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Pimp Your XP
An anonymous reader writes "Ezinearticles.com has up an interesting article on how you can improve Windows XP to mimic and even surpass Vista — at least some of its new features. Several of the suggestions cost money and others are free. From improving the user interface with Stardock to mimicking new security features with open source software such as Sudown, the article discusses many ways that die-hard XP users can enhance their environment without moving to Vista."
I'm not sure of the value of tacking on features to XP to make it more like Vista, especially when such features cost money. I mean, if you want Vista-like stuff, why don't you just pay the upgrade fee and get a complete, well-tested package instead of a bunch of disjoint shareware utilities?
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
to seperate userinterface from operating system..
I mean, the article has a nice list of things you can do instead of upgrading to Vista,
however the main principle that is highlighted has been logic to most developers for decades:
1. Seperate logic from userinterface
2. Seperate into small logical components
3. you achieve better programs which are easier to maintain and upgrade. (which is often as good as profit)
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Output Firwall £20 (a year)
Directory Opus £35
Stardock £25
Total cost of Pimping your copy of XP to look like Vista £80, the look on your friends face as you tell them you bought Vista Home Basic for £56 Here
Priceless
In all seriousness why bother? The feature's discussed are all availiable in Home Basic and even if you compare this 'pimping' to the Home Premimum edition you can still get Vista cheaper (£70 at This site ) The only reason not to upgrade to Vista and doing this would be hardware incompatibility or your machine isn't capable of running it well (say you've only got 512mb of ram.)
I have a fully licensed copy of Win2K Pro that I have faithfully moved from machine to machine for the past 7 years. It doesn't require registration, is rock solid, and does everything that I need it to do as well as XP or better, including software development and gaming.
I'll update from 2K when my disk and all the backups rot (must remember to take another), or I absolutely need hardware that absolutely won't support 2K. Until then, as far as I'm concerned, Microsoft peaked 7 years ago, and it's been all downhill from there.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Not to mention, this is a hell of alot of software, I mean, he's talking about installing several toys that will run 24/7 and of course this is gonna sap your processing power, and its not integrated, so it'll probably end up using more resources than vista.
Vista is running all sorts of DRM on top of it's not very efficient or thrilling UI. The cost of adding a few skins is going to be less than that. Yahoo widgets along give the user a clock, weather and that kind of thing, without any performance hit.
But really, the further you get away from M$ the better your computing gets. The real upgrades are free. Most of the visual elements have been available in the nix world for decades. The performance gain of moving to GNU/Linux is incredible and it can be had for less than 2GB of system files that auto configure and run live off a 650MB boot CD. Why buy car tweaks or a new car when you could just download a space ship for free?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Security
"....the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls."
UAC is useless and annoying. It might be fine for my Aunt Mildred, who only turns her computer on a couple of times a week to surf the web for a few minutes and send one or two e-mails, but for anyone who actually want to get things done, Vista is virtually unusable unless you turn off UAC. In the long run, UAC will make things worse because clueless users, who have absolutely no idea whether foobar.exe is a legit program or malware, will simply start clicking 'Yes' to everything.
Windows Explorer
"Windows explorer featured several significant upgrades in Vista."
WTF? Numerous features in the XP version of Windows Explorer have been removed or changed in ways that make them less useful. Customize the toolbar? Gone. In fact the whole Toolbar is gone. Status bar shows total size of all the files in a directory? XP yes. Vista no. The list goes on.
Search
"Windows Vista's integrated desktop search is one of my favourite new features"
Purely a personal preference, Desktop search is meaningless to me. I have thousands of files in dozens of directories and rarely need to use search to find them. In all fairness, XP's search is so horrible and less than useless, that anything will seem better.
Look and feel
Look - don't care.
Feel - Vista feels slow and clunky on a 2.2ghz Athlon XP with 2 gig of RAM. It only feels slightly better on my new dual-core 2.8ghz machine with 4 gig RAM.
Media Center and Games
Vista doesn't really do anything that's better than XP. And that's the real problem with Vista. People have long knocked XP as nothing more than a fancied up Windows 2000. And there's some truth to that. But, everyone forgets that when XP first came out, most people were running Windows 95/98 -- quite possibly the two worst pieces of crap software ever created. XP represented a major improvement. Vista, in many ways, is a giant step backwards.
I bought a brand spanking new Core 2 Duo E6600 w/ an X1950 vid card. 4 gig RAM.
I took Vista off and installed XP Pro SP2 because Vista felt like I was trying to jog in a swimming pool. XP runs like a dream, even using Adobe Premiere and Sonar 6 at the same time.
And, there's minimal DRM. And, I don't have to tell the computer that I really, really want to do what I want to do. And, I can play City of Heroes. And, for the first time since I started using computers a couple of decades ago, I feel good about not having the latest OS.
That may be the real legacy of Windows Vista. It may be the turning point in the way many of us have slavishly lined up for every new technology that came along, just because it was the latest and greatest. I see Windows XP sort of like the way I saw the '66 Mustang that I had when I was in grad school in 1977 - as far better than the current model. And you know what? There was something fine in feeling that way about a bit of technology. And there is, again.
When Microsoft removes the DRM from Vista, and I'm convinced all my little productive applets and plugins will work in Vista, AND I get a free upgrade to the latest service pack from the license I paid for when I bought this new computer that is now lying unused, I may take a second look at Vista.
Until then, I'll enjoy my nice new WinXP system and save up for the next gen Mac Pro or quad-core Ubuntu Studio box. And Bill Gates can shove Vista so far up his ass that his eyes look Aero Glassy. That's all.
You are welcome on my lawn.