Possibly one of the most historic pieces of software being sold. (Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition)

Member Name: f1ndl0w

Product:	Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition
Date:	01/06/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Runs very quickly on todays hardware, excellent support online (not Microsoft's own though!)

Disadvantages: 3 GB Ram limit restrictive on todays computers, still costs as much as when it was released!

Love it or Hate it, XP is a bit of a legend in the computing world, I don't think there is any other technology that has been around for 8 years without a replacement that has superseded it entirely. It has its security flaws, it has its limitations, but, it gets the job done and is arguably better than it's supposed replacement, Windows Vista.

At the time of it's release the design was no doubt revolutionary, it brought colours to a grey world of windows, and made computer's more family-orientated; making it simple to have multiple users on a single computer and removing the need for an IT support team to keep it running smooth! But beneath the fancy new GUI the XP is essentially Windows 2000 with a fancy icon set and updated driver support - oh, and a few wizards to help you on your way!
Back in 2001 XP had excellent support for hardware, most things were plug & play meaning that getting stuff to work was simple. Although as hardware as progressed the built in drivers have not, leading to compatibility to be decreased somewhat, this is to be expected though, as having the same hardware restrictions over an 8 year period would lead to very little innovation.

Miraculously XP has now been given a new lease of life in "netbooks", the low power of these machines make them ideal for an aging operating system. Despite the low specs by these standards, what you have to consider is that the current 1 gig of RAM that is now considered standard would have been almost unheard of 8 years ago, 1 GB is actually 16 times the minimum requirements of just 64 MB! Unless the upcoming Windows 7 is a success (and early releases look promising) I wouldn't be surprised if a few years from now people were still using it on a day-to-day basis.

Although, 8 years on, XP is beginning to show it's age. The 3 GB RAM limit has been surpassed by many users for several years now, with 4 GB plus being common. Microsoft did release a 64-bit edition, although this had very limited driver support - leaving it used only by the most enthusiastic users.

Installation is a pretty simple, albeit old looking process, you simply boot your computer up from the CD and then follow the on screen instructions. For the first few stages it looks like you are back in the days of DOS, without a nice GUI to help, although this is for only the most basic of tasks - partitioning your hard drive and copying core system files. I assume it is this "basic" since back in '01 less powerful computer's may not have been able to manage loading a full GUI from a CD. Once the first stages are complete your computer restarts into a much nicer looking wizard, guiding you through the process. This is simple enough for even less-able computer users to follow, and states that it should take around 40 minutes - although with modern hardware this is usually a much quicker process. One downside of the age is that computers now usually use SATA for their hard drive connections, which often require separate drivers under windows XP, and annoyingly the only way to load them is through now near-obsolete floppy disk drives!

Once the main installation is done it's just a simple case of setting up your user accounts, and then you are greeted with the desktop. By now this is familiar territory for many computer users, and hasn't really changed much over the years - just a fancy new skin to make it look more "in with the times".

For most user's the "pro" features aren't worth the cost, as they bit's that you pay for are often only used by businesses in large networks. Although one feature - remote desktop can be useful for controlling a computer over a network, but you can also get this in the cheaper "media centre" version, which will save you a bit of money and give you a few extra media features.

Despite it's age I think that XP is probably here to stay for a long time, it is the operating system that so many of us have used for so many years, making a change to anything else a more difficult move. It is not just home users who are fans; businesses' are unlikely to move away, due to their larger support cost's of distributing a new operating system over many computers.

I worthwhile not if you are purchasing is to buy the "OEM" version, as this is much cheaper - it just doesn't come in the fancy packaging. I would still recommend XP to many people, even today, as it is simple to use and allows for you to get a cheaper computer with still similar performance of Vista, making it excellent value for money.

Summary: Despite complaints, even after 8 years it's still running strong.

Variety of features:
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