Wicky OS, innit? (Microsoft Windows XP (Whistler))

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	Microsoft Windows XP (Whistler)
Date:	14/10/01 (960 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reliable, Pretty, Ease of use

Disadvantages: A bit pricey, High requirements

This is the first opinion that I've written on Dooyoo for quite a while so you'll have to forgive me if it's not up to my usual standards of rubbishness but I'll try and get back into the swing of things as quickly as possible.

Windows XP then; what's that all about?

Well, essentially Windows XP is supposed to be the unification of the Windows NT and 9x product lines. Traditionally Windows NT has been aimed towards corporations and larger networks and is famed for its reliability and security. Windows 9x on the other hand is supposed to be easy to use, fairly quick and a lot cheaper. So in an ideal world XP will be quick, cheap, reliable and secure, but how many of these criteria does it fulfil?

Well, I'll discuss that in more detail towards the end of my review but first things first; the issue of compatibility. WindowsXP work with a lot of hardware straight out of the box. It appears to have a large built in driver database so compatibility doesn't appear to be as much of an issue as with Windows 2000 and the like. My SoundBlaster 128, network card and graphics card were all detected automatically upon installation and worked without any hitches. The only piece of hardware that won't work in XP is my BT Speedway ISDN adapter, which is a real pain because it means that I can't use the internet from within XP. This isn't the end of the world however because XP will dual boot quite happily with Windows98. Installing WindowsXP is a very simple procedure that it fairly quick and painless. The days of having to fiddle about with changing floppy disks every five minutes are well gone and the installation is almost entirely automated. Simplicity personified.

Once you’ve got the operating system installed and setup correctly you can then explore its new features and facilities. People have been using Windows 2000 for the past few months will have a fair idea of what to expect. The programs a
ren’t drastically different to the programs that have traditionally been included with Windows 9x and Windows NT. Paint, Wordpad and all of the traditional games are included so any secret Minesweeper fans can rest assured that their fun doesn’t have to stop just because they’ve upgraded their OS. XP does have a lot of useful utilities that Windows 9x users won’t have seen before. A lot of these are to do with networking and administration so a lot of users may not see much use for them, but anyone with a small network at home will soon grow to appreciate them. Rather than just allowing people on a network to access a disk drive or similar, you can actually allow certain people to access certain folders. This means that if you have confidential files that you don’t want everyone on the network to see, you can limit access to them. This feature was available in Windows2000 as well but I don’t think it’s ever been included in Windows 9x.

The main thing you’ll notice upon entering WindowsXP is the nice new interface on offer. Essentially it’s very similar to that of other versions of Windows except that everything has been tweaked to look absolutely stunning. The Start Menu is totally changed and is now much more logical, menus all slide out smoothly and of course all buttons now look shiny and smooth. These little touches may not sound like a lot but it makes the computer appear much more accessible and easy to use. XP is a simple to use operating system compared to Windows 2000 but if you did deeper you will find that flexibility hasn’t been compromised. With Windows 2000, if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could quite easily do a lot of damage to the installation and stop it from working. With WindowsXP a lot of the advanced options are hidden away from the eyes of novices so hopefully this risk is minimised. If you take a closer look though it is possible to do exactly the same thi
ngs as you could do with Windows 2000 and a whole lot more as well.

System requirements for XP are fairly high due to the extra levels of complexity. On my Duron 850 with 384Mb RAM, everything runs smoothly and at an excellent pace. Whilst Microsoft’s recommended specifications may be a lot lower, I wouldn’t have thought that it would be a very pleasant experience to run XP on anything with less than 128Mb RAM and at least a 500Mhz processor. I bought a new 40Gb hard disk to accommodate XP and obviously I’ve come nowhere near to filling it. The installation of the operating system took up about 1.5Gb so a hard disk of around 10Gb for probably be a suitable minimum for anyone intending to install a few games and applications. You probably could scrape by with lower specifications but if you’re going to splash out on a new operating system, you may as well do the deed properly.

From a reliability point of view, XP is excellent. It has never yet crashed on my machine so there is no room for criticism in this area. Windows 98 used to crash occasionally on my PC, Windows 2000 crashed a lot less and XP doesn’t crash at all. Microsoft really seems to have got its act together with this operating system and I cannot criticise this aspect of it.

So the new OS is reliable. What about speed? Well to be honest, it does seem to whiz long at a fair old pace. I haven’t yet had to sit around waiting for it to complete a task and the general feel of the operating system is very responsive. I haven’t directly benchmarked it against Windows9x or 2000 but it certainly doesn’t appear to be any slower. One area that is certainly quicker though is the amount of time it takes to load up. Because there is no underlying DOS lying beneath the OS, boot up time on my machine is under a minute; about half the time of Windows 2000.

Price-wise the operating system is fair. I got my copy for free because it’s
a pre-release version but the finished copy will cost somewhere around £200 for a full copy. This may seem like a lot of money, and to be honest it is too much, but considering what the OS offers, it is decent value for money.

You may have noticed that I haven’t discussed Product Activation at all and that is because it hasn’t really bothered me at all. If I do find that it is a pain, I will update the review accordingly.

In conclusion, XP isn’t a huge leap forwards but it is a clear refinement and amalgamation of existing products. Microsoft deserves a lot of praise for finally producing a decent solid OS and it would appear that Microsoft’s domination of the world will continue for a long time if they keep making excellent products like this.

Summary: