I just bought a sony 1.7 p4 that has winxp home on it. The computer is wonderful. the system is buggy. when you come out of stby, there is a mysterious multicolored, like noise, icon in the upper left, every time. The outlook express insists on changing my server connection settings regularly. The modem connects at 34 max compared to 3 other computers at 43 to 48. The immplementation of the light version of adaptec sucks. The hardware is very good.... fast, sturdy, well built, and responsive as you would expect a 1.7 gh. winxp is a pain untill you revert it back to classic mode. the installed elements version steers you to what ms wants. i took it out. as to drivers, the epson 870 only installs partly, the hp k80 multifunction only installs part way. they seem to revert to a winxp built in mini driver that gives some functionality to these machines untill the mfg gets the new drivers out.... maybe by the time we see win 2002... canon has updated drivers for the s800 posted...the epson 875dc wont install, and i havent had the nerve to try my oly p400. in short i wouldnt do it unless you had to, unless you are dead positive that your programs and equipment is given an ok by Microsoft... this whole wintel thing is beginning to smell....looks like an orchestrated racheting of hardware, software needs, and software obsolesence, followed by another round of hardwaare up grades....if the drivers are not okayed, you get a message to the effect that they arent and you shouldnt install them,,,,, but you can...in some cases you get a refusal to install message and IT WONT. so research , reseaarch, research. BTW the things that do run on the machine are a pleasure to use, what with all that speed and memory...I have not had winxp crash, then i never had a lot of trouble with win98se. having lived with the new os for two weeks, would i put it on my other machines as upgrades,,,, NO.
I have an old P3 733Mhz system and XP runs like a charm my record for XP Pro is 1 week 4 days 16 hours 23 seconds. It would of been longer if the battery backup did'nt die out in the middle of a 30 min power outage. Other then that XP has worked with everything I own. It went without a hitch as far as the setup goes and since I have a cracked activation version I did'nt have to deal with that part, the C80 installed without a hitch the 870 did too and so did Norton AntiVirus (with the minor exception of a patch that XP told me to get in order to make NAV work) and ZoneAlarm installed too (again XP told me theres a new version of zonealarm). I have nothing against XP so far I can bring it out of sleep mode and hibernation (my favorite part of 2000/XP). I run XP on my fairly new HP 5490 laptop I got and no problems there I'm using the Me to 2k upgrade pack and everything works like a charm. The modem,NIC,display,graphics,USB,speedstep,wireless logitech mouse. I honestly cant complain about XP yet and I have the final 2600 build.
I dont know if you're the same guy (that posted before about the modem being slow and blaming it on MS) but that whole "blame it on MS" when the company that made the product is clearly at fault is getting rather old and childish. Though I dont use a modem I would'nt attribute the drop in speed to XP simply because the company who made your modem decided to not optimize drivers for XP. Like I said I dont use a modem but I do use the high speed wireless internet (www.netbeam.net) and I dont get any complaints yet.
Fast, yep its supposedly 38% faster then Windows Me is. Sturdy HECK YEAH 1 week 4 day uptime. Responsive is also true and this is on my P3 733 which I might go to a 1.4Ghz AMD or Intel soon.
Luna is'nt too bad I love the silver verson of luna or even the green version and it rocks but yeah XP in regular mode is pretty plain jane it looks like Windows 2000.
Like I said if you install the windows 2000 Epson 870 driver it WILL work. Though there are'nt any XP optimized drivers for printer/scanners etc MS said 2000 drivers WILL work with XP. The k80 I cant vouch for since I dont need an all in one machine but I'm guessing that either HP has XP drivers out on their site OR windows 2000 drivers will work just fine.
Umm this IS windows 2002 (if you dont believe me take a look at the boxes for the Office XP stuff (down towards the bottom right they say its a 2002 edition).
I've heard the 875 WONT INSTALL so this IS true. The p400 I dont know but you never know.
With the exception of DOS and early Windows 95/98 based programs then yeah they'd HAVE to be certified by MS but any program that claims Me/2000 support WILL run on XP. Though if you get any troubles either XP will tell you about a patch or more recent edition or it can run it in compatability mode. In no way does XP let a defunct program such as an old edition of NAV or ZoneAlarm run on your system and what I mean by that is it probably will let you install it but after its installed it WILL tell you its disabled it cos it will cause XP to do some spooky things.
I had my fair share of 98 crashes so thats why I went to 2000 and for some reason 2-3 days is my best uptime and anything beyond that did'nt exist. I'd say if you're going from 95/98(SE) Me its definately worth it to go get XP and install it but make sure you have a decent system to run it and not some P2 333 with 64MB ram. If I had to choose to upgrade all my systems I'd give it the HECK YEAH!!! though I encountered some problems networking 2000 on my desktop and XP on my laptop (they would'nt see eachother) I went XP on both my systems and so far so good been running the final version WAY before you all could get your hands on a "bring your PC to gateway stores and we'll load XP on for $99 on it deal".
Theres always gonna be bugs but I'd recommend if you have a second PC to load XP on it and run it and see if it all works. I've been using XP since beta 3 or RC2 (around the 2300-2400 builds)
I didn't think you could upgrade to W2K from W98. I'm a Linux/Unix person so just believed the salesdroid. I guess I should know better.
.John,
I wasn't talking about IT pros migrating hundreds of corporate desktops to Windows XP, just home users upgrading one or two PCs!
Saying Windows XP has no compelling features is like saying the Nikon D1X has no compelling features. I don't have time to even begin to explain them all (details at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp ), and this is a site about digital photography, not computers.
True, Windows NT 4.0 is stable, but it is woefully out of date in other ways. It will never work with all the latest hardware, for example.
I don't have any desire to run old 16-bit Windows programs (much less DOS software!), so I won't address that. All the applications I use (Photoshop Elements, ULead Photo Explorer Pro 7.0, Office XP) were released within the past year. I can't stand old, out-of-date software, just like I can't stand old, out-of-date digital cameras.
I admit I do spend a fair amount of time messing around with computers, but you are implying one needs to be a computer expert to successfully upgrade to Windows XP. Far from it.
