The best Windows yet? (Microsoft Windows XP (Whistler))

Member Name: movielad

Product:	Microsoft Windows XP (Whistler)
Date:	12/08/01 (1092 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Faster, more colourful and packed with lots of new features, Widest range of device support in a Windows OS yet

Disadvantages: New interface will require some getting used to - but it is customisable and lots of it can be reverted back to Windows 2000 style, Windows Product Activation - having to contact Microsoft everytime you reformat your machine or install the OS into another partition

I originally signed up for the Corporate Preview programme of RC1 (release candidate 1) of Windows XP in June and have been waiting eagerly for the CD to arrive since. About a week ago, the CD finally arrived in a long carboard envelope with a single A4 sheet of instructions (or should it be destructions?).

My machine, a Dell 8100 with a 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 processor, 40Gb Ultra DMA 100 hard drive and 1Gb of RAM already had Windows 2000 installed as well as Red Hat Linux 7.1. One of them had to go for the purposes of this test, and unfortunately it was Linux (as Windows is used heavily by my fiancé, so I couldn't get rid of that).

So, I insserted the CD and waited to see what - if anything - would happen. The installation resembles a cross between Windows 98 and Windows 2000. When Windows XP gets to the "main" installer having copied the installation files to hard drive during the text-based portion of the installer before partioning, etc., it very much resembles the Windows 98 installer. You get a lot of Microsoft spiel on the right hand side of the screen and the installation progress on the left hand side. On my Pentium 4 machine, it took approximately 20 minutes to install (although it claimed the whole installation would take 39 minutes). Overall, the installation of Windows XP over Windows 2000 is very much quicker and requires minimal input from the user. It's very good at working out what it needs by itself.

After installation, I was happy to see that XP detected every bit of hardware that I've got - even the Jessop's USB Sony Memory Stick reader. Heck, it even managed to work out that my CD-ROM drive was a CD-ROM/DVD and CD-REwriter combo drive and thus made it available to Windows XP's built in CD burning facility. More on that later. I've got a Speedtouch USB ADSL modem and installing the drivers from the CD enabled me to get XP on the Internet just fine. The only problem I've exper
ienced was that after long periods of inactivity, the Speedtouch would just refuse to work. A reboot of the machine cured the problem. However, since upgrading the Speetouch drivers to 1.3.4 from Alcatel's web site this has resolved the problem completely.

By default, the interface to Windows XP is very different to what I've been used to with Windows 2000. You don't have a My Computer on the desktop straight away. Everything has been tucked under a newly improved Start menu. It's all confusing at first as Microsoft appear to have crammed the entire desktop into the Start Menu. However, I soon got used to this eccentric method, but I did switch it off and go back to the older style of Start menu which I am much more acustomed to. The great thing about XP is it's ability to "skin" the interface. You can skin the taskbar, the desktop, the Start menu, the title bars, 3D objects and the list goes on. I do use the Windows XP style for dialog boxes and title bars, etc, but I found that the 25 point title bar was far too large for me to handle. I simply reduced down to 20 and I've got a cool looking Windows interface now that combines the best of the older Windows 2000 interface with XP's new colourful icons and title bars.

As for performance, I've certainly not noticed any slow downs. In fact, Windows XP boots much faster than Windows 2000 and Windows 98 and this means that you get to your desktop much quicker than ever before. With the support of DirectX 8.1, games run very smoothly under XP and have not encountered any compatibility problems as yet with anything that I've got.

Another big change for Windows users is the use of Windows Product Activation. In order to stop casual copying of Microsoft software, they've implemented a mechanism which means that after 14 days of use, you MUST activate Windows either through the Internet or by calling a 24 hour operations centre to ensure
that you can continue to use Windows. This is a bit of pain if you're trying to install the software into two partitions as once you've activated it on one partition/machine, you can't activate on another without calling the operations centre and explaining to them what you're doing. This is the case if you ever need to re-install Windows on your system again. Like it or loathe it - it's here to stay.

Other interesting items to note is the inclusion of Windows Media Player 8 which claims to play DVDs. Unfortunately I've not been able to get this to work at all - the system keeps complaining

Back to CD burning. XP now includes native support to burn files to a CD-ROM through the Windows Explorer interface. Although I have not tried this as yet, I am pleased to see that the operating system now includes native support for CD writers. However, for those with Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum, XP will NOT work with this software unless you upgrade to 5.02 of Easy CD creator. DirectCD with this package will refuse to work completely. It's been rumoured that Roxio will release a full XP compatible version of Easy CD Creator 5.1 Platium for a small upgrade fee after XP is released.

Other new additions include new ethernet security protocols, although this is enabled by default and confused Windows XP when it tried to connect to my laptop through the network. Disabling the security
on the ethernet card resolved this problem.
There is also a built-in firewall which can be used on ethernet connections or through dial-up connections (ditto for ADSL connections). This is actually a pretty good firewall and it's done a grand job so far of protecting the machine if looking at the firewall log has anything to go by.

Another new feature is Remote Assistance whereby you can have a college look at a problem on your machine remotely (aka PC Anywhere) and fix it. Again, this is not someth
ing I've tried, but as I've now received two copies of XP RC1, I may give this a go with my laptop.

Internet Explorer 6 is the default web browser, but also includes MSN Explorer for those that have Microsoft Passport accounts or MSN accounts. Both work incredibly well.

For beta code, this is an incredibly stable and zippy operating system. The user interface changes will require some getting used to as there are some very different layouts within the system that could confuse people initially. However, once everybody gets over the interface change, there is plenty of new features to explore and home users who have been using Windows 98 up until now when find a whole new world of stability and performance from XP.

Is it worth upgrading to XP if you're a Windows 2000 user? I'd say yes. As well as the quicker start-up time, you'll get more device support than before (my Netgear FA311 isn't supported natively under Win2k), a better more customisable interface, and better overall performance.

You can be sure that when the final release comes out that I'm forking out for the upgrade ;) Normally I wouldn't do this for some time, but if the RC1 stability continues to be excellent for the next few months, I'll take the plunge.

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