Posted on 12/19/2001 2:35:44 PM PST by Bush2000
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:45:48 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
XP Home is installed on most new computer sales and is intended to replace WinMe
XP Pro is touted to replace Windows 2000 Workstation.
XP Embedded is used in devices such as Set Top Boxes or Palm type devices, and it comes in four flavors.
MS claims that Win XP has outsold other Winders versions. Manufacturers must choose from flavors of XP, rather than Win Me, Win 2000 etc. They roll the sales and upgrades from all of these previous versions into one new product group (XP) and then compare the results against just a single title.
Wonder what the sales for XP are, compared to the first month intros for Win Me and 2000 together? How about Win 98 and NT? These are much more valid sales figure comparisons.
Also, nasty rumor to hear is that MS will be raising the price of several XP products on Feb 02. Consumers probably won't be affected, but corporate users sure will be. The jump in first month sales may be large purchases to save money up front.
my assumption is that win xp is stable, being based on win 2000, but that it's a new package with some bugs. and that they'll have a patch out soon.
my win 2000 college instructor recommended not buying xp until they ironed out the bugs. but i ignored his advice! i like the looks of the desktop.
thanks for the link. i e-mailed them.
I agree completely. If your system is crashing with XP, it's your system, not the OS. I've been running it for over a month with no reboots, multiple users loging on and off, without a single slowdown, much less a crash.
Make sure you don't have any incompatible hardware or software. Certain antivirus programs wil not work with XP (for example Norton CE 7.5, you must remove it and install 7.6 after the OS is loaded), as well as some CD burning apps and other miscellaneous stuff.
And for the person that asked(sorry can't remember who it was) what the difference between Win2000 and WinXP was:
There's not a major difference on the underlying kernel. I'm not sure what XP identifies itself as(mainly because I haven't checked), but if I wanted to stick a version number on it, I'd call it something like NT 5.2 or something along those lines. Most of the changes are in the interface and some additional functionality that was added(such as burning CD's straight from windows explorer).
i have a dell p3-450, purchased 3 years ago.
it had only 64 sdram, but the day i bought win xp i upped it by 256, for 320. i may add another 256.
You need to tweak it, aka, configure the OS.
XP is a great MS OS because it finally offers a protected memory and files system OS for the home user. That should = stability. Having helped some people thru their XP problems in getting it running as well as running it myself I will make a few remarks on XP.
1) -XP is a great OS, -once it's properly installed and configured. Which can takes up to 3 days/16 hrs.
2) -XP requires more hardware tweaking than any other MS OS. As a general rule a new user should go into their PC's bios Setup and disable all bios shadowing beyond video. XP's use of protected memory requires control over all of the lower memory. Many device, system and crash issues involve protected memory errors and freeing up resources is the easiest way to resolve them. I've found the more system resources XP has control over, the more stable it is.
3) -XP is harder to configure for AMD systems than Intel but in the end the performance/cost advantage makes AMD the better system. With the goal of configuring an OS to be speed and stability I'd say the amount required for XP is about 2/3rds what's required for 98SE.
4) -XP should be installed onto a clean HD. I've seen of a lot of problems from people doing the upgrade. Backing up the media, wiping the drive (write 0s, partition, format) and installing XP using a previous OS disc for upgrade verification is the way to upgrade imo.
5) -Don't get frustrated by the lack of themes or go out and buy the Plus pack because of it. There's plenty of free, online themes to install and tons of cool wallpaper. Just hook-up with some 'Linux freaks' to find out where the high-quality freebies are. If ones really daring they could do a google search under "XP Themes download". /sarcasm.
6) -Tweak, tweak, tweak XP to get it to run well. Imo XP pro doesn't run well out-of-the-box. The biggest issue is it's 20% system resource reserve for user: System. By default XP maintains a 20% reserve of the PC's resources for the System to run. This reserve presents a noticible drag on system performance. Very noticible in some cases. Use Administrator account, GPEDIT and QoS Packet Scheduler to reduce reservable resources to 0%. Works great, system hauls.
7) -As with 2000, run Task Manager at startup and keep it running, minimized to the taskbar. This gives a System resource set on High priority which helps to prevent page file lockups. It also allows the user to see if unwanted programs are running and system hangups when they occur, giving the option of ending the task. TM can be started anytime by hitting Ctrl.+Alt.+Del in any NT5 OS.
XP's achilles heel imo is it's NT5 comm. driver. It's a network comm. driver and 'someone/something' is on the other side of it. Discounting XP's raw sockets the comm driver alone makes XP Own-You-Ware. Caveat emptor.
There are no stablility issues with Win2K. That's why many of us are sticking with it. In fact, it's safe to say that Win2K SP2 is more stable than WinXP pre-SP1.
XP Pro is touted to replace Windows 2000 Workstation.
XP Pro replaces Win2K PRO, which replaced NT4 Workstation.
gracias.
i'll see what happens.
I suggest we Freepers take up a collection to buy this man a share of Microsoft so that he can take the Microphone at the next shareholders' meeting and make this statement. Who's with me?
the point is that win xp is not win me nor win 98, which were less stable.
WinXP is pretty darned solid in its own right, but it isn't exactly tearing it up in the marketplace. In the business marketplace, especially the "technical desktop", fuhgedaboutit. I talk to many ISV's, and I did a survey of a whole passel of 'em a while back regarding their "OS roadmap". XP? Not on their radar. They couldn't have cared less. The reason? They saw no compelling reason to even touch it. Now, in reality, that doesn't make any difference, for practically any app that can run under 2K will run just fine under XP.
XP's problems are twofold: 1) the licensing scheme; not popular, pain in the ass, people don't like it, period (you can fume at that, but you KNOW it isn't my opinion, but a LOUDLY stated truth), and 2) the perception that it's just Win2K with a paint job. The second may be a bit of a misconception, to be sure........but the underlying point is valid. XP offers some neat-o things to the un-schooled home user, but that's about it. It DOES support 64-bit, which is a cool thing.............but too early for that factor to have much of an impact on its sales.
XP, I predict, will be around a LONG time, for there will be little reason to produce an "XP II" for a very long time.
I found my crashes went to about nil after I went into virtual memory settings - turned off "let microsoft control" - turned on my D: drive (could use your C: drive) and set a size of twice my ram memory.
See item 2 in post #50 as they may solve the problems also - I hadn't heard of that before but am going to try it today to see if that works with "let microsoft control" turned back on.
Er, no. Win2K was never marketed as a home-user OS. XP's predecessor in the consumer market is Win98.
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