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Looking Back on Five Years of Windows XP
david.emery writes "In an article in the Washington Post entitled If Only We Knew Then What We Know Now About Windows XP, post technology columnist Rob Pegoraro points out the 5 year legacy of Windows XP. The article starts 'Windows XP is turning five years old, but will anybody want to celebrate the occasion?' This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors." More from the article: "Consider stability, the single biggest selling point of XP. The operating system was meant to stop individual programs from crashing the system, and it succeeded. It takes an especially malignant program to send my copy of XP to a 'blue screen of death.' But that's not the only way XP can crash. Drivers, the software that lets XP communicate with hardware components, can still lock up the system. If you've seen an XP laptop fail to wake up from standby, you can probably blame it on buggy drivers."
This is correct, but misleading. The main floor of Windows is built of balsa wood with a nice hardwood veneer. It looks solid to the casual observer, but isn't. As for the foundation, styrofoam sure can look like concrete blocks with a nice coat of gray paint.
And as someone else pointed out elsewhere, you're renting this house, and the landlord insists that all you need for a back door is strings of beads, which they add more of every time someone just walks into the house.
The main difference between all versions of Windows is that the house just keeps getting bigger, but not much stonger.
We obey because it's the path of least resistance. I sure as hell ain't gonna start using Linux exclusively and abandon the stuff I like using just to stick it to Microsoft. Doesn't do a damn thing in the long run.
The current versions of Windows are supposed to be the OS that was rebuilt from the ground up, based on NT. It's the DOS based Win95 OS that was scrapped.
Windows is satisfactory IMO: a point and click interface that doesn't crash. It's Internet Explorer that needs much fixing.
I agree. Patching an OS is unreasonable. And the fact that they back up what they patch in case you have to remove the patch is unreasonable (source of the bloat in size). This is why I still run my original Slackware 96 distro. I can't get anything done, but boy it still is running.
...why not just move straight to Linux and save the complete redesign and recoding? Oh, that's right, because Windows is THE standard in software. Remember that NT has been around for longer than 95 has, and it only overtook the 9x line with XP, despite NT being a much better OS than 95. Want to know why? It's very simple: because 95 ran all the existing programs and NT didn't; the only reason XP overtook 9x at all is because it brought compatibility with old programs up to 9x's level. Linux has fought tooth and nail for every 1% market share it's gained, and still that number is dominated by server computers that don't need to run all of the legacy apps. So I guess that's just a roundabout way of saying: your suggestion is absolutely crazy. It'd likely be a decade before the new OS became the new standard and Windows disappeared for all practical purposes. And who knows, maybe that'd be Linux' chance to crush MS (or at least MS' OSes) once and for all, and the new OS would never become the standard.
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors."
WinXP is little more than a skin or theme for Win2k plus the downgrade of mandatory product registration. Please note that 2k is Windows version 5.0 and XP is 5.1. I acknowledge some enhancements to the OS, but most could have made an appearance in 2k SP5.
Whenever I bring this up I always have someone come back with "But XP is better for games." I've never seen this. To this day I play all my PC games on 2k with absolutely no problems or notable performance degradation.
2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
IMHO the best "improvements" that XP has over 2K was the built in CD Burning, .zip support, and the ability to fool old programs into thinking they're running on an older OS. Most of this is a non-issue though because there is good software out there that can remedy these missing features of 2K. When I last dual booted XP and 2K on my system at home I found that with a clean install of each OS that XP would boot faster but once booted 2K actually was less of a hog on the system. Not that 3DMark is the best tool for comparison but I would always score higher in 2K vs XP (no extra services or processes running on either OS). XP basically boiled down to eye candy and the addition of features to remove the necessity for some 3rd party utilities.
Damn you, Microsoft, why did you force all those developers to ignore your test requirements!?
Again, I don't know why Microsoft forced all those developers to ignore their guidelines! It's all Microsoft's fault!
InstallShield used to do that by default, until they realized developers were often sloppy and didn't put their files in the right places. That led to missing DLL files, missing OCX files, etc. Again, is this really Microsoft's fault? I don't think so.
I can't say much good about the registry, since it clearly should have been scrapped a long time ago. Same goes for Windows Genuine Advantage, it is intrusive and prevents a lot of legitimate users from getting security updates. Service Pack 2 did a lot to improve security. I agree more could have been done, but SP2 was a positive step. Vista sounds like it will have some fairly good security tools built-in (depending on the version) for home users.
I have a tough time believing these articles, mainly because most people I know don't have problems with XP in general. When I go to customers' homes/businesses to fix problems, it's usually a result of them downloading porn or free screensavers. I don't really blame MS for that, mainly because a stupid user will find a way to screw up their computer. I don't think that will change with Vista, and I don't think MacOS/Linux are any different.
This article did make some good points about things XP did wrong, but it threw in enough complaints about minor or non-existent problems that I lost confidence in the article's content.
-William Brendel
XP is not a bad OS when you tally up the features vs. problems. Saying that 'I can't believe people are willing to put up with the bugs' is about like saying 'I can't beleive people are willing to put up with compatibility issues' when discussing the Linux distro of your choice. They're not the same problem, but they're about the same order of magnitude.
Please don't mistake me for a Microsoft apologist, though. XP does have some serious flaws.
My take on the worst flaws of XP:
Kernelspace Hardware Drivers - A driver that locks up the system is BAD! I'd be willing to bet that every Windows XP user has at least one such driver on their system.
Cryptic Registry Settings - I've never quite gotten why it was determined that putting all your settings and configuration in one basket was deemed to be a good idea. I can't think of any positive justification whatsoever for this.
OS-level DRM - Bad for so many reasons.
Enabling executeable content by default in Outlook Express - The source of the vast majority of Windows Specific internet worms. This is not really an OS specific issue, but Microsoft is pretty keen on insisting the OE is an uninstallable part of the OS.
No real super-user - You can get 'SYSTEM' user access in Windows via illegitimate means. There is no mechanism for a machine administrator to get this without some sort of hack or workaround.
Crippled IP stack - There are a lot of features between the desktop and server distributions that are crippled to try to keep people from running servers with the desktop distros. Completely fucking pointless since the real money in server distros is not licensing fees, but the support contracts companies.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I use XP because it has all the software I want to use (as does OSX), and it has a good UI that is very keyboard-friendly (as are most Linux flavours I've encountered), while still allowing me to play all the games I want to (currently just XP here), and watch any media I might want to watch, regardless of codec or DRM-infection (again, only XP does that for me). I use my computer to actually use it, not to make a statement :) As soon as any other OS is better-suited to my needs, I'll switch in a heart-beat.
Acting all surprised that people still use it, then insult them as if they're brain-dead drones following what Big Bill tells them is a bit rude. There are plenty of competent non-fanboys out there using Windows, as it does what they want. Just as there are plenty of non-fanboys out there using the many flavours of Linux and OSX to do exactly the same. Again, I use my computer as a tool, not a statement.
The "price" of Win2k, to most home users, was the same price as virtually every version of Windows since (but not including) Windows 95: $0.
I say zero dollars, because in my experience, people either acquire Windows "free" with a computer, or they pirate it. Seriously, those two modes of acquisition have to be the largest two. Very few folks actually buy a retail box of Windows. They either use what comes on the computer, or they get somebody to 'upgrade' it for them, more than likely with a downloaded ISO.
The only version of Windows that I ever saw 'Joe User' run out and purchase was Win95, and I think that was more due to the media attention than anything else; that level of attention/media-circus has basically never happened again.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just a few things:
1) About the kernel mode drivers. Isn't this the case on, well, pretty much every desktop OS? Unless I greatly misunderstand the may the monolithic Linux kernel works drivers on Linux are in kernel space too, even complied as a part of the kernel. It seems that it is just how things are done to provide the speed people want on a modern OS. One can argue that it's fine, drivers ought to be well written. After all what would you rather have: A well written kernel mode video driver that is fast and essentially never locks up your system, though it could, or a poorly written user mode video driver that is slower and crashes all the time (causing your display to restart) because the developers can be sloppy?
2) The registry is one of those kind of good idea/bad idea things. The little appreciated good part is that being centralized it provides a place for everything to find the information it needs. Things like file associations, locations of installed software (and associated required files) and so on. I think there's probably a better way to do it, for example have the registry contain only minimal information like where an app is and a pointer to its config file, but don't discount the advantage of having a central store for information on the system. It means that I can install an app that interacts with another app and they can both get the information they need on each other easily, even if there's been verison changes.
3) What is the OS level DRM you refer to? I've yet to encounter it. The only MS DRM I'm aware of is the Windows Media DRM and the Office DRM. Both are specific to their programs. I suppose you can argue, to an extent, that the WM DRM is OS since media playback is a part of the OS, but it's not automatic or anything. If you try to play a DRM'd file it whines at you and asks if you want to get the licenses for it. However either way it functions on media files only. You can't DRM up an executable or something. It is functionally no different than DRM built in to other media players.
It's also purely optional. It's not like a WMV file needs to have DRM. Most don't and in fact you have to install more software to protect them. You are perfectly free to make unencumbered files if you want to. Same deal with Office. If you want, as a company, you can install the DRM features and control distribution of documents you make, but by default there's no restrictions on anything.
I realise that DRM is unpopular around here but the answer is to simply not purchase DRM'd media. Nobody is forcing you to buy anything. If you don't like it, refuse to play ball. However I don't think it's appropriate to get mad at the people who provide the technology to use it. That's along the same lines of "We shouldn't have done atomic research because it can be used to kill people." Most technology can be used for good or bad, you can't really get pissed at those that make it if people use it for bad.
As an example of good DRM usage, suppose I decide to use streaming media to do technology briefs within my company. I keep employees up to date on progress on new projects via a media stream, rather than staff meeting. However this is all confidential stuff, it's works in development and for it to get out would be harmful. Well, DRM allows me to control that and make sure someone doesn't just save the file on their laptop and walk it over to a competitor.
The people to be pissed at are the content producers that feel you shouldn't own your own content, not the technology producers that make the DRM technology. You don't have to use it if you don't like it, it's just an option.
Not everyone uses a computer as a glass typewriter. It depends on the software - some of the very expensive commericial software people use in my office has never run on a Microsoft platform and linux on basicly 1U gamer godboxes is the cheap way to use it. To look at the displays you can use Hummingbird Exceed on MS Windows or just use linux instead with a faster X windows as part of the standard install. To print on plotters you can spend many minutes and wasting metres of paper trying to get the page setup to the correct size in MS windows applications (if you can remember which application to use for a specific graphics format so you don't run out of memory) or on a dozen kinds of *nix you can just tell it to go away and print the thing or even just dump the file in the plotters memory by ftp if you want. As for network printer setup - someone went to sleep at MS that day.
As for compatibility - some new machines where I work had Windows98 installed on them so that old stuff developed expensively in house over many years would run (so yes - there is some redesign and recoding going on - and it will run on a lot of platforms), as well as things like expensive A/D conversion cards which just don't have drivers for newer versions of MS Windows. We even have to keep a DOS machine to get some stuff around - possibly buggy and incorrectly written to a poorly documented API but there are a lot of old programs that just will not run. A lot of scientific software was written in VB back when it was basic, then pascal and now it is java instead - so a lot of stuff really has to be rewritten from scratch even if you stay purely on the MS platform. If some guy has spent three solid years working out how to do some brilliant method of manipulating data in a certain way to solve a scientific problem you don't want to have to find their notes five years later, teach someone in their field how to program and get them to redo it in on a different platform - you want to just run the thing.
One last thing - having a single standard OS to rule them all is the stuff of meglomanic fantasy and ignores the idea that people want to do different things with their computers.
I've used WinXP for all of that 5 years and it's been a productive platform for me. I've edited and processed video, ran a digital audio workstation, built web pages, wrote documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Photoshopped, Skyped and played the hell out of Half-Life 2 and Eve-Online. Even made a few java apps. BitTorrent is my window to the world. I have actually had Windows Restore save my bacon a few times.
My computers talk to each other, and with liberal application of Kaspersky's finest, I haven't had a single bit of virus damage on my home wireless network. I can open a link to my network at the office and it also has not been taken down by virus or spyware, thanks to a moderately small application of care. I go more than a month without rebooting regularly and haven't had to reinstall the OS since 2003.
Although it costs about 150% of what I think it should, so does my car and iPod. I don't like the way Microsoft does business and I hope the Zune goes right down the crapper. I'm extremely apprehensive about Vista, and the WGA has been foul in the extreme.
But Microsoft made a pretty good OS in Windows XP.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or cheap, or just don't see a need to install a more demanding OS for no discernible benefit. I haven't found any software or hardware that refuses to install or run on Win2k, for instance. An OS is just a platform to run apps. If it does that without crashing, why change it?
Also, W2K does not have the broken implementation of access to shares that XP home has. I know that XP home to W2K is not a fair comparison, but the point is that MS took something that works and deliberately made it less functional. An example: a person in my office cannot access a SAMBA share from his XP-H machine. He then accesses his home directory on the same machine and now magically, he can access the share that was previously denied earlier.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Is Linux somehow 'magic' in its ability to defend against bad drivers, or would it suffer the same problems as WinXP does?
A bad driver is a bad driver: it can bring down the OS (no matter what the OS is).
Why is this 'issue' considered to be XP-specific?
This is absolutely false. XP was absolutely more of a resource hog than Windows 2000. I used to support Win2K desktops in an office environment running standard productivity apps with 128 MB of RAM (2K required 64MB) and it ran fine. Try doing that on XP. I did, and it wasn't pretty.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
>> People like to say "I've never seen my XP box lock up". Thing is, unless you're right there when it happens... you won't. XP automatically reboots after most crashes.
As you state in your next sentence, you *will* notice it when it happens (by the fact that you're back at the login prompt when you don't expect it).
So, anyone who states "I've never seen my XP box lock up" is either correct (it didn't lock-up/reboot/etc), or they are lying (of course, there's no way to know if someone is lying).
Manufacturing scenarios ("unless you're right there when it happens...") to help your side if the argument *is* flamebait.
......ALL MacOS X intel versions are intentionally crippled by Apple to prevent them from running on generic PC hardware......
/. users STILL cannot get it through their heads that Apple is a HARDWARE maker who happens to make their own OS. There is nothing that prevents HP, Dell or any other hardware company from doing this also. if the did, would HP customers clamor to run the Dell operating system? Do Ford users clamor for Mercedes engines in their cars? Why should Apple write their OS do it would run on a Dell or other brand?
Why is it that smart
All theory is gray
I sure hope you're insinuating that OSX is the better replacement and not Linux. If said home user wants to change some setting, he will probably poke through his XP control panel for a while and has a decent chance to find the checkbox or dropdown associated with the change he/she was looking for. In Linux, said user will never in a million years open up a terminal, type man somecrypticallynamedconf.conf, find the appropriate boolean, integer, or string value in the man page, su to root, fire up an editor and point it to /etc/rxcgsd.d/init/conf/somecrypticallynamedconf.c onf, make the appropriate edits, and restart the service.
/MLS
Before you pounce on the Windows Registry, just compare the number of times you have had to regedit a value, to the number of times you have edited a conf file. I think you will find the argument stands.
I'd like to see *nix succeed, but you do it a disservice by declaring it ready for Grandma when it is clearly not.
When every Linux app comes with a small plugin to a configuration management GUI, that adds the conf settings to a panel that allows you to view and edit them visually, maybe we'll have made some real progress. Upon launch, config manager asks for root password, then loads all plugins that come installed with all Linux apps.
Panel opens, there is a list of all the programs that it is managing configurations for on the left, and upon clicking, opens a nicely tabbed and organized layout of all the options with tooltips so I don't have to flip back and forth between the man page if I need further information.
Conf files are reparsed on every opening, so manual edits to confs will show up as well, and leaves that as an open option to 'advanced' users that are used to them.
It's such an obvious idea yet nobody has made a real attempt at it. I'll even give my 'revolutionary' idea away for free. Please God, someone use it.
Okay, how 'bout this for a great reason not to run XP over 2000 (and certainly the most common one): I already have 2000 installed on my machine(s) and it does everything I need; 2000 was available, i tried it, and it ain't [too] broke yet, so I'm not going to "fix" it by upgrading, which could only lead to problems.
Initial cost is not necessarily even a factor in choosing software/OS. Sure, I could buy a $400 air compressor, a $200 nail gun, and some assorted accessories, but if I only need to put a roof on my shed, "upgrading" beyond my trusty 16oz rip claw hammer would just be dumb.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.