Windows XP, a look back

[SunnyRabbiera]

Now with vista out, XP's lifespan is not going to last much longer as that is almost always microsofts deal, the new OS would totally phase the old OS within a short period of time.
But I will take this chance to show my love and hate for windows XP.
XP when I first got it seemed to be a great OS, indeed its interface is butt ugly by most standards but XP was very friendly and welcoming.
Most of my hardware and software loaded in it, XP was initially very fun to me but it wasnt long before its inherit flaws decided to bust out.
My woes with it began with XP service pack 1, for starters it was not that much of a patch plus it practically wrecked my system.
But after I got things reorganized XP felt like home again, then came service pack 2...
Microsoft if you did this with service pack 1 you would not need a 2, but thanks to microsofts arrogance they overlooked everything and it made XP a train wreck.
But still there are some things I liked in XP, the ease of use, the plug and play, all of it seemed pretty decent... until I discovered linux.
I kind of miss XP, and to be honest MS would have done far better for themselves if they kept on modding XP instead of creating Vista.
It was the crap I heard about vista that made me linux bound, but maybe in the future I might use XP again in a virual enviroment up until its lifespan runs out.
But honestly its no wonder why most of us on XP moved to linux, all the BS in XP turned me off but if I had the chance i would use XP again... under my own terms of course :D

[BoyOfDestiny]

Well it's been a while.

I had used 98SE, since windows ME is/was essentially 98se with garbage on top (the only two differences I can remember is the addition of the buggy system restore (storing files in triplicate, keeping viruses backed up, and unable to delete etc... dunno if they fixed that) and hiding the reboot to DOS option from the start menu.)

I could never keep 98se more than a couple of weeks without a reboot. Lots of disk thrashing, even with my whopping 384mb of RAM at the time... Considering many people still used 128mb or less etc...

So I looked forward to XP, except for the activation scheme. With what Vista has now, well + WGA they added for XP now, it makes that look pretty tame... Besides that though, more stable, and better memory management, plug and play that worked (mostly! ;) ) ntfs instead of fat32...

I disliked the "new" start menu, and the "personalized menu" option which hid items you hadn't used in a while (that still makes no sense to me.)

The "eye candy" was annoying (slow fades etc), and for reasons beyond my understanding, you had to go to control panel to disable the skinning. If you choose classic from the appearance (or wherever it is) it would just skin it to look like the old one, still wasting the resources)

I ran (and still do now on Ubuntu) privoxy with firefox, and back when I used ie, with ie. I used adaware to scan for spyware. Between the needing to defrag. Having to tweak things (like disable system restore), update my own apps, etc...

Well Linux was "too hard" for me back then. Now however is another story. It's so low maintenance that it's almost boring (so I run feisty right now to keep things interesting). Besides the 3 or 4 apps I compile (sometimes svn's) EVERYTHING is updated for me. No defragging. No scanning for spyware or viruses. No ports listening that I didn't want there myself. No activation, no limitations on hardware changes... No deliberate holes for the NSA...
And it's free (in the freedom sense and cost sense)

So I don't miss XP. If I wanted to I could stick it in a VM. But in all honesty I can say it was an improvement over win9x, and I wouldn't complain if people hung onto it rather than jumping aboard Vista (I detest the DRM and the effect it will have on hardware, whether that be making it more costly or function limiting)

[erlyrisa]

-I think XP will stay around for alot longer than it's predessor - 98/2000

-even Microsoft have made it easy enough for an XP licensed user to keep up with the latest offereings that Vista beholds , eg. IE7 ,the Contacts folder and .net --I think even they themselves (Msoft) know that with XP - it's just good enough. It's not like 98/Millenium> fat clunky slow and virus ridden. I have a feeling the average Joe isn't running out to buy Vista, just like the average Joe didn't run out to buy XP ... I still got a couple of mates running Milenium on 64Mb machines. - I keep offering them ram and an install of XP - but their attitude is , it downloads me music, I can surf the net and do me Spread sheets, I don't really care. (Shame I can't get them to install Ubunntu!)