Should I or Shouldn't I...
-
...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[^]
-
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.
-
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
-
...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
-
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 -
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 - 2/10/2003So I understand what you are saying, you think you disabled the updates on two of the machines, which have not been updated and work fine. But the one machine has been getting updates and you have problems with it? Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^] -
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 - 2/10/2003Are you using WinXP Home Edition? I have found that networking is a pain under this version but it's much nicer under Pro edition. They're both really dumbed down but more so in Home edition. X| Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
-
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
Yep, I hear you there. I had to tweak the death out of it before I was satisfied with the way everything worked. Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
-
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.
Like many others the child color scheme just hurts my eyes. The childish color scheme was the main reason I was reluctant to upgrade. Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
-
So I understand what you are saying, you think you disabled the updates on two of the machines, which have not been updated and work fine. But the one machine has been getting updates and you have problems with it? Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^]None of them work as well as Win2K; the one that is fully updated is less reliable than the others, however. 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 -
Are you using WinXP Home Edition? I have found that networking is a pain under this version but it's much nicer under Pro edition. They're both really dumbed down but more so in Home edition. X| Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
This is the Pro version. The Home version is so bad I wouldn't recommend it to a home user that only checks email with a PC. Anyone that actually plans to use a computer for anything useful would be better off with a Mac than WinXP Home Edition. 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 -
This is the Pro version. The Home version is so bad I wouldn't recommend it to a home user that only checks email with a PC. Anyone that actually plans to use a computer for anything useful would be better off with a Mac than WinXP Home Edition. 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 - 2/10/2003Buying a Mac is pushing it IMO, but I do agree that WinXP Home sucks donkey b...whoops can't say that here:-D. Brad Jennings "if the golden arches shut shop, where else are the VB people going to get work." - Colin Davies
-
None of them work as well as Win2K; the one that is fully updated is less reliable than the others, however. 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 - 2/10/2003Roger Wright wrote: None of them work as well as Win2K; I have had problems on Win2k machines but I think it was more of a hardware issue. But I agree Win2k is hard to beat for use in the business world. Roger Wright wrote: the one that is fully updated is less reliable than the others, however. Now that's weird, I never use the recommended driver updates because they never work and I only do the critical updates, and service pack updates and my machines seem to do just fine. 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
Office 2000 and VS6 will run fine on XP Pro. XP usually runs fine (the only issues I know of is weird USB stuff - it's less tolerating, and might do cr*p on isochronous transfers) Last year I upgraded my dev env from W2K to XP, and I can't really complain (after disabling the fisher price look) There are some nifty niceties you don't have on W2K (go discover!), and I'm rarely missing something (the "lock workstation", and the missing CPU indicator of the task manager being the most notorious). But XP sucks, and you shouldn't use it :cool:
So many people long for eternity that don't know what to do on a rainy sunday afternoon.
[sighist] | [Agile Programming] [doxygen]
If you look for evil in me you will find it whether it's there or not. -
Roger Wright wrote: None of them work as well as Win2K; I have had problems on Win2k machines but I think it was more of a hardware issue. But I agree Win2k is hard to beat for use in the business world. Roger Wright wrote: the one that is fully updated is less reliable than the others, however. Now that's weird, I never use the recommended driver updates because they never work and I only do the critical updates, and service pack updates and my machines seem to do just fine. Later,
JoeSox
www.joeswammi.com
Constitution Party[^]You confirm my experience! The last time I let an update through on my Win2K system, it destroyed my ISP connection. I still haven't found a way to fix it, but I got it working with a workaround. M$ updates are disasters - nothing I have ever done to any system in my ignorance has ever done as much damage as a M$ update. 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 -
I hated XP because I found it hard to find stuff I needed to use. It's a kids OS IMO. Having said that, if you need to use it for work, you should run it at home so you can navigate it easily when you need to. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
It'd probably be fairly easy to make a bot that'd post random stupid VB questions, and nobody would probably ever notice - benjymous - 21-Jan-2003Thats what I thought too, but i found that after about 3 hours tweaking it you can actually make it look like an "adult" os.... normal start button, start menu, control panel, explorer windows, and all that good stuff. So after that, you can actually see that it's not actually a bad OS. it's more stable than 2000 IMO. And it boots in 1/3rd of the time. I've had no problems with any software on it, and i run VS6, SQL Server 2k, office 2k, jbuilder, unreal tournament 2k3, and so on.
#include <beer.h>
-
...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
Well, for one thing, if you use Paint somewhat then beware that the XP version doesn't allow you to save .gif pictures with transparency enabled. I hate it when upgrades of software have less features - or missing features from the previous version. X|
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beierhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
-
Office 2000 and VS6 will run fine on XP Pro. XP usually runs fine (the only issues I know of is weird USB stuff - it's less tolerating, and might do cr*p on isochronous transfers) Last year I upgraded my dev env from W2K to XP, and I can't really complain (after disabling the fisher price look) There are some nifty niceties you don't have on W2K (go discover!), and I'm rarely missing something (the "lock workstation", and the missing CPU indicator of the task manager being the most notorious). But XP sucks, and you shouldn't use it :cool:
So many people long for eternity that don't know what to do on a rainy sunday afternoon.
[sighist] | [Agile Programming] [doxygen]
If you look for evil in me you will find it whether it's there or not.peterchen wrote: the "lock workstation Lock workstation is there, but you may have to disable fast-user switching for the shortcut key to work (Windows + L). If you disable the Welcome screen then Ctrl + Alt + Delete should work as it did under 2K. peterchen wrote: the missing CPU indicator of the task manager being the most notorious What are you refering to here? I've got Task Manager running, set to hide on minimize, and I have the CPU meter in the system tray. James "It is self repeating, of unknown pattern" Data - Star Trek: The Next Generation