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ringo · Oct 31, 2002, 12:52 PM

Well I finally took the plunge last night and put XP professional on my Pee-Cee.

Thought I would share my initial impressions/comparisons to OS X with the class.

1. Appearance: Blech! The default install looks like an episode of Teletubbies. The color scheme (blue and green) makes me seasick. Overall an improvement over the blocky look of 98 and 2000, but fugly on intallation...BUT, appearance is far more customizable than OS X. Why won't Apple let users choose more than just Aqua and graphite?
Overall: OSX wins, but XP is more tinker-friendly

2. Interface: Start Menu has doubled in width, but even in combination with the taskbar is not as user-friendly as the dock.
Overall: OS X wins

3. Ease of upgrade: XP comes with an app that will warn you about incompatible hardware and software from an earlier installation of Windows. Peachy, let me fix a few things in advance. Too bad it failed to point out that several of my programs (Musicmatch, Nero, Disc Juggler so far) would be 'broken' by the new OS. Only fixed Nero so far, but I can look forward to spending more time fixing the others. I'm not confident that I found everything either...planning on starting every app I own tonight to make sure all the kinks were worked out.
XP also fails to warn the user that preferances from some other programs will need to be reset due to the better implementation of users. I spent 15 minutes this morning trying to figure out why one of my download folders on the desktop wasn't populating to discover that the app was saving to the old desktop location, not to the current desktop.
Overall: XP does not live up to promised ease of upgrade (From 98 anyway).

4. Configuration: Why oh why does XP depend so much on wizards? Yes, many users need these, but configuring my network was a hassle because Microsoft's "Plain English" is different than my own when it comes to describing "typical network environments".
Overall: Advantage OS X

So overall, XP is much nicer than old Windows OS's, but falls way short of the standard set by OS X.

Best perk from upgrading: Remote Desktop, now I can make my PC do what I need it for from my iBook...it's like having two computers in my lap at once, 'effing nice.

macvillage.net · Oct 31, 2002, 01:42 PM

Set the color scheme to silver... Looks a bit better IMHO.

theolein · Oct 31, 2002, 04:34 PM

Don't forget to convert your partitions to NTFS. It makes for a huge improvement in stability. I use XP daily and I've grown to appreciate it's stability, which is really good. Most of the wizards can be passed by but I will never understand why MS needs so many dialog boxes for any configuration issue, no matter how simple. Even the console has improved enormously in Win XP. The same drag and drop of files to get the path pasted in the command line works in XP as do pipes finally. (I think someone at MS thought this would get Linux people to crossover). However I miss MacOSX and it's simplicity as well as the integration of everything there.

olePigeon · Oct 31, 2002, 06:46 PM

You're lucky. XP litterally killed my stepmom's scanner and mouse. Physically destroyed the USB ports.

I know of at least 2 other people that this happened to.

philzilla · Oct 31, 2002, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by ringo:
Best perk from upgrading: Remote Desktop, now I can make my PC do what I need it for from my iBook...it's like having two computers in my lap at once, 'effing nice.

some of us have had that ability for years. it's called Timbuktu

i helped my dad upgrade his D*ll from WinMe to XP Pro, a few weeks ago. it was a bit awkward to install and i had to do some DOS-Fu, as well as completely formatting the drive first (because it was SO screwed up by WinMe, that XP decided the entire drive was corrupt!

anyway, i've had a few plays with it. uhh... stable OS? i hard to reboot it about 6 times during one hour. it just froze solid. nice!

that Teletubbies comment is the first thing EVERYONE i know says, when they first see it. like, what were M$ thinking!?

anyway: if it *has* to be a Windoze OS on your machine, i guess this is the best of a bad bunch. just skin it to look like OS X first

klinux · Oct 31, 2002, 06:57 PM

Yeah, really lucky. Windows ME literally pulled out a knife and jacked my printer, leaving a trail of ink. It physically bent the keyboard in half.

I know of at least 2 other people that this happened to.

Hawkeye_a · Oct 31, 2002, 07:02 PM

The only thing i didnt like about XP so far is the dragging of open windows around. it gets that 'fade' effect and redraws the stuff behind the window at the wrong time, making it look really bad. OSX has the double-buffering technique which makes window dragging 'look' and 'feel' a lot smoother.

Apart from that, windows XP is preety good imo. (i dont have a PC, but have used XP at work). It definately is a leap forward for windows users, and at first i had a hard time adapting from my old wndows habits to the new workflow of the OS. but it's never crashed on me once, and aparently works great on a wide variety of hardware configs, so i like it.

Krusty · Oct 31, 2002, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by klinux:
Yeah, really lucky. Windows ME literally pulled out a knife and jacked my printer, leaving a trail of ink. It physically bent the keyboard in half.

I know of at least 2 other people that this happened to.

ROFL

Oct 31, 2002, 08:38 PM

The only feature on XP that I wish MacOS X had is the "switch users" feature. Friends come over grab my laptop when I have a whole bunch of stuff open. I'd rather let them instantly have access to their own user space without me having to log out first.