Should I or Shouldn't I...
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I havent had any problems with vs 6 on xp. It loads alot faster then any of the older versions of windows and is alot more stable. If you do decide to install it, you may want to shut off indexing and many other items that are not needed. You will notice a huge performance gain. You can switch the windowsxp theme to classic and it looks exactly like win2k. This is the first thing that gets taken care of after an install. Like many others the child color scheme just hurts my eyes.
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Masaaki Onishi wrote: Currently, Win2k pro is enough for me to write the code Yup, but for how long? Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Hello, the CPians around the world;) Nishant S wrote: Yup, but for how long? I am ready to say ... Until I publish the release version of eCoolWebPanelBar, and get the money from it to buy the new computer for Widnows XP.:~ Or, Microsoft gives up the support of Windows 2000.:wtf: -Masaaki Onishi (eCoolSoft)- ASP.NET Web and Windows Application Development by C# and MFC. eCoolWebPanelBar(BETA) is availabe now. http://www.ecoolsoft.com
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I recently switched to XP from 2k. I had the same reservations as you, however on the whole I've had no problem with it after finding out how to change everything so it still looks like 2k. Things I've noticed that are different: - The interface is painfully simplistic unless you change some settings - It takes up a *LOT* more hard drive space just for the base install which was an issue for me because I make ghost boot images of my system so I can quick restore in a disaster. - It has a noticebly longer delay than w2k when you launch a program however the program doesn't seem to actually run any slower once it's going. - It's the only OS that supports hyperthreading CPU's if that's an issue for you. My only major concern when I first switched was that despite having the fastest x86 cpu that Intel makes at the moment it feels less responsive than 2k did on a processor that was easily 5 times slower than this one. However everything runs faster, for example compiles are faster etc so I think XP is just trying to do too much behind the scenes when you (for example) click on a desktop icon to launch a program or a document. There is a noticeable delay before anything happens (which I've noticed before with XP) and it will at first make you feel like it's slower than 2k. VS.Net works fine on it, but I've never tried vs6 so can't say for sure. Bottom line is that you can make it look and feel exactly like Windows 2000 did so there really isn't much of a downside.
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I recently switched to XP from 2k. I had the same reservations as you, however on the whole I've had no problem with it after finding out how to change everything so it still looks like 2k. Things I've noticed that are different: - The interface is painfully simplistic unless you change some settings - It takes up a *LOT* more hard drive space just for the base install which was an issue for me because I make ghost boot images of my system so I can quick restore in a disaster. - It has a noticebly longer delay than w2k when you launch a program however the program doesn't seem to actually run any slower once it's going. - It's the only OS that supports hyperthreading CPU's if that's an issue for you. My only major concern when I first switched was that despite having the fastest x86 cpu that Intel makes at the moment it feels less responsive than 2k did on a processor that was easily 5 times slower than this one. However everything runs faster, for example compiles are faster etc so I think XP is just trying to do too much behind the scenes when you (for example) click on a desktop icon to launch a program or a document. There is a noticeable delay before anything happens (which I've noticed before with XP) and it will at first make you feel like it's slower than 2k. VS.Net works fine on it, but I've never tried vs6 so can't say for sure. Bottom line is that you can make it look and feel exactly like Windows 2000 did so there really isn't much of a downside.
Hello, the CPians around the world;) I'm curious of what kind of machine do you use? -Masaaki Onishi (eCoolSoft)- ASP.NET Web and Windows Application Development by C# and MFC. eCoolWebPanelBar(BETA) is availabe now. http://www.ecoolsoft.com
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I say if it ain't broken don't fix it. OK, I seem to have legal copies of most Windows OSes now. I have 1 box with Home, and another that I can flip from 2000 to PRO and ME. I have already used three Activations on the PRO and am now running everything on 2000. I fear loosing my rights to future activations on the PRO OS. Honestly I think PRO is better and more stable then 2000. And it's far better for games. I can't even get AOM to run on 2000. My only fear is that if I flash the BIOS a lot more I'll have to go out and buy another copy. So for any dev who chews BIOSes or runs some Native NT commands I'd suggest doing it on a 2000 secure install. For Joe in the street I'd reccomend XP Home or PRO. Regardz Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I'm guessing the concept of a 2 hour movie showing two guys eating a meal and talking struck them as 'foreign' Rob Manderson wrote:
If you're going to be wiping out the box that offen, don't activate the copy since you can run the OS for 30 days without activation.
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I recently switched to XP from 2k. I had the same reservations as you, however on the whole I've had no problem with it after finding out how to change everything so it still looks like 2k. Things I've noticed that are different: - The interface is painfully simplistic unless you change some settings - It takes up a *LOT* more hard drive space just for the base install which was an issue for me because I make ghost boot images of my system so I can quick restore in a disaster. - It has a noticebly longer delay than w2k when you launch a program however the program doesn't seem to actually run any slower once it's going. - It's the only OS that supports hyperthreading CPU's if that's an issue for you. My only major concern when I first switched was that despite having the fastest x86 cpu that Intel makes at the moment it feels less responsive than 2k did on a processor that was easily 5 times slower than this one. However everything runs faster, for example compiles are faster etc so I think XP is just trying to do too much behind the scenes when you (for example) click on a desktop icon to launch a program or a document. There is a noticeable delay before anything happens (which I've noticed before with XP) and it will at first make you feel like it's slower than 2k. VS.Net works fine on it, but I've never tried vs6 so can't say for sure. Bottom line is that you can make it look and feel exactly like Windows 2000 did so there really isn't much of a downside.
J Cardinal wrote: - It's the only OS that supports hyperthreading CPU's if that's an issue for you. Not true - W2K Server supports our hyperthreaded CPUs (edit: support == sees 2 processors instead of 1) cheers, Chris Maunder
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I've been having the same conundrum for the last 12 months. I have W2K Server on the laptop and most things work - but enough things don't *quite* work well enough that I'm getting to the point where installing XP will, I hope, fix the little niggling things. Having said that I can't stand the way XP tries to hide stuff from you. I hate being treated like the lowest common denominator. cheers, Chris Maunder
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
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Christian Graus wrote: Get stuffed :-D Tonight we are both looking good eh? Now all we want is for someone to come here and make a post about how Indians and Aussies suck and we can pulverize him together :-) Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
Michael Martin wrote: Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. It depends on your machine, make sure it is well over min. req, of course. Are you upgrading? or Clean install? or on another partition? If you are interested in making XP your main OS then go for it, simply because you can set system restore points, In-case of weird OS behavior(installing a bad driver or crapware that f-up your system) you can easily convert back. It is highly customizable so you can get the interface you like. I use Office 2000 on XP with no problems, and MSC++6.0 sp5, no probs. I use Virtual PC for my other OSs to test my software in and other boxes while I am at my "real job". Are you developing any software that needs to be tested on dif. OSs? Then you might want to use partition magic (tip:make sure to to one task at a time in pm) and shrink your win2k partition to get as much space as possible for the XP install. or whatever I am babbling, you know what you want to do:-D :-D ps. don't for get the windowsupdate for the service packs and hotfixes. Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^] -
...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
XP is great. If you don't like the new interface, you can always make it look like Windows 2000. I haven't ever had a stability problem with it. The only thing I can think of is that Explorer sometimes forgets its settings. You'll have it sized and positioned a particular way, then close it, and when you open it again, it's in the default size. Kind of annoying, but very minor. I say go for it. VS6 worked well for me on XP, though I never tried Office 2000. Jon Sagara Hi! I'm Melanoma, Moley Russell's wart. -- Uncle Buck
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If you're going to be wiping out the box that offen, don't activate the copy since you can run the OS for 30 days without activation.
You are right Terry. The thing is I never "intended" to change the bios so often. Its just some of the stuff I was playing with was "BIOS" hungry. Regardz Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I'm guessing the concept of a 2 hour movie showing two guys eating a meal and talking struck them as 'foreign' Rob Manderson wrote:
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I vote with Christian - XP sucks, but if you are running into it on customer systems, you really should learn it thoroughly. There's no way to escape the heap of excrement M$ has decided to ram down our throats. I've used it a while longer than Christian, though, and can promise that it will not get any better. It starts out bad, and stays that way. Specifically, it doesn't network worth a damn. The first thing to do is kill that useless simple sharing mode. It forces all network connections to shares to be authenticated using the Guest account, which is disabled on all machines for good reason. Most applications I've tried to run (admittedly few) work badly if at all on XP, even though they work perfectly on Win2K. Accessing shares also often requires mapping the target folder as a drive on the local machine, and the mapping is forgotten after a few hours of operation. Printers also get lost, and all machines in the workgroup have to be rebooted periodically to keep the group printers available. Wireless support is built in to XP, but it doesn't work without a lot of tweaking, and remains problematic (this may be specific to ORiNOCO products). Overall, I consider WinXP to be the Win3.x of the 21st century, but it's unlikely to be going away as it should. Bite the bullet and support your customers, but don't expect to enjoy it. It is ok for women not to like sports, so long as they nod in the right places and bring beers at the right times.
Paul Watson, on Sports - 2/10/2003 -
...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
What you have not yet switched to XP! XP is the best OS developed by Microsoft. Most people think that XP is just some UI improvements but there are a whole lot of other stuff esp. so much fun with developing with new API additions.
Welcome to India! We love the three "C"s: CP Cinema Cricket
Rohit Sinha - The Lounge (2/14/2003) -
J Cardinal wrote: - It's the only OS that supports hyperthreading CPU's if that's an issue for you. Not true - W2K Server supports our hyperthreaded CPUs (edit: support == sees 2 processors instead of 1) cheers, Chris Maunder
Hmmm...well Intel says only XP and says if you have 2k you should disable hyperthreading in the bios and I'm guessing they would want to say it works on as many os's as possible so there might be some sort of technical issue there. I researched that pretty carefully before I upgraded my box because I really didn't want to switch to XP at the time. Ref: http://support.intel.com/support/platform/ht/os.htm[^]
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Hello, the CPians around the world;) I'm curious of what kind of machine do you use? -Masaaki Onishi (eCoolSoft)- ASP.NET Web and Windows Application Development by C# and MFC. eCoolWebPanelBar(BETA) is availabe now. http://www.ecoolsoft.com
It's a "Touch" brand, basically a clone with an Asus chipset and MB. I've found the to be extremely reliable over the years and don't really want to take a risk on anything cheaper than that. (i.e. build your own etc) And name brand (tier 1 as they used to say, maybe still do, IBM, HP etc) systems are just way out of touch in their pricing relative to what you get.
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I vote with Christian - XP sucks, but if you are running into it on customer systems, you really should learn it thoroughly. There's no way to escape the heap of excrement M$ has decided to ram down our throats. I've used it a while longer than Christian, though, and can promise that it will not get any better. It starts out bad, and stays that way. Specifically, it doesn't network worth a damn. The first thing to do is kill that useless simple sharing mode. It forces all network connections to shares to be authenticated using the Guest account, which is disabled on all machines for good reason. Most applications I've tried to run (admittedly few) work badly if at all on XP, even though they work perfectly on Win2K. Accessing shares also often requires mapping the target folder as a drive on the local machine, and the mapping is forgotten after a few hours of operation. Printers also get lost, and all machines in the workgroup have to be rebooted periodically to keep the group printers available. Wireless support is built in to XP, but it doesn't work without a lot of tweaking, and remains problematic (this may be specific to ORiNOCO products). Overall, I consider WinXP to be the Win3.x of the 21st century, but it's unlikely to be going away as it should. Bite the bullet and support your customers, but don't expect to enjoy it. It is ok for women not to like sports, so long as they nod in the right places and bring beers at the right times.
Paul Watson, on Sports - 2/10/2003Interesting post. I haven't read your or Christian's posts about XP. I haven't had to much experience with networking XP. But I did try and network a Win98se with XP with Virtual PC and I gave up. We haven't "officially" approved WinXP at my workplace yet so I haven't had to network any XP machines yet. But I am curious to find out exactly what version of XP (service pack and hotfixes) you were working with? Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^] -
...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I like Windows XP and think it is a good upgrade. The default skin is a bit clunky, but get Watercolor or similar minimalist skins and the interface becomes a treat. It crashes exactly as often as Windows 2000, which is hardly ever. Only app I have ever had a problem running was AutoCAD 2000, a quick Compatibility Wizard tweak later and it was working perfectly. Never had driver problems, but then my hardware is pretty standard stuff. All in all, if you want to have a go then have a go. If you don't, stick with Windows 2000. Not much difference.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South AfricaMacbeth muttered: I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er
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...Install Windows XP on my computer over the weekend. I am currently running Windows 2000 Professional. While I am not having any problems with it I am finding myself exposed to Windows XP more and more. Whenever I get a side job to fix a computer or network it is invariably Windows XP. Which I then have to find my way around to get to the tools I need. I have a legal copy of Windows XP Professional, though I only have Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6. Will I have any problems running these together? Any other gotcha's I should know about? What about tweaks to get it in working order? I also have several other programs, both commercial and shareware. But to the best of my knowledge they are all fine with Windows XP. If your answer is 'Windows XP sucks, don't use it', can you please explain why you feel this way. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
I started using WinXP Pro last June and I really like it. Some of the stuff is a little funky to use at first but once you learn it, it's pretty cool. I hear a lot of CD burning software doesn't work on WinXP but I haven't really checked into this because it has burning software similar to DirectCD already built in. I guess the main reason that I like it over previous versions of Windows is that you rarely have to manually install drivers for hardware, just plug the device in and let 'er rip. Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
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Interesting post. I haven't read your or Christian's posts about XP. I haven't had to much experience with networking XP. But I did try and network a Win98se with XP with Virtual PC and I gave up. We haven't "officially" approved WinXP at my workplace yet so I haven't had to network any XP machines yet. But I am curious to find out exactly what version of XP (service pack and hotfixes) you were working with? Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^]JoeSox wrote: what version of XP (service pack and hotfixes) you were working with? They were three brand new, identical Dell PCs, with WinXP Pro SP1 installed at the factory. Although I tried to disable the automatic update feature horror on all of them, I must have missed one. The machine that is most brain damaged and utterly unreliable at this time indicates no updates available, while the other two indicate sixty or so waiting to be installed, and are far more reliable. It is ok for women not to like sports, so long as they nod in the right places and bring beers at the right times.
Paul Watson, on Sports - 2/10/2003