[quote]Oh, one more thing. XP is rock solid. Have had it running non-stop for the past four days now. Now, if this was Windows 98 it would have crashed on me half way through day two if it got to day two. Not to mention, IMO, memory management is a lot better than Win98. [/quote]

4 days is crap uptime when compared with mine(My Machine has been up for 34days 5hr 27min load averages: .83, .89, .82) I -and that was the time from my last software update(it required reboot [in past 10 months I have had 2 crashes that required a restart[/i]).I am running Mac OS X.1.4(am about to upgrade to 10.1.5 and restart my uptime)
[url]http://www.macaddict.com/forums/Forum31/HTML/005215.htm/url]

This week I Installed the XP OS on my PC. I am only using a 850CPU with 512 of RAM. I find all office XP applications are much slower, it's unusable! Now I have to reinstall 2K. I would agree with this poor evaluation of XP.

I work hard for my money and I am disappointed that MS staff do not work hard enough to deliver on their word.

ps - My advice is that you test drive XP before you buy it. If you have less than a GIG CPU and 1/2 GIG of RAM, pass on XP!

Also, last year I bought and Installed ME on my kids and fathers PC's. After never-ending freezes on all machines, I rebuilt the machines with 98SE. Beware ME is scrap!

Funny test.. No mention of how much memory was in the machines and no comperative test of AMD cpu:s.

All the tests I had seen prior to this listed Windows XP as slightly faster than Windows 2000 on anandtech, tomshardware and so on..

help me! I can't get onto msn instant messanger. Everytime I try, it freezes up in the middle of my log on process. What can I do?

no matter which way you put it, computers are like airconditioners.

they dont work well when windows are open.

Originally Posted by bobdole
Whoa... an added 53 minutes to a normal work day?

That is assuming that most people can keep up with their workstation in the first place! Anybody who has used XP during the beta, or RC- candidate phase will realize that it is a VERY STABLE OS. People really aren\'t giving MS enough credit for their incredible work that they have put into this product. Plus, if you disable the \"fluff\" features (like the new desktop skins) it is every bit as fast as Win2k. For admins, this product is a DREAM! WMI interfaces out the ying yang.

Bah... Go buy it, you\'ll love it.

I think that the complexity in Windows products comes from incorporating a diversity of features that aren't necessarily part of operating system. Each feature is done well enough and is stable enough to deter buying third party software. Basically lets kill any possible furture competition from another software house by not allowing it to become large.

My final verdict: XP is coming off. Win2k SP2 is going back on.

I've noted a kind of downhill slope with Windows installs: Right after install, when you haven't even got all your drivers, everything is razor sharp and snappy. Everything clicks and runs, no sluggish feeling at all. After all the drivers are installed, and everything is running right, the snappy feeling is much more muted, but it's still there. Everything runs nicely, and stability isn't much of an issue. After getting all the 3rd party stuff loaded on (DirectX8, Office, Diskeeper, some core games, ftp client, mirc client, etc, etc, etc), things are less snappy still, but stability remains a non-issue.

After a month or three, even if I haven't installed a single damned thing, the OS either is, or is starting to become unstable.

Even if I installed NOTHING. No drivers, no updates, NOTHING.

Why is that?

I have a Debian install here that hasn't needed any maintenance or nose wiping for something like 6 months. I fix the boot loader after I reinstall Windows, but nothing else. I run it >60% of the time now, even though I love gaming.

Anyway, back to the point: 2K install to unusablility slide time = 3 months, give or take. XP install to worthless slide time: less than 1 month.

Now, I must run before I get a BSoD in the WHQL signed DetXP 21.83 again. That NV_DISP.DLL is a real pain.

By making Windows more complex, Bill Gates and company are making it less stable.
----------
Not necessarily. It would be hard to argue that XP is less stable than 9x/ME, for instance.

Wow, lot of random things to say.

- InfoWorld RULES!

- Damage's graphs are still way better.

- I hope Samlind has started a new catchphrase:

Slowest. Adoption. Ever!

- at work, our mail server (also a file server) is a Pentium 133 running NT 4.

- Win2k is pretty much the greatest thing since chunky peanut butter.

- for the longest time, I was dual booting for games to Win95sr2. After some kind wipe, I've finally moved up to 98se.

ER

In my first post. I didn't say all of Amazon's computers are now on the LINUX platform. That's why I posted the link. My point is there is now a strong financial incentive for businesses not to use any version of Windows, especially XP.
Anyone who's studied engineering, genetics and/or chaos mathematics knows that the more complex a system is, the more likely it is that it will fail. By making Windows more complex, Bill Gates and company are making it less stable. The best way to make Windows more stable is to take stuff out.
The website www.98lite.net has software that lets you do just that. It's not free, but it is cheaper that XP.

"Windows XP is the fastest operating system we've every built"
-------------
See, the wonerful thing about teh wonderful world of misleading marketing and sh!t talk is that he coulda been talking about boot times...

Originally Posted by ---k
I didn\'t expect XP to be any faster. That would be counter to MS business model. They sell more feature-rich (bloated) software. Intel would be out of business if if software was less bloated. The only time I was pleasently surprised that this wasn\'t the case was when I went from 98 to 2k. I don\'t this will happen again in the forseeable future.

I have a question for you.

Is anyone seriously expecting new games to forever work with their Celeron 300?

EVERY single windows version has been slower than the previous, and that is matched by the hardware speed increase. This time it somehow has to be magically different?

Originally Posted by ---k
My personal experience with the XP slowdown is mirrored by Anandtech:

\"The performance delta between the Windows 2000 + Office 2000 combo and Windows XP RC1 + Office XP still hovers around 25 – 27%. \"

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1505

\"The net result is that customers will need to budget for a 25-30% performance loss per client PC when transitioning from Windows 2000/Office 2000 to Windows XP/Office XP. Put into real-world terms, this represents the equivalent of a 500MHz performance delta – i.e. you’d need to crank-up the processor clock on our test bed by 33% to 2GHz in order to compensate for performance lost to OS and application “inflation.”\"

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1501

I\'ve read from numerous sources that Intel wanted MS to come up a solution to their stagnating cpu sales. Seems like MS succeeded solved Intel\'s problem with flying colors with XP. Now you are justified in getting that 2GHZ CPU.

Make that

[q] "Windows XP is the fastest operating system we've [b] EVER [/b] built [/q]

Damn typos :-),
IntelMole

I forgot to mention this before by the way:

I didn't mention that Bill Gates is a HUGE liar... Taken from his conference thingy in New York City:

"Windows XP is the fastest operating system we've every built"

hehe that's BS and everyone who knows anything about computers knows it...

Run Windows 3.1 next to Windows XP and which one is faster in raw terms?

Exactly, Windows 3.1 :-),
IntelMole

What a pathetic troll.

Try running this on your front page:

Ziff Davis study shows XP up to 34% faster than Win 98SE, Win ME, Win NT, and Win2K:

http://etestinglabs.com/main/reports/msxp.pdf

Well look at that; a 155 page disclosure that actually tells you what was tested and how it was tested.

Gosh dude, sorry that it doesn't fit in with your anti-MS trolling.

I haven't heard anyone mention the desktop RDP server yet. IT manager's dream. That's the only reason I'm even considering it. I can't wait until someone hacks that back into Win2k. I know it can't be that hard.

[q]
Oh, one more thing. XP is rock solid. Have had it running non-stop for the past four days now. Now, if this was Windows 98 it would have crashed on me half way through day two if it got to day two. Not to mention, IMO, memory management is a lot better than Win98. 384 megs of PC133 ram will do wonders. <thinks> wonder if 512 megs of PC2100 will do any better....</thinks>
[/q]

Heck, it doesn't take WinXP for anyone who has used NT4 or Win2K for a while to know that the Win9x kernel is a joke compared the NT one when it comes to stability and memory management. Win9x/ME users might realize tangible benefits from upgrading to WinXP but I still have yet to see a single significant reason why those using Win2K without problems would want to. And no, the Luna UI is not reason enough, not in my book anyway...

[q]
Everyone knows 9x was for gaming and NT was for working. Killing off the 9x kernel was a poor choice and Microsoft will get hurt by it especially since there are a lot of legacy style gamers still out and about.
[/q]

As a gamer who relied on Win9x for a long time, I think the 16/32-bit kernel outlived it's usefulness by several years. Had MS gone with the NT kernel for everyone years ago instead of dedicating(wasting) its resources on releasing modified versions of the same one that dated back to the early 80's, there wouldn't be any wondering whether this program or that program will run on XP or 2K today.

Win9x was a hack from the beginning to ease the transition from DOS to full 32-bit programs. It was good back in '95 when most programs were developed for DOS but the three years betwen then and the release of Win98 should've been sufficient for both developers and end users to move away from the older software model.

Sticking with the Win9x kernel for "home" OS's only delays the inevitable and makes life more difficult for both the people creating applications and using them. If XP is better than 2K is better than NT, imagine how much better(barring MS bloat) of an OS we would have had MS dumped the 16-bit model completely after Win95 and forced all software houses to create all 32-bit programs.

Many people, especially testers of the BETA builds, knew Windows Xp was not going to be a cake-walk OS. Improvements to the 9x based Windows ME should have been done instead for Home Users. The NT kernel offers stability and better control over the OS but there is a price you will pay. Gamers will find many older games especially ones built in the DirectX 5 era will not work with any NT based OS. People wanting to upgrade will have to find compatible hardware or be stuck with minimal to zero driver support. Everyone knows 9x was for gaming and NT was for working. Killing off the 9x kernel was a poor choice and Microsoft will get hurt by it especially since there are a lot of legacy style gamers still out and about.

MS is evil.. took me quite a while to figure out how to disable and then uninstall MSN from XP.

Does anyone have info on how to steal back some performance from the GUI (ie. by disabling key features)? And back to back comparisons?

Originally Posted by tucker
I read the Infoworld article and found it to be interesting, but not representative of what I have experienced in months of beta testing on XP Pro and Server. It would have been nice if Infoworld would have published the full specs of the test machines. They didn\'t even say how much memory each box had. They could have been running 128 mb for all we know.

In day-to-day use, XP runs faster than Win2K on my P3-1000, 512 mb system with older generation IBM 34 GXP HDs. Boot-up, shutdown, hibernate, and sleep are all MUCH faster in XP... and the system just seems snappier. Windows Explorer opens in a fraction of the time compared to Win2K.

I don\'t do database crunching... I mostly run typical Office 2000 apps (Word, Excel, Frontpage), so my experiences may be different than Infoworld\'s database oriented testing. All I know is I like XP and I\'m not going back to Win2K.

I have most of the UI features turned on except for the drop shadow on menus and window animation. Both of these really slow things down. I much prefer the look of XP over Win2K, and the multiple user support with fast user switching (especially using the Powertools) is very nice. With the Welcome Screen, this is an OS that my non computer literate spouse can finally use.

Is it perfect? Hell no. There are still bugs and driver support isn\'t what it should be. Personally, I would have pushed back the release date a bit, but then the lucrative holiday season would have been out of the question.

Quoted from Firing Squad (http://firingsquad.gamers.com/games/winxpperf/default.asp):

[q]"When operating our testbeds with the older OSs, there hasn't been much to worry about. Prior methodology required us to install the OS, install the drivers and then run the benchmarks as we would any program. With the advent of XP, our usual testing procedures developed a little kink. Microsoft actually has a section on their website explaining how to run tests on XP. It seems that WinXP has some interesting disk caching, or disk arrangement, features that run in the background. The purpose of these tasks is to speed up the programs you use on a daily basis. This is akin to the way defrag works, only these processes startup whenever you aren't doing anything on your computer."[/q]
From their next page in article:
[q]"These processes function on a three-day cycle. Windows cannot possibly create an intelligent arrangement of the disk without having any sort of user history. Microsoft claims that this feature can improve system performance by up to 10%.[/q]
And a final quote I liked, that really seems to put a thorn into the infoworld article:
[q]"If you are doing anything besides playing games, these scores should make you shun 98SE for life, as the NT based OSs maintain a rather large margin over Win98SE in a few of the tests. In some of the test, WinXP either has a small lead over Win2K, or they end up neck and neck."[/q]
Just some things I found interesting.. Check out Firing Squad's complete article (hyperlink above).

-jlt

Okay peeps, I've heard as much WinME bashing as I think I can take...

Here's the deal:

Windows 98 was an ABSOLUTE SHOCKER of an OS... Not only is it much slower than 95 and ME that I run now, it doesn't like my motherboard, which meant that when i got my scanner and upgraded to Windows 98, I spent about a week trying to figure out why it was conflicting. Not fun.

Windows 95 is probably the best OS of the lot, except that it's outdated... imagine - Windows 2K2, the bare bones OS... no fancy graphics or useless features to slow my computer down... no gigabyte installations to slow it down even more... no "bloatware..." hehe

Windows ME I run because it has the System Restore feature, which I cannot live without because I manage to screw my system very regularly and very efficiently.

It's also about as fast to start up as W95, and the whole DOS issues (such as stuff in Scandisk about maximum path length) are banished FOREVER!

Oh, and Win ME doesn't have a thing for my soundcard and motherboard like 98...

NT and 2K I've not tried, so i can't comment on, unfortunately...

XP has far too much on it, it's just bloatware... It's slower, the extra features (like the start bar stuff etc.) slow it down until you turn them off, which defeats the point of upgrading :-)

Oh, and people.... anything divided by nought is actually "unclassified" not infinity :-P

Taking cover from the snipers,
IntelMole

Oh, one more thing. XP is rock solid. Have had it running non-stop for the past four days now. Now, if this was Windows 98 it would have crashed on me half way through day two if it got to day two. Not to mention, IMO, memory management is a lot better than Win98. 384 megs of PC133 ram will do wonders. <thinks> wonder if 512 megs of PC2100 will do any better....</thinks>

They both switched to linux from ....UNIX... sorry boys, no Microsoft bashing there....

DiamondZ post #40

I see you ran into the same problems as I did. lol If I would of been in the right state of mind that night I installed XP I wouldn't have called MS tech support for four hours to figure out that I was losing my cd-rom after reboot and would of fixed it myself. I had to disconnect my second hard drive that I had daisychained on the primary IDE channel. I also had the cd-rom drive set as the slave on the secondary IDE channel, but didn't have to do anything to the cd-rom drive. Boy was that a hassle...one I didn't mind though. Never will learn anything w/out some trial and error every now and then.

And the same with the front page, big news or a TR review at the top, then suddenly there are new news posts a bit down...????? its not the newest is at the top which makes it a bit akward at first.