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Windows XP - The eXPerience Thus Far?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "So Windows XP has been out long enough
for those of us in the IT field to have our managers, users, and
vendors hitting us up for it (Redmond's marketing apparently worked).
So, how has Windows XP affected your IT department and company thus
far? Are you using it, or planning on using it? What made you decide
to migrate? What problems have you run into, and what features have
you found beneficial? Please leave out the anti-MS/pro-Linux rhetoric
unless it is directly related to an issue you have with XP.
Thanks!"
I've been on the beta program since April, and can say that the only real reason to upgrade over 98/me is stability. I wouldn't bother upgrading win2k computers. the extra features are nice, but most of them are either 1) new, and therefore not full-featured (or fully tested/trusted) compared to alternatives (compare PCAnywhere to the Remote feature) or 2) available for win98/me and 2k.
I'm not going back. Sure, it doesn't work with my older web cam, my opti931 sound cards and a few other *low cost* pieces of some computers I've put it on, and the software that came with my $250 cd burner (also purchased in April - CD Creator 4) is also unusable (the only real loss I have with it - I can only use the built in CD burning functions right now) but I've had about 4 stops (when the system halts, dumps memory to the HD and reboots because of some hardware or software issue) in this entire time, and I only reboot when I install software (which was something that was supposed to be fixed, but oh well)
Having said that, I should also say that I'm not going to upgrade the office I work for. Sure, the benefits would be great, but we can't afford the $99 per computer when win98 works for us. Even if we had crashes on each computer daily, we still wouldn't save enough time and money to make up for the cost of the upgrade to the home version, nevermind professional. So it's installed on one computer which has to be rock solid - it's the one I dial into when I'm away from work (I work at home 3 of 5 days a week) and also serves a simple PHP/APACHE site which shows some MS access database information, but isn't worth a full blown server.
So the only thing against it is the 'MS Tax' and the only thing you're getting for that money is the stability we all should have gotten 10 years ago from MS.
-Adam
My experiences with XP are close to perfect. It has yet to bluescreen or take me down to restart because of error (even linux has done that in the past). IE is super fast and works everywhere. The interapplication communication and drag-and-drop are a great timesaver. The only complaint I have is there is no driver written for the Samsung Uproar 64 meg mp3 player/cellphone of mine. Oh well, I just use my laptop... Also, I have yet to find an app that doesn't work with XP that I need...
As far as I am still concerned, Windows still wins in the desktop war.
First of all, where I work, we are still discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would guess.
I have installed it clean on a machine I have at home and I am not all that impressed with it. I use Yahoo Messenger a lot, and I have frequent hard system lock ups, where I have to power cycle the box. I also have a disk on the same box with 2K on it and I don't have the same problem, even though I use Yahoo Messenger about the same under both OSs. So my experience has been that XP is *less* stable than 2K.
I work for an office connected with a major university. I've hand built a few high end workstations recently, in which I was planning on installing 2000, but the university and its license agreements won't license 2000 anyways. So we purchased XP licensed, and figured we'd give them a try, and install 2000 without a license if they didn't work (cause in my book a 2000 installation with an XP license isn't stealing from nobody.) Anyways, so far the XPs have been running great. Turned off the neato graphics to speed them up, and they have been crunching databases doublegood.
Our experiences here have been that it is too slow for computers under 600 MHZ. Also the Novell Support, which has gotten worse at every release of windows, is now so bad XP clients can break Novell Servers by copying files to them. If you run Novell Servers it would be best to replace them with Windows servers before upgrading to XP.
I reverted my test boxes to win2k because
1) XP requires too much CPU and memory.
2) XP devices drivers don't work for my wireless cards.
3) I did not have patience to get Zone Alarm over the hurdles.
Win2k handles desktop very well for admins and
managers. The techs tend to run RedHat or Mandrake or Solaris.
Of course, none of our servers run any variety of Windows, nor ever will. I'd rather spend time on
bizdev than in court with ex-customers!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I can't speak for 128-bit encryption, but take a look at rdesktop. It's a Windows Terminal Services / RDP client for Linux.
Try rdesktop. It runs on Unix with X windows and supports RDP4, a remote access protocol used by Windows NT4 Terminal Server, Windows 2000 Terminal Server and Windows XP. It's at http://www.rdesktop.org
I consult for a group of medical facilities that has an uber-paranoid security model. We run an completely win2k office, I tried an XP client on my test network and 1/2 of my group policies failed to work. Friggin Internet Explorer always loads, I can't remove the icon from the desktop like in Win2K (these machines are not and never will be connected to he internet), and roaming profiles and dekstop redirection are broken. SO I will not be upgrading till about 2006 or so.
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet