.

 

i dont really like the new media player - i just use winamp or something. i dont got an mp3 player either. it just feels too crowded.

acura3200 - i had problems installing mine too - what you got to do is update your bios. and do a clean install - so format your hard drive.

 

I've been using XP almost exclusively for 3 months now. I have to agree, when I work on a Win2K machine or slide one of my Win2K drives into my laptop it seems... Old... Kinda like going back to 3.11 from 95.

A few things I really like...

The networking is the most awesome I've ever used... When I added wireless to my W2K machine I needed to configure it myself WEP, Network name, etc... With XP I plugged my wireless card into my laptop and it asked me which of the TWO networks I wanted to attach to??? It turns out my neighbor had a wireless network and I didn't even know about it... I'm a consultant so I attach to lots of networks, XP makes it easy.

The adaptive menus are cool, the stuff you need is closest to the start button. Stuff you use frequently just appear directly on the menu. The desktop is clean and it has utils to keep it that way. If you load some software that replaces important DLLs ( which is what screws up most machines ) or messes up your registry entries you can roll back.

The tray changes are cool too. Stuff that isn't used is hidden, but you can snap the tray open.

The taskbar looks like normal until you really start filling it up with programs. When you have a lot running it shows only the program class. When you click the program class (for instance IE if you have several browser windows open) it will show you the instances of the program (for example MSNBC,Acura-TL,Yahoo) so you can pick an instance...

I don't have time to go through everything but it's cool...

 

NO is not W2K with a new GUI. You can actually have windows XP with your old windows GUI....same taskbar and menus and desktop. You can unzip zip files with windows XP but you can't zip them.....how stupid is that??? You can run windows 95,98, NT apps. On windows XP this is one of the best features XP has. It also has a way faster boot up or start up, whatever you want to call it. Windows XP uses UNIX sockets for the internet, making IE faster. It is more reliable and it has a better memory management. The home edition has a very nice logon screen that I like a lot.......This is the best feature in my personal opinion. They did many fixes that should have been fixed before, but never did. I would say that for $99 upgrade it's not worth it, but it might for some people. .

 

Hi guys - I'm over from a-cl.com, and thought I'd drop my $.02 in here.

I still, to this day, can not understand why Micro$oft can lure people into paying money for a darn GUI update.

GIVE ME A BREAK!!!

In the Unix world, you can download a billion GUIs to your machine, and Sun won't charge you for it.

However, if you want to get new ACTUAL features, such as IPv6 support, or native LDAP compatibility, or something along those lines, then yeah - you gotta drop the $$$ to upgrade (unless you have support - then you get it for "free").

Granted, M$ is a $oftware company whose livlihood depends on upgrades to ther $oftware products, but a $99 GUI and Media player upgrade?

M$ has gotten to the point where their "enhancements" or whatever they call these petty updates, are nothing more than token offerings in an otherwise forward-mobile computing environment.

I say stick with 2k or ME. And BTW - doesn't XP require MORE memory than 2kP?