Well, in hell they don't ask you to send an online technical error report to Microsoft everytime one of XP's bugs crashes a program. (which is what XP does at least a dozen times a week)

Hi Splinx,

I bought a system with XP installed and half my applications crash.

The problem is they don't even reliably crash...

so you can never tell what programs cause trouble or not because one time it may crash and the next time it will not....infuriating.

I guess the fact that XP isolates the problem, shuts down the program and yet still keeps running is the 'big improvement'

XP takes up so much memory (around the 5-6 gigabyte range) that I refuse to install it on any system without a 40 + gigabyte hard drive.

It's not noticeably faster than Windows 98 and all the user id stuff is a real pain to cycle through everytime you start up.

The privacy issue is another thing - I wonder how many saps are clicking 'yes' when the 'send an online error report' pops up after a crash. This is a major privacy no-no as all the data about your system, software ectera are sent in realtime to Microsoft.

Microsoft is using the PUBLIC as test guinea pigs - these bugs should have been out long before this was released.

I run Windows 98 on my laptops - and I don't intend to upgrade them to anything newer.

However, if you do plan to upgrade - a desktop system to XP - I use a manufacturers 'restore the hard drive' XP disk - which often comes with a new comp - after replacing the existing hard drive with a new one...I just did a 40.gb quantum drive that way. (I consider it a spare drive ;-)

Then I take out the newly prepared drive, replace the old one, and there's no hassle - one 'drive with XP' ready to be installed in any desktop system.

If I were to upgrade a laptop to XP - which I do not plan to do - I would get a hold of one with XP pre-installed and then do the same thing. (hard drive juggling)

Microsoft makes upgrading existing systems a pain.

XP is all different from Windows too...and not better. Its just different enough to be irritating when you intuitively go for something on the control bar. So XP has a 'mimic windows' mode - which only partially recreates the windows user interface.

XP = Xtra Painful
XP = no-Privacy
XP = EXperiment in Progress
XPletives deleted....

Best wishes, ;-)

SDAI-Tech1