Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/SP2 Complete package > Reviews (65)

Windows XP, 2002 or NT5.. I'm not sure which version of the name you'll been familiar with, but heck.. its all the same to me.. :)

Anyway, this version, XP Professional (along with Home edition) is what Microsoft have threatening to release for years. In theory, it's the product line that would finally see the back of the horrors and sins that were Windows 98 (versions 1&2), and finally bring the added parts of ME into the field of NT stabilty.

If only life were that simple. What you get, basically, is a promise of true backward compatibility with the Win9x series of OS's, the stability of NT4 & Windows 2000, with the added features from NT regarding networking and communcations facilities.. and an adaptive GUI...

I'll not bore you with the full run-down of what's on offer, since MS have already probably gone full-swing on that side.

Anyway, i didnt take part in the public beta testing but did take advantage of being able to evaluate the Pro edition a week before release through an MS Partner program.

My benchmark for the product wasn't, despite all logic, Win9x series. I used Windows 2000 Professional for most characteristic testing comparision and took note of where ME features had crept in.

Firstly, an important note. The price of upgrading to XP can be high, or to use an industry term - the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) can be high.

Where Win2k Pro had a minimum requirement of a P166MMX and 64Mb of Ram, and around 640Mb of HD space for installation, XP has upped the ante to a need for a PII233, around 1.5Gb of HDD storage, and a massive 128Mb of Ram. Ok, its fair to say that the extra 64mb is a peanuts upgrade cost today, but since Win2k would work fine in 64Mb, why does XP need twice as much..??

The OS 'cripples' itself to strip visual features where onboard memory is below the 128Mb mark. In practise, you'll find that the extra visual effects are not entirely worth the extra memory, so fit the RAM and shut the effects down. Use the extra 64 Mb wisely as environment space instead :)

The biggest issue with Windows XP, for me, isn't the benefits promised by functionality. Having been through the entire MS OS series, i looked forward to this product since i did have hopes to finally bin the win9x disks and have XP on board, after it was proven good, to have my preferred NT and 9x compatibillity.

In practise, its quite easy to get a lot of older software to work under XP, and the Compatibility Wizard helps here. But Windows 2000 wasn't bad on account of compatibility with Win9x and Win 3.1 software, so the benefits to a Win2k Pro user are minimal... and MS recognise that fact.

The stability is maintained by using a 'sandbox' type process for implementing drivers and software. Using NT5/Win2k as the core and middle of the new versions, XP provides a System Restore and driver rollback facility to revert critical system files and drivers after you have a mishap. Bar System Restore, this was the case in Win2k, but you had to restart after restoring the previous drivers.

What MS have effectively done is create the 'sandbox' to help maintain a 'semblance of a bomb-proof environment that allows for little probability of a rogue driver or software installation to completely louse up the integrity of the system.

So, to ensure you have decent driver support and stability, you need XP drivers, or failing that, Win2k drivers. Here we come into another funny area..

Win2k drivers are available for plenty of kit now, after a ridiculously long period of beta status availability, so in the absence of XP stuff, you should have a fighting chance of decent support and functional devices.

But hey, remember the 'sandbox'...??

Well, if u try to install an incompatible Win2k driver set, it kicks out the bad stuff and reverts to the basic compatibility stuff. In fact, if you need to install Win2k/ME WDM drivers from the product vendor, you'll probably end up in Safe Mode to prevent the 'sandbox' from blocking the installation. Now this would be a fair case of caution, to block drivers, when there are XP drivers out there. But those are like gold dust at the moment. So, you are stuck with iffy drivers, MS sourced compatibility drivers, or passable Win2k drivers.

This enters into another problem area. A lot of products you use with a PC have limited functionality support in Win2k and NT4 compared to using them with the Win9x support files. And since XP is essentially Win2k Pro Mk II, the same factor seems to end up being the case.

And that is where the big issue arrives. Around 17% of uk machines are considered XP ready by the people at MS. Now maybe i'm missing out on something here, but thats not a totally inspiring setting for the Home Edition really. This does, indeed, increase the TCO if you do happen to have pre-PII/Celeron/K7 based systems, since most of the later ones do have some degree of hardware suitability for XP. And MS have generally issued an 'evolve or die' ultimatum as a result.

So, 'evolve or die' means that in practise, XP is best got hold of with a new machine, where compatibility and driver support is the vendors problem, not yours. I mention this because of the support factor of contacting Microsoft. If the device is not certified for XP, then you get no official tech support from Microsoft - no ifs, no buts, no joy.

To my mind, its not worth the effort really. But its a case of the product arrived far too late, after far too many intermediate promised upgrades and intermediate OS's.

What it does offer, can be duplicated for the most part reliably without the MS type-approval restrictions by moving to Win2k Pro.

For a Windows 3.1 users, you get a whole lot of fixes and can enjoy the good parts of win2k, win9x now with the stability that was missing.

For a Win9x user, you stand to get what you paid out for when you brought in Win95/98.

For the NT4 user, drivers and cost considered, its a big move but only worth while if you feel the need for change.

The only real benefit of moving from Win2k Pro to XP Pro is to see the back of the non-stop service packs.