Windows Xp pro the eighth wonder of the world? (Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition)

Member Name: dur_kid

Product:	Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition
Date:	14/10/02 (968 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pretty to look at, Crashes are not dramatic, A breese to install

Disadvantages: None but the price, which varies.

Windows XP Professional is it all it?s cracked up to be? That is the question.
The answer is simple a resounding yes.

At first I was very reluctant to upgrade as always with a product from Microsoft as we have all been caught out, remember millennium edition in my humble opinion a disaster even by Microsoft standards, I diversify and praise where praise is due. From its installation with a bootable CD Rom to its completion she almost puts everything in of its own accord with little input from the operator required, a truly professional feature.

It has certain drawbacks but none of any real consequence, one or two issues with drivers i.e. not much support in certain areas. An example of which is the Voodoo series of 3dfx cards for one, they do not work, so if you want to retain your Voodoo graphics don?t bother with XP, on the other hand the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Other issues are backwards compatibility for games basically there is none, you can download patches to enable older games to run but it is a chew.

One of the better features is the My Docs/My Pictures folder whereby if you possess a digital camera and download your photos to this folder when you open, it automatically shows you a thumbnail of each in the bottom row, when you double click on one it opens into a full screen format, which I find excellent, and from there one has forward and backward as a option. It also has a built in slide show in full screen, a really nice feature. All the pictures in this folder can also be utilised as a background by clicking on the option ?set as desktop background?, on the left of the box.

It is an intelligent operating system with some automatic repair features such as a recovery option if things freeze up, with it?s predecessors you would have had to use the three finger shuffle to correct matters a (close down and reboot), but not with XP it recovers itself if you give it time, and you can manually
close the one offending programme to correct matters yourself without a complete shutdown. XP makes network installation a breeze, so simple it?s like falling of a log compared to the previous versions of windows.

Another useful add on is the system tools disk defragmenter, it is so much quicker than earlier versions, my drives used to take literally hours to do, now they take an hour or so, much better.

XP is packed with features and by far the best windows to date, recommended.

Summary: