Is XP really that good?

[40hz]

The only real knock I have on XP is its desktop.

I'd truly love it if you had a little more choice in desktop management. Especially since all the 3rd-party desktop replacements I've seen are even worse than what Microsoft came up with.

I wish I XP provided an option to get rid of all the desktop junk and icon nonsense in favor of a blank screen with a pop-up on right-click menu arrangement like Xfce provides. Combine that with a Quake-type dropdown terminal window (i.e. command prompt) like Yakuake and I'd be in heaven.

[mrainey]

I wish I XP provided an option to get rid of all the desktop junk and icon nonsense in favor of a blank screen with a pop-up on right-click menu arrangement like Xfce provides.

I use a combination of no-icon desktop and well-organized Start Menu.  Works great.

[nontroppo]

I don't know about you, but I prefer Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)

  

Oh well, it got much better since then, I'm sure. Probably you used some of the first versions, which even by Nick's own admittance were terrible in the toolbar department. And with the new changes coming in 2.8, things are like these UI-wise. Personally, I prefer this kind of interface to the lean one used by NetNewsWire (not to mention this one seems to lack the newspaper-style to show the feeds).

-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)

Thanks for that blogpost by da man himself, nice to see things are getting better. I still think that is indicative of the XP-centric design philosophy (UI design comes later if at all), and sadly many programmers simply fail to bother the subsequent refining part as Ray did.

A pinnacle of XP UI? 

HA! I knew you were going to mention Pixelmator . There's a lot of software for the Mac that looks great, but it always baffled me that most of it it's payware, and not exactly cheap. When considering the initial price of a Mac, and the extra you have to pay for most software, the design-advantage starts to feel smaller :-)

-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)

Come on, spending money stimulates the economy ya skinflint! 

Seriously, there is lots of free software out there too (and most of the *nix tools are available for OS X too, e.g. Gimp in this case). But you know, when FeedDemon came out there were lots of free RSS readers too for XP (I used just about all of them), and FeedDemon cost $$$ back then; but it was simply better software. Again it is probably the distinction between "good enough" and "wonderful".

[tomos]

A pinnacle of XP UI? 

-nontroppo (December 01, 2008, 07:51 AM)

I prob going a bit further off topic here -
I havent used that renamer, certainly looks a bit daunting - but I could imagine once you get to know it, you have all options at your fingertips.
I love a good looking programme (dont call me superficial yet!) and find myself often frustrated with interfaces of (windows platform) software, difficulties finding stuff/unintuitive, [requiring 20 clicks to do something that could/should be two] etc.

guess the point I want to make is that if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both

[cranioscopical]

if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both

-tomos (December 01, 2008, 09:21 AM)

Good point! 
So often choices are presented as either a or b when the possibility exists for a or b or a+b

[Darwin]

A pinnacle of XP UI? 

-nontroppo (December 01, 2008, 07:51 AM)

I prob going a bit further off topic here -
I havent used that renamer, certainly looks a bit daunting - but I could imagine once you get to know it, you have all options at your fingertips.
I love a good looking programme (dont call me superficial yet!) and find myself often frustrated with interfaces of (windows platform) software, difficulties finding stuff/unintuitive, [requiring 20 clicks to do something that could/should be two] etc.

guess the point I want to make is that if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both

-tomos (December 01, 2008, 09:21 AM)

I love the GUI in Bulk Rename Utility 

[40hz]

if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both

-tomos (December 01, 2008, 09:21 AM)

Good point! 
So often choices are presented as either a or b when the possibility exists for a or b or a+b

-cranioscopical (December 01, 2008, 12:07 PM)

Excellent point!

BTW: Remind me to warn my two sisters about you.

(Sorry, couldn't resist. )

[40hz]

I wish I XP provided an option to get rid of all the desktop junk and icon nonsense in favor of a blank screen with a pop-up on right-click menu arrangement like Xfce provides.

I use a combination of no-icon desktop and well-organized Start Menu.  Works great.

-mrainey (November 30, 2008, 08:33 PM)

I pretty much do too. But having to dive to the start button on a big monitor is becoming more and more of a pain for me. (I think I'm finally starting to feel the years a bit... ) 

Right now, I'm semi-faking the functionality of xfce by using Direct Folders 3.3 ( www.directfolders.com ) but I'd still prefer that "feature" to be built into Windows itself.

[yotta]

is xp really that good? maybe, but windows 7 is better

[zridling]

Carol has often said it before, but the one vast advantage that XP enjoys is its application base. Not only users, but businesses don't want to give up that advantage. And now that enough people (or corporations) didn't switch to Vista, they know they can wait Microsoft out.

Automatically upgrading is no longer inevitable for everyone.

[tslim]

Hi,

I still have a Pentium 3 machine runs DOS VER6.0
I normally use it to play old games like Dig Dug, Road Runner, Roller and the brush.. etc

On the Pentium 3, Dos 6 boot-up 100 times faster than XP on my QuadCore machine.
Dos 6 main screen is 100 time cleaner than my XP desktop (it only has a C prompt)
Those old games boot-up 100 times faster than Civ4 or any recent games in XP

Dos 6 does not has a registry so it never has registry corruption problem like XP
and ...
with DOS 6, I have never used more than 1 Mb ram to run any program...

I think DOS 6 is the best O/S, better than XP
and...
I have no experience at all in Linux, so I am not quite sure about DOS6 VS LINUX, but I suppose DOS 6 is also better than Linux.

[zridling]

This just in: Dell is charging $150 to downgrade to XP!

"Essentially how it works is the customer prepays for an upgrade to Vista Ultimate in exchange for a preinstalled copy of Windows XP Professional."

Dell, you suck.

[app103]

This just in: Dell is charging $150 to downgrade to XP!

"Essentially how it works is the customer prepays for an upgrade to Vista Ultimate in exchange for a preinstalled copy of Windows XP Professional."

Dell, you suck.

-zridling (December 05, 2008, 08:56 PM)

Dell is giving XP away for free right now, with Vista Business. You just have to know where to look. Stay away from the home user stuff and head to the small business section of the site and customize your machine. You won't get a crapware bundle, either. Just look for that word "FREE". 


http://www.dell.com/...0~1791344&page=1

[f0dder]

tslim: registry corruption? in all my years of XP (and before that, win2k) I have never ever experienced that, neither on my own machine nor any I have been supervising. Neither during normal use, nor after BSODs (including some pretty nasty ones during driver development on test machines). Care to elaborate?

As for old games booting faster than new ones, sure - old games didn't have to load a gigabyte of 3D models and texture data . New games sure do look prettier... gameplay isn't always better, though.

[tslim]

As for old games booting faster than new ones, sure - old games didn't have to load a gigabyte of 3D models and texture data .

-f0dder (December 05, 2008, 10:21 PM)

So as the case for DOS main screen is cleaner than XP desktop, because it simply does not have Startup Menu, Recycle Bin and Shortcuts with icon. It only has a C prompt.

In fact for all I have listed, those are, IMO, WRONG factors to be taken into account when trying to compare 2 different O/S. Simply put, they are merely personal concerns, not universal factors in O/S comparison.

One might like a wonder woman who helps her boy friend in every aspect of life though sometime she can cause problems, the others might prefer a slim, innocent girl whom he needs to give help in every aspect of life and she never cause problem because she herself is the problem...
I can list a thousand reasons why my girl friend is better than yours, yet I am sure you won't agree with me. I think computer O/S is something hard to evaluate, it is as complicated as girl friend...

BTW, me too have never come across registry corruption for years, except when a virus/trojan writes something to registry in my friend's PC (if that is considered corruption)...

... and to be frank, as of this writing, I love XP the most!

[nontroppo]

I've seen three cases where a machine was hosed due to registry corruption, one machine was fixed by hacking around in the recovery console:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

The user of the second was smart enough to run ERUNT on a regular schedule and ran an alternative OS to make recovery trivial (XP running bootcamped on my macbook  )

But a third was truly hosed, system restore was useless and several days work was interrupted as that machine was rehabilitated. Google suggests these are not isolated incidences. My experience is that a monolithic store, even with XPs attempts at integrity maintainence, is certainly flawed.

[f0dder]

Weird.

I haven't seen a hosed registry since then Win9x days - neither on any of my own machines, or machines I've been managing (the museum, friends, family, ...). This amounts to 20+ machines (and more if you count replaced hardware), and some of them have been through a lot of abuse, as well as malware, hardware failures, de-synched RAIDs (stripes as well as mirrors), et cetera. On my own systems, it includes getting BSODs during driver development with unflushed filesystem caches (which *has* hosed a system now and then, but never with registry failure).

So I wonder, what do people do to get a corrupted registry? Note that invalid driver configuration doesn't count, as that would leave a system hosed no matter where system configuration is stored and isn't registry-specific.

[iphigenie]

This sounds like one of those discussions where someone hasn't used Linux for more than ten minutes in the past year, but knows in detail how bad it is. In other words, it's not true to my experience

-zridling (November 30, 2008, 03:23 AM)

This would have been a very commendable attitude if it wasn't followed by a list that is more religious belief than truth - made me want to rant, which i did elsewhere

The point of this thread was a very open minded discussion saying "oh, windows XP works pretty well"

My take on this is simple: it works pretty well because it is old. It has been here for years and as a result
- the current hardware is overpowered for it (my first xp machine had 256M of ram and it did really well on it)
- annoyances have been ironed out
- it is easy for hardware makers to have decent drivers
- but it also has accumulated a huge collection of generic drivers
- there has been time for freeware to emerge for all the annoyances that are linked to taste (= things which annoy a subset of people)
- software that was written years ago still works
- most people have used it enough (even if only on other people's machines) that it is universally familiar (this is the bit that linux alas cannot beat)

This all creates a pretty nice and tight package, and a success on the scale that makes the original hype campaign for XP (I was an OS/2 person back then, i hated that campaign full of misinformation) actually not ridiculous at all...

I have always preferred another OS to tinker with or develop on, but throughout it all I have always had my day to day desktop machines as windows, especially at home. Granted it mostly was because of certain pieces of software and games. But I guess I am typical.

You get the same effect if you use an older version of linux (do patch the libraries, though), without the newer, less stable bells and whistles.

It takes time to become efficient

[zridling]

[iphigenie]: This would have been a very commendable attitude if it wasn't followed by a list that is more religious belief than truth - made me want to rant, which i did elsewhere.

Methinks you protest too much. I did acknowledge XP's utility, however, where exactly is the untruth and "religious belief" in my response to "For your normal user, there is little reason not to run Windows"? (emphasis mine)

No big deal. I disagreed and gave 11 specific reasons based on my experience with Linux as a reasonable alternative to Windows. I used Microsoft OSes from 1985-2007. I have definitely earned -- not to mention paid for -- the right to try something different. God forbid it should turn out to be fortunate in every way.

[nontroppo]

So I wonder, what do people do to get a corrupted registry? Note that invalid driver configuration doesn't count, as that would leave a system hosed no matter where system configuration is stored and isn't registry-specific.

-f0dder (December 09, 2008, 01:10 AM)

Well beats me. The owner of the hosed system is a true computer conservative, she runs stuff that she was comfortable from her DOS days (wordperfect > word), she was definitely not a tinkerer in any sense. She runs eudora and netscape, never opens attachments from mail, never wants to try new software, *never* would run a beta, doesnt install service packs/updates until she knows no one else had issues. And yet when we were days away from a crucial deadline (computers seem to sense it!); boom.

My corruption was also not clearly attributable to anything, though I do test lots of software, and am a private alpha tester for several things, so I'm more vulnerable (I'd have to edit registry values sometimes). ErunNT was the only registry-type software I'd run, can't really see how that could cause failure.

[tslim]

I did acknowledge XP's utility, however, where exactly is the untruth and "religious belief" in my response to "For your normal user, there is little reason not to run Windows"? (emphasis mine)

No big deal. I disagreed and gave 11 specific reasons based on my experience with Linux as a reasonable alternative to Windows...

-zridling (December 09, 2008, 04:10 PM)

"Let there be Light"... and there is light
Basically statement like the above gives religious impression. (Guess who said that)

I mean your 11 reasons probably are not religion founded, but the way you have stated them, is. 

e.g. you have stated:
- Viruses and Spyware (no need to buy any of that; and viruses are nil)
...
- Fun! (I haven't had this much fun on a computer since Win95.)

Lets see how I put mine for DOS6:
- Viruses and Spyware
   a) The population of DOS6 user is very small relatively (compare to the most popular O/S - Windows), so no Virus is interested in attacking DOS6, because ... it is hard to find DOS6 user, too few of them.
   b) Even if there are many Viruses waiting on-line to attack DOS6 user, but generally they still won't fall a victim because there is no Internet Browser in DOS6 ... DOS6 users basically don't go on line, the viruses simply got no chance.
   
   As a conclusion, no need to buy any of that; and viruses are nil 
   
- Fun!
   a) I am kind of person who like to torture myself, very very much. For example, I like to spend hours after hours just to find out why a device does not work in DOS6, even though I know ahead there is no documentation to help.
   b) Sometime I could go on line and ask one million experts a few billion times in order to find out how to configure a device driver for DOS6... even if I am told there is no driver for certain device ... etc
   c) I am lucky that I enjoy setting up DOS6 environment bit by bit until I got my heart attack... I am happily dying just for that... which I think could be a torture to most other people.
   
   As a conclusion, I have had this much fun on a computer with DOS since ver 6 
   
Well, you need to have strong ground in order to support your reasons like what I have done, right?     

[Rover]

This is to certify that I have migrated my home laptops to Windows XP Professional for a week already.

Since Aug. 15, 2005, this blog used to include a good deal of Linux coverage (especially the so-called “old blog”, whose graphical look changed several times), and the very few faithful readers should know quite a lot about my tumultuous love-hate relationship with the bloody penguin.

from LinuxToday.com