foo fighter
Member
Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287 |
 I'm back............
quote:
Originally posted by dietrichbohn
Foo? Are you there Foo?
Ah, the trials and tribulations of beta software. 
Well, after nearly two hours of waiting for the setup program to complete, I finally got the system up and running, though not without it's share of problems. I advise anyone waiting on the beta to uninstall ZoneAlarm before attempting to load XP onto their system. It will stop the setup program dead in its tracks! Other than that, the install went off without a problem. I'll hand it to Microsoft, they did an excellent job of building a world class setup procedure.
The first time XP boots up, your greeted with a rather cool looking intro movie that says "Whistler". But look fast, because you will only see it once, and never again. After that, you encounter the login screen which vaguely resembles the one from MSN Explorer. Very colorful and easy to use. Once you login, you are booted into XP. Here is where my excitement turned to disappointment. First, let me just say that the new interface is awful! Some users have characterized it as "Fisher-Price looking", I call it Sesame Street on acid". The GUI elements look very cheap and toy-like, although there are some aspects to the design that are a definite step forward. For example, buttons, scrollbars, and drop-down menus behave like rollover buttons on a web page. You move your mouse over a scrollbar, and it changes color. This will be a big help for beginners who are new to PCs, but experienced users are not going to like this. Aside from that, the interface is far too bloated. I don't see how anyone will be able to use this new OS at anything under 1024x768 screen resolution. Window titlebars have been doubled in thickness, and the preview pane that is built into each window can take up as much as one third of viewable space. My disappointment deepened when I soon realized that, beyond the new UI enhancements, there really wasn't anything new in XP. It's just a rehashed version of Windows 2000 with some minor usability tweaks. I've often wondered why so many screenshots I see of XP only concentrate on the taskbar and Start menu, and now I know why...that's all there is! That's not to say it's a bad OS, in fact, I think it's going to be a hit with Windows fans, but there really isn't anything new or exciting here. In fact, I think it's a step back, as a workstation OS. Microsoft seems to be architecting Windows into a bloated MSN client.
In terms of stability, it runs great! To be honest, even at the beta 2 stage, it's still more stable than Windows 98/ME. Win9x users are going to love it! But there are going to be some costs involved. Your going to need somewhere near at least 500Mhz (PIII or Celeron) system with 256MB to really get the full benefit. I have an older PII 350 with 128mb ram, and while it will run fine for basic tasks, the OS quickly slows down when doing anything involving multimedia. The new interface is the real culprit here, it is a massive resource hog. But PC133 memory is cheap, so if you already have a Pentium III system with 128MB ram, adding another 128 won't set you back much, but I pity the poor bastard that owns a Pentium 4 with Rambus memory. You may want to find buyers for one of your kidneys now! 
My overall impressions of XP are rather mixed so far. It's a step ahead (of the Win9x codebase), but it's also a step back in some respects. For me it was somewhat of a let down.
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Last edited by foo fighter on 04-26-2001 at 08:50 PM
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04-02-2001 05:11 AM
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