I just installed Windows XP, and to say I'm blown away would be an understatement of massive proportions. This is the best Out Of Box Experience of any operating system I've ever installed, on any computer. It's an order of magnitude better than WinME or Win2k in that regard. There's a throbbing techno soundtrack during the "shades of Frank Lloyd Wright" configuration sequence, for chrissakes. It's amazing.

I stand by my original comments. This is the biggest change in the Windows OS since the transition from Win31 to Win95.

Before the litany of "why should I spend $199 to upgrade" begins, I'm not twisting anyone's arm here. But all I'm saying is, get one of the pirate non-activation copies floating around and TRY the goddamn thing. It's exceeded my high expectations considerably.

>Before the litany of "why should I spend $199 to upgrade" begins, I'm not twisting anyone's arm here.

Particularly since the upgrade version is $99 ($199 for Professional, which very a small percentage would find much use of). =)

I've been using XP at home every single day since RC1, and I agree, it's Very Nice. I mean, yeah, it's still Windows. With all the talk about it, and the MORE talk that's gonna happen when the marketing push begins, people might expect a complete revolution. It's not. But it IS pretty much "the Windows we've always wanted."

For the record, I've turned my computer off twice in the last two months - voluntarily when I was installing new hardware, and when there was an electrical storm. I've reset it about half a dozen times, all when prompted to do so by installing software and the like. But never to fix a problem, restore performance, kill a misbehaving application, etc.

After all these hours of use, I'm still finding little things that I say "oh, that's handy" or "that's a smart way to do that" or something. Some of them are there in Windows 2000, but I never had that as my "all day every day" sort of OS so I never really found them, and others are unique to XP.

For those who will "wait a few months until they work the bugs out," that's probably not necessary. Not that there won't be a few issues, I'm sure, but the "nagging problems" count is already lower than the CURRENT problems with Win98 or 2000.

I'm not saying rush out and buy it, because hey, it's not like your current OS is gonna stop running apps anytime soon. But I *AM* saying this one's more worthy of "rush out and buy it" than any OS for the PC in the since Win95.

"But I *AM* saying this one's more worthy of "rush out and buy it" than any OS for the PC in the since Win95."

Exactly. Group hug, everyone!

NOTE: when I say "everyone", I mean everyone except Mark Asher.

I've met several of the people who post here in person, and I am *NOT* group hugging them.

Okay. Enough zaniness.

A serious question-- can I use Windows 2000 drivers under XP? I noticed a bit of graphical corruption on the file menus using the default XP GeForce 3 drivers.. so can I download the latest leaked win2k geforce3 drivers and install them under XP? My guess is yes.. but I thought I'd ask before venturing into the wild blue yonder.

Meanwhile, Jason and I will regard the rest of you peons from high on our ornate thrones o' Windows XP.

Can one of you two tell me what the diffs between Professional and Home XP are? I kind of like W2k for my work machine and I have W98 on my gaming box. Cost of the OS isn't really an issue, since my next door neighbor can get me a copy from the MS store.

Sounds great. Get rid of the Product Activation and I'm there. Sorry, but there's just something that sticks in my craw about Product Activation, questions of piracy and intellectual property aside. I *just* don't like it.

DeanCo--

"Can one of you two tell me what the diffs between Professional and Home XP are?"

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp

"Sounds great. Get rid of the Product Activation and I'm there."

I don't think MS will be selling a non-activation copy to consumers.. it's basically the corporate edition. But it's out there in the "wild", so to speak.

wumpus, i believe you perhaps *can* force the nVidia drivers to install, but, gosh, just wait a couple weeks for the Detonator4's to be out... SURELY, nVidia will release an "official" WinXP version then.

- mike - of course, you know they won't.. just in spite of you -

Tim,

in addition to the link wumpus gave, ARStechnica had a similar article recently, which i think is a bit easier to digest... http://www.arstechnica.com/tweak/win2k/xp-versions-1.html

- mike - winxp or bust! -

Just to nay-say... I'll be VERY curious to hear reports from folks who like to play games that are a year or three old still. (Us old codger flight sims guys who buy games like Longbow 2 and F/A-18 that still offer new challenges three years down the road. :) I plan to buy a new laptop with XP, but I doubt I'll put it on my gaming desktop for a while.

My own experience with the preview version shows a few things to be concerned about. First, drivers. My Zoom 802.11b network card has no XP driver and the Win 2000 driver doesn't work under XP. So no go on my laptop. Also, if you're still running "abandoned but good" hardware like Vortex2 cards, etc., you'll probably be looking at upgrading due to driver issues.

I'm also annoyed by activation, by the fact that laptops now come with "restore discs" instead of Windows CDs, and by the fact that Microsoft is now "selling" functionality to third-party companies. (You can now buy prints of images from your My Pictures folder, for instance -- from the companies that pay Microsoft to be there.)

Mind you, I'm just pointing out the negatives... There's a lot to like, and I'm looking forward to eventually buying a Satellite 3005 notebook with XP on it. But I think once it hits stores, you're going to hear a lot of gripes and problems.

I'm not one of those "don't upgrade unless you need to" guys, either. I've always run the latest version of Win 9x/Me within a week or so of release. But this time you're changing the entire underlying architecture, and there are some interesting potential headaches there.

Thanks for the links, wumpus, Mike.

I'm probably going to go with pro, just to get IIS on my work machine.

For my gaming box, I'm not so sure. I'm like denny, a little concerned about my older games and such. Might just wait it out.

One thing about the differences between the two: you can only get SMP with pro. With hardware so inexpensive, I was considering upgrading my gaming rig to a dual proc for F4 and the occasional game that supports it.

"For my gaming box, I'm not so sure. I'm like denny, a little concerned about my older games and such. Might just wait it out."

If Denny is using a laptop for gaming, he has much bigger problems than I can help him with.. ;) That seems like the source of 99% of his frustrations, and I can't say I'm surprised. Laptops are still proprietary as hell, impossible to upgrade, and generally temperamental. Not to mention the lack of decent 3D, though things are improving with the GF2go and new radeon 2 mobile stuff.

Perhaps in my lifetime I will be able to buy a laptop that isn't a litany of compromises for gaming.

Jeff,

You misread my message. I was saying that when I get a new laptop, I'll get XP on it. But I won't put XP on the desktop I use for gaming.

> I plan to buy a new laptop with XP, but I
> doubt I'll put it on my gaming desktop for a
> while.

I'm well-versed in getting games running on laptops, believe me. :-) Although actually, while the propriety nature of laptops does make them a bitch to upgrade, it doesn't tend to harm gaming. The laptop I'm going to get -- Satellite 3005 -- has a GeForce2Go, and with a USB controller will run all the modern games as well as a mid-range P3/800. The only problems with laptops and gaming related to performance, not compatibility. (At least, since USB finally put an end to the game controller dilemma.)

"For my gaming box, I'm not so sure. I'm like denny, a little concerned about my older games and such. Might just wait it out."

Being able to run my games is more important to me than the OS, which after all is just a tool. XP would be more interesting to me if it had some new features that let me do new things I couldn't do before. Instead it looks mostly to be a more stable version of Windows with a GUI overhaul.

'Meanwhile, Jason and I will regard the rest of you peons from high on our ornate thrones o' Windows XP.'

Which is stable and runs games, kind of like....Windows 2000. I have 2000 Professional installed; why on earth would I want to switch?

>But I think once it hits stores, you're going to hear a lot of gripes and problems.

Certainly with the volume they'll sell, that will be true. Particularly since people WILL stope to complain, but not often stop to compliment.

Re: drivers - with MOST things, you can certainly use Win2000 drivers. That's true of GeForce3 cards...I'm using the newer leaked version drivers at home and they fix that graphical corruption. Note that the Detonator 4 drivers due out "any day now" offer full acceleration of Windows XP GUI functions and will probably fix the corruption.

As Denny pointed out, some devices will require Windows XP specific drivers. WiFi cards are likely one of them, because WinXP handles networking a little differently than Win2K. With a WiFi card, you can (in theory) just take it from home to office or from any one WiFi network to any other that you have access to and keep 'on browsing and downloading, *without interruption*. I gotta admit, that's pretty slick.

>I have 2000 Professional installed; why on earth would I want to switch?

Mainly just for the improved GUI and integrated apps, and better support for some hardware. But XP *SHOULD* be far more compatible with older apps and even newer apps that Win2K has problems with - I don't have the final code and have done enough testing to confirm that first-hand.

If you're not having any problems with games under Win2K, then god bless you. That's great, and I hope it continues. But Denny's concerns re: older games is doubly true with Win2K. Plus, the home edition of Windows XP is $70 cheaper than 2000 for the upgrade, and $120 cheaper for the full version. WinXP Pro is $20 cheaper for both. Which obviously isn't a reason to switch, but it's an advantage for people who don't have either.

>You can now buy prints of images from your My Pictures folder, for instance -- from the companies that pay Microsoft to be there.

It is my understand that, though people paid to be listed in the initial install, other companies could just as easily install simple software to integrate themselves into this function of the OS. It's not skin off my teeth either way - it's no different in my mind than MS selling desktop space to AOL for the last four years. It's open to everyone, and if you ignore the function, you're no worse off than with any previous version of Windows.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/tips/default.asp

I messed with ClearType last night. It looks AMAZING on the wife's LCD. I mean jaw-on-the-floor fucking INCREDIBLE. It's a dramatic step toward that elusive NextOS printed page look, since _all_ fixed-size fonts become anti-aliased (such as the text on dialogs and UI elements).

Cleartype exploits the fixed RGB pixel pattern of a LCD so it's pointless on a regular CRT. But damn. If you have a LCD, you will soil yourself when you see this stuff in action. It seems to increase the font clarity (and apparent resolution) about 3 times! No kidding.

It's worth enabling to get a sense of the future of display technology, but unless you have a LCD or an intense desire to go crosseyed, I'd stick to the standard greyscale antialiasing.

Do a google search on 'cleartype' if you want more detail on the technology. It isn't just marketing hype.

Yeah, there are several LCD anti-aliasing technologies that all work exactly like ClearType does (uses the vertical colored R, G, and B bars for each LCD pixel to effectively draw three times the horizonal resolution). It's really great that MS has integrated it into the OS, though. It really does look absolutely fantastic (it's been available on the PocketPC devices for awhile now).

All it does to turn it on with a regular CRT is blur everything horzontally with some color artifacts, which will immediately bug your eyes out. =)

Steve Gibson has a neat little app detailing some sub-pixel rendering (like cleartype) font anti-aliasing technology at grc.com. Hang on, I'll find the page...

http://grc.com/cleartype.htm

The "free and clear" demo app is neat. You can zoom in on fonts to see what's going on, and zoom back out to see the effect naturally.

'Mainly just for the improved GUI and integrated apps, and better support for some hardware. But XP *SHOULD* be far more compatible with older apps and even newer apps that Win2K has problems with - I don't have the final code and have done enough testing to confirm that first-hand.'

Again, I haven't had a single 2k-related game problem out of the old Microprose strategy games group, which is more-or-less the only dos-based old games I'd want to play. Excepting Crusader: No Regret, that is, which probably won't work on XP either due to the crackpot Origin memory manager.

Going back to the past discussions on XP, I have no idea what these integrated apps and improved GUI features are. Nicer looking icons? Looking at the features page on http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/features.asp , literally everything in it is already in 2k, excepting Cleartype, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop Sharing.

Maybe I can use it to improve my winmark scores from the 2400 range to the 3000 some guy on madonion.com manages to get with my system, but I doubt it.

No one's obliged to obviously, but I really can't see myself ever considering XP until someone convinces me of WHY having code built into an OS that allows it to deactivate itself should be downplayed?

If this information was displayed at the end of every advertisement that MS is no doubt going to unleash on the mainstream public, then it wouldn't sell.

You know how radio ads for medications always spend 50% of their paid-for time having to disclose side-effects because the law forces them to? If the law cared, this would be Microsoft's ad: "Buy XP -- it's faster and won't crash like WinME does! ...... [spoken very fast and in monotone voice:] Product can deactivate itself if it believes you've illegally obtained the software or have changed your hardware too often. When deactivated, your computer is rendered unbootable. Calling Microsoft's support line will be necessary to reactivate your PC."

Does Murphy's Law suddenly not apply with computers anymore? Is this not a recipe for disaster?

"No one's obliged to obviously, but I really can't see myself ever considering XP until someone convinces me of WHY having code built into an OS that allows it to deactivate itself should be downplayed?"

Activation only has to occur once, during the initial install. It's not like you have the specter of deactivation hanging over your computer every second you use it. In the rare case that something extreme changes with your hardware (eg, new mobo) and you DO need to re-activate, you bought the software, right? So you can just activate again either via the 'net or phone. Not a terrible inconvenience.

"Does Murphy's Law suddenly not apply with computers anymore? Is this not a recipe for disaster?"

How else do you expect developers to prevent piracy? In an era where everyone is connected to the 'net all the time, it's inevitable that the internet would become the next dongle protection scheme.

But then, the cracking of said scheme is also inevitable. So you can have it either way. If you weren't planning to pay for software, I doubt XP will force you to do so, so it's sort of a moot point.

"How else do you expect developers to prevent piracy? In an era where everyone is connected to the 'net all the time, it's inevitable that the internet would become the next dongle protection scheme."

Piracy prevention has always been the bane of legitimate users and ridiculed by hackers. It's pointless -- saves the company no money and pisses off the paying customer.

My point is, code existing that specifically tells the OS to deactivate itself simply *must*, by any logical theory, result in cases where legitimate users are inconvenienced (in the very best scenarios) and completely fucked (in the worst).

Surely the code will be abused somehow? How many "critical" updates has MS released over the years that were a result of loopholes found in security? How hard will it be for someone to figure out how to remotely trigger this safeguard system on other people's machines?

In the past, the absolute worst someone could do if they knew your IP address and that you're running Windows is crash your machine, which requires a reboot. Will that change?

>Piracy prevention has always been the bane of legitimate users and ridiculed by hackers. It's pointless -- saves the company no money and pisses off the paying customer.

Microsoft, and several other publishers, have the numbers to disprove that.

Yes, it harms legit users. Yes, hackers and warez-monkeys shrug it off. But they're not the only one committing piracy, and they're usually the ones who wouldn't go buy it legitimately if they couldn't steal it. Casual copying by Regular Joes is a huge problem, and it's this that Activation aims to prevent. I bet it will save Microsoft hundreds of millions of bucks.

I still don't like Product Activation, but I think a lot of the people worrying will be surprised to find it isn't a big deal.

>How hard will it be for someone to figure out how to remotely trigger this safeguard system on other people's machines?

Impossible. It's not tied to a "machine" but a hardware configuration. Which, by the way, someone else might have. And it doesn't include any info that could identify you or your machine (name, IP address, etc). It's a hash of hardware ID numbers like your NIC's MAC number - as a hash, you can't recreate the original info from the data that activation stores.

>literally everything in it is already in 2k, excepting Cleartype, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop Sharing.

And built-in CD burning. And side-by-side DLLs. And the new media player (actually does some nice stuff, like play DVDs if you have a legit software DVD player license, rips WMA and MP3 better, burns audio CDs at full speed, and so on). And much better home networking support (including better wireless networking). And a built-in firewall. And much better support of digital cameras, scanners, portable MP3 players, and the like. And Remote Desktop.

I'm probably wasting my, er, breath. Until Windows 2000 fans just use it for a week, they probably won't see anything significant about XP other than a few superficial things they can live without.

I mean, come on... if "Wumpus" and I are AGREEING on this, it's GOT to be good. =)

"So you can just activate again either via the 'net or phone. Not a terrible inconvenience."

How do I use the Internet if my OS is disabled? I also hate having to call MS. That's a pain. It may not be a terrible one, but it's a 15-30 minute chunk of my time on the phone.

This is something that is of no benefit to me, the consumer.

"I mean, come on... if "Wumpus" and I are AGREEING on this, it's GOT to be good. =)"

All those things you listed -- I don't do any of them. I don't have a DVD drive, I don't burn CDs, I don't rip MP3s, I don't have a second computer for networking, I use Zonealarm as a firewall already, etc.

Is there really anything in it that makes it a "must have" package?

"My point is, code existing that specifically tells the OS to deactivate itself simply *must*, by any logical theory, result in cases where legitimate users are inconvenienced (in the very best scenarios) and completely fucked (in the worst)."

"How do I use the Internet if my OS is disabled? I also hate having to call MS. That's a pain. It may not be a terrible one, but it's a 15-30 minute chunk of my time on the phone. "

But this is the nature of the beast-- any kind of security is always a burden to legitimate users. Ever been to an airport? I rest my case. But it's a necessary evil, just like activation. The honor system simply doesn't work, folks. Do you leave your house unlocked all day? No? Then why should you Microsoft to? It's ridiculous to expect that.

"Piracy prevention has always been the bane of legitimate users and ridiculed by hackers. It's pointless -- saves the company no money and pisses off the paying customer."

Disagree. The goal of any copy protection scheme is to make it inconvenient to copy the software. Ideally, the incovenience of pirating the software will outweigh the ease of properly buying or licensing it. There are two ends to this spectrum-- on one end, no copy protection of any kind makes it trivial for anyone to copy; on the other end, the copy protection is so onerous that legitimate users spend hours dealing with it every day instead of getting work done.

I think a one-time (barring massive hardware shifts) activation is perfectly reasonable and achieves a nice balance of protection with minimal inconvenience to legit users.

You can expect this to become the standard for all future software. I don't think software should be free, any more than I think the latest Steven King book, David Byrne album, or Woody Allen movie should be free..

"I'm probably wasting my, er, breath. Until Windows 2000 fans just use it for a week, they probably won't see anything significant about XP other than a few superficial things they can live without."

RE: Mark's comments, you really do have to use it to see how remarkable the damn thing is. We can sit here and list the hundreds of minor and major improvements over Win2k and WinME all day long, but nothing will convince like TRYING WINXP YOURSELF.

Hell, I was _expecting_ it to be good. The depth and breadth of the changes-- in every facet of the OS-- have far outstripped even my high expectations. This is unquestionably the best PC OS I've ever used. It's an order of magnitude better than WinME or Win2k.

I don't mean to wax poetic, but fuckin' a, man. It really is that good.

'Casual copying by Regular Joes is a huge problem, and it's this that Activation aims to prevent. I bet it will save Microsoft hundreds of millions of bucks.'

Yeah, Uncle Earl getting a copy of his OS/copy of Office/whatever instead of paying for it is where all the real loss is in piracy, I think. That, and businesses not having enough licenses.

'And built-in CD burning. And side-by-side DLLs. And the new media player (actually does some nice stuff, like play DVDs if you have a legit software DVD player license, rips WMA and MP3 better, burns audio CDs at full speed, and so on). And much better home networking support (including better wireless networking). And a built-in firewall. And much better support of digital cameras, scanners, portable MP3 players, and the like. And Remote Desktop.'

Of course, I already have solutions for all of those, and the Microsoft method for the ones I'd actually be interested (cd-ripping, DVD licensing, ripping MP3s) is designed to extend MS's monopoly to digital music, and they can go fuck themselves on that.

'I don't mean to wax poetic, but fuckin' a, man. It really is that good.'

You know, I thought only slashdot Linux users could write these sorts of things. ;0

"You know, I thought only slashdot Linux users could write these sorts of things. ;0"

Suit yourself. WinXP is good in obvious, intuitive, and gratifying ways, not the abstract, obtuse, oh-by-the-way-it's-free ways of Linux.

WinXP is going to be a huge success for MS, and rightly so. You can quote me on that.

"You can expect this to become the standard for all future software. I don't think software should be free, any more than I think the latest Steven King book, David Byrne album, or Woody Allen movie should be free.."

So if I buy a Stephen King book am I not allowed to give it to a friend when I'm done with it? Where's the copy protection?

It should be enough that I register online once with Microsoft, which already is much more than I do when I buy a book or movie. I shouldn't have to reactivate it after that.

I wonder if stores will accept returns of XP? I bet some people will be annoyed enough by the activiation to return it, especially those people who have several PCs and discover that they have to buy a copy for each PC.

"RE: Mark's comments, you really do have to use it to see how remarkable the damn thing is. We can sit here and list the hundreds of minor and major improvements over Win2k and WinME all day long, but nothing will convince like TRYING WINXP YOURSELF."

I don't want a list of hundreds of minor and major improvements. I'd just like an idea of how it will make my time in front of the computer more productive? I just bought ME 3-4 months ago, so I'm resistent to spending another $100 on an OS. ME's been pretty good to me so far.

You know what would make me upgrade to XP in a heartbeat? If it would go back to the old DOS structure of having apps install all their needed files in one directory or directory and subdirectories.

That would add a lot of value to me. I'd like more control over my system instead of less and less, as Windows seems to give me.

"[Wouldn't it be cool if we could] go back to the old DOS structure of having apps install all their needed files in one directory or directory and subdirectories."

I know what you mean. Someone on usenet wanted to know how to uninstall the IL2 demo, becasue it doesn't add an option to the Add/Remove Program dialog. One of the beta testers responded that you just delete the folder like back in the good old days of DOS, no registry entries, no nothing. Heh. It says something that it never would have occured to me that I could remove it that way.

"If it would go back to the old DOS structure of having apps install all their needed files in one directory or directory and subdirectories."

This is an architecture inherently supported by the (now beta 2) .NET development tools. With distributed computing & security issues, it doesn't really work, but a traditional 'desktop' type of application can.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the OS - I've been writing my vertical market applications this way forever. One big freaking EXE, no worthless points of failure (non-system DLLs).

The .Net development platform still uses DLLs, but encourages private copies and supports side by side loading of different versions of one DLL. It is also supposed to have runtime support all the way back to Win98 (95 is not supported).

Going back a bit, I saw a Win CE handheld demoing ClearType at the MS company museum in Redmond and thought it looked awful. It looked like an incorrectly calibrated CRT, with slivers of red and green bleeding from the sides of each character.

Some XP reviews for you guys

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%253D1470%2526a%253D13705,00.asp

PC Mag - 5/5

http://www.cnet.com/software/0-6688749-8-7007240-1.html?tag=st.sw.6688749-8-7007240-8.arrow.6688749-8-7007240-1

CNET - 8/10

The CNET article has some surprisingly competent benchmarking at the end.

"More important, the company claims that over 90 percent of Windows 9x, NT, and 2000 applications distributed in North America in the past three years will work on Windows XP out of the box."

That still leaves a significant percentage of apps that may have problems.

"Compatibility with DOS applications and games is a more serious problem....if you still play DOS-based games, you may want to keep your Windows 98 machines as long as possible."

I don't play many DOS games, but I'd cry if I couldn't play X-COM or MOO again.

"The good: Streamlined interface; better performance on many systems; easier and more capable networking; integrated CD-R/RW playback and burn features; Pro version's Remote Assistance tool aids troubleshooting and control of remote PCs."

See, none of the above is relevant to me.

"The bad: You can install XP on only one machine; piddling discounts for additional PC licenses; nags you to sign up for Passport Web account; Home Edition's multiple-user login screens are often redundant; heavy system requirements."

I'd probably have to buy more RAM to run XP too, it looks like. Everything I read recommends 256 megs. No wonder you get a performance increase. Microsoft wants you to throw more machine at it.

My own pros and cons based on reading a number of articles about it:

Pros:
- added stability
- some new features like disk optimization during idle time

Cons:
- activiation
- possible game incompabilities
- cost (my current OS is already paid for)
- lack of any new and compelling features

I don't really know about the interface since I haven't used it, but a lot of the stuff in XP is multimedia or networking stuff that I currently have no need for. It also looks like there's very little reason to upgrade from Windows 2000 if you have that OS.

It looks like a nice OS for people who need more handholding with their PC, do a lot with multimedia stuff, have problems with Windows crashing a lot, or who simply like to geek out with a newer, slicker GUI.

It may be the most significant upgrade since W95, but it doesn't seem to have any real "must-have" features.

I didn't upgrade from DOS/Win3.11 to Windows95 until games that I wanted to play required it. I still run the original version of Win98, patched out the wazoo. Until I absolutely need XP, I'm not planning to upgrade.

>So if I buy a Stephen King book am I not allowed to give it to a friend when I'm done with it? Where's the copy protection?

But that's not copying. Once you give it to your friend, you no longer have it. If you wanted to photocopy your Stephen King book and then keep reading it while your friend did, that's against the law.

>and the Microsoft method for the ones I'd actually be interested (cd-ripping, DVD licensing, ripping MP3s) is designed to extend MS's monopoly to digital music, and they can go fuck themselves on that.

As much as the Fraunhofer institute has a monopoly on digital music otherwise. At least good WMA encoders are free.


I can't believe this discussion is starting up again.

Here, I'll sum up the next 150 posts to this group for everyone so they can skip the rest:

People who have used XP quite a bit: "Wow, it's really good! MS's best OS upgrade yet!"

People who haven't used it: "I don't see what the big deal is. Activation is evil. Microsoft wants to own everything. I don't need what it does. I'm not gonna upgrade."

Folks, if you don't want to upgrade, that's fine with me. And "Wumpus" too, I'm sure. It's not like we get kickbacks from MS or anything. We're only posting here because we honestly recommend it, just like we'd post about how cool some new game is that we think the people here should go buy.

"But that's not copying. Once you give it to your friend, you no longer have it. If you wanted to photocopy your Stephen King book and then keep reading it while your friend did, that's against the law."

Can I uninstall XP and give it to a friend, and then will he be able to activate it with Microsoft?

"People who have used XP quite a bit: "Wow, it's really good! MS's best OS upgrade yet!""

Except for Jeff Lackey, who prefers the OS he's running at home to the beta of XP he's running at work.

Anyway, that's not even the point. I don't doubt that it's better. My question is what will it do for me that ME can't do? There are better TVs at Best Buy than I have at home but I don't run out and buy one. In fact I could go down a checklist of stuff I own and find better versions for sale.

Why should an OS be any different to me than a radio? If the one I have works fine and doesn't cause me any problems, I'm going to ask the person trying to sell me a new one to make a compelling argument for why I should upgrade.

"We're only posting here because we honestly recommend it...."

Ok, so why are you recommending that I spend $100 on it? What's it got that ME doesn't have that I really need?

If it can't run X-COM or MOO or MOM, no way in hell am I going to upgrade to it. I love those games.

"Users of Lernout & Hauspie's Dragon Naturally Speaking, for example, will find that the product does not run at all under Windows XP. Adobe's PhotoShop and even Word 2000 do not fully integrate with XP's interface."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/09/03/story/0000101400

Anyone know how Office 97 works with XP? I have that Dragon program too, though I haven't used it in awhile.

Is Microsoft going to patch XP so that programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking will work? It's a Windows program. Does Microsoft have a list of programs that don't work? I would think that if they did compatibility testing, they would have such a list. I looked on their site, but I didn't find one. Of course it's hard as hell to find anything on their site, it's so huge.

Adam, it may run them. I don't know. It's just that one of the reviews said XP has problems with DOS games.

I've had more luck with DOS games under XP than I ever had with Windows ME, but it chokes on a lot on older Windows games. From what I've seen the new compatibility modes are little more than hype.

If you plan to do a lot of retro gaming, stick with Windows 98. Voodoo2 cards are incompatible with XP so Glide games are out unless you have one of the newer Voodoo cards installed, but with the disappearance of driver support and no upgrade path who will want to use one of those as their primary card by next year?

Microsoft does have an enormous list of XP-compatible hardware and software, but the catch is that right now you can only access it from XP's Help files. I imagine the full list will go public once the OS is available at retail. I'm also guessing we'll see a lot of XP patches from the software and hardware manufacturers in the near future, but it's definitely not an OS I'd recommend a hardcore gamer rush out and buy.

"I've had more luck with DOS games under XP than I ever had with Windows ME...."

That's nice to hear. Did you try Master of Magic? That's a particulary troublesome one to get to run under Windows. It would be a plus if XP ran it without too much fiddling.

Did you ever get Sacrifice to work under XP?

Haven't tried MoM under XP, but I did get Sacrifice to work. Turned out it was conflicting with Zone Alarm, and disabling the firewall fixed all the problems. A few weeks later I installed the freeware version of PGP and lost all mouse and keyboard support in Windows. Losing all input devices made troubleshooting a bit tough, so I had to wipe the hard drive and re-install Windows. Went back to ME until XP's compatibility problems are sorted out...

If anyone plans to upgrade to XP, install a clean copy on a freshly formatted hard drive and you'll save a lot of hassles. I had no trouble upgrading from 98 to ME, but going from ME to XP was a nightmare. Most of the other people I know that are testing it have reported similar problems when upgrading, but those who installed it on a clean drive are having vastly better luck.

Sorta OT, speaking of MoM did anyone here play Dominions? It's an indie game sorta like MoM supposedly.

http://www.illwinter.com/dominions.html

Haven't tried it yet was wondering if any of you guys tried it.

Oh, and on XP, I wont get it til I need it. Windows 98 FIRST edition still has been running all my games. Maybe if I get all multimedia crazy and stuff, then yah I'll get XP.

etc

"Except for Jeff Lackey, who prefers the OS he's running at home to the beta of XP he's running at work."

This is true. The interface changes are kinda neat, but I really don't want my utilities such as my DVD player, CD burning, firewall, etc. mixed in with my OS. I certainly don't consider it an advantage. I'm one of those guys who experiments with a wide variety of applications until I find the one that I like the best. We've had some problems at work with trying to use a couple of utilities in the place of XP's integrated utilities - it can be done, I'm sure, but for at least a couple of items we've found quirks that we're tracing back to little registry issues from the built in stuff. This isn't something I want to deal with UNLESS I find the positives to outweigh the negatives.

I don't dislike XP at all (even with some of the hassles we've seen.) But I already can do what I want to do on my systems at home with ME and 98SE: Office style work, complex work that requires huge databases and custom modeling and scientific software, play lots of games both old and new (don't tell me I can't play XCom or Red Baron 3D!), burn tons of data CDs (Nero) and music CDs (Feurio,) run a LAN, run firewalls of my choice, work with my digital photography (Photoshop 6, USB card readers, Qimage, Epson 780 printers, etc.) work and play on the web, use and test a wide range of hardware, old and new, run filtering and individual log-in software for the kids' machine, etc. Managing files is simple and effective, backing up my data via tape and CD is simple and effective, hooking into the mainframes at work works well. So XP, from what I've seen of it for the weeks I've worked with it, really doesn't seem to offer me enough to go purchase it for home. Would I install it if I got it for free? Hmmm. Perhaps on the downstairs (kids') machine, just to try out a lot of games and play with something new. But again, only if I got it for free. I just can't find anything XP allows me to do that I'm not already doing quite well. IN the words I'd use when teaching our R&D guys some marketing thought processes, XP doesn't fill any significant unmet needs of mine.

Now, do I think that it's a good deal for new computer users, or users getting their first machine? Sure! It has proven to be more stable than SE or ME under trying circumstances. Of course, as I read in an article last week, touting stability in a new version of Windows as a feature is kind of like advertising fast food by saying "It tastes great! And much less chance of E-coli poisoning!" ;)

>are better TVs at Best Buy than I have at home but I don't run out and buy one

I actually think that's a bad example. With a better TV, I know I'll get a better picture and notably get the benefits every time I use it. An O/S, for me as a gamer, is a transparent tool that I almost never interact with. But I'm glad to hear it's an improvement. As a gamer, any improvements aren't relevant, at least yet, so they don't justify any upgrade hassles and expense (even if minimal).

All of these new features:

"built-in CD burning. And side-by-side DLLs. And the new media player (play DVDs), rips WMA and MP3 better, burns audio CDs at full speed, and so on). And much better home networking support"

...are all completely worthless to me, and in my experience, stability has never been a problem with Win 95/98/ME. Even though driver support for Win XP is "quite good" currently, even if that means 90% of applications run fine, that still means that if I upgrade immediately I'll have problems 10% of the time -- 10% more often than I do with my current O/S, which - given my O/S requirements (playing games) - would make it goofy to upgrade currently.


Stefan

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/coleman/june18.asp

My claim to fame around Microsoft is that I was the guy on stage with Bill Gates giving a presentation during the Seattle earthquake in February. If you saw that clip on CNN, well, it was me. Don’t worry, I have permanently deleted that 20 seconds worth of material from my Windows XP presentations and columns to ensure your safety.

In this column, I want to discuss parts of the new user interface in Windows XP, show you how the new design is more task-oriented and easy to navigate, and then walk you through my favorite feature in the new UI.

There’s a lot more here than you might realize. I'll steal a phrase from Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows Client Team at Microsoft: "It's not just lipstick on the chicken, people."

"A few weeks later I installed the freeware version of PGP and lost all mouse and keyboard support in Windows. Losing all input devices made troubleshooting a bit tough, so I had to wipe the hard drive and re-install Windows. Went back to ME until XP's compatibility problems are sorted out..."

I flat out don't believe this. I am not trying to be rude here, but.. let me just try to duplicate this. Post the URL to the software you downloaded and I'll give it a shot.

"But I already can do what I want to do on my systems at home with ME and 98SE: Office style work, complex work that requires huge databases and custom modeling and scientific software"

You never run out of GDI and Windows resources? This happened to me all the time in 98 and SE when using InterDev. Get about 15 windows going and that fixed 16-bit pool of Win9x resources dwindles rapidly. Things get mighty flaky at that point.

I'm not sure how "complex" your work was, but there's a reason that every development studio I've ever worked in has standardized on NT/2k (and soon XP).

For gaming, I agree with you. There's no reason to upgrade since most games target 9x first and 2000 or XP second. But most people don't use their computer exclusively for gaming.

From the link Wumpus posted.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/coleman/june18.asp

That's a ridiculous column. The guy touts two features of XP.

The first is the clean desktop. Big deal. I could have a clean desktop with ME if that's what I wanted. Why is not having a My Documents, Recycling Bin, and other icons an improved feature?

Then he gets to his favorite XP feature -- his favorite!

"How many of you use e-mail on a daily basis? Personally, I can have anywhere from 2-20 e-mail messages open at one time. In Windows XP, all those open files are much more manageable. And, not only e-mail messages, but Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or any other kind of documents are more manageable in Windows XP."

That's it. If you routinely have a lot of documents open at once, XP handles them a bit more nicely, sort of. Here's what it does.

"In Windows 2000, Windows Me, and previous versions, those Taskbar buttons got smaller and smaller as you opened more documents. Each new document created a new button and squeezed it onto your taskbar, until the buttons were so small you couldn’t read them. They were worthless.

"In Windows XP, you get one button per application. Down on the taskbar now, you will see one button for Outlook or whatever your e-mail program is. You’ll see one button for Microsoft Word, one for Notepad, one for each program that is running. Each button has a number indicating how many documents of that type are open. For example: “8 Microsoft Word,” means that eight Word documents are open."

That's his favorite XP feature. Heh. It's handy if you have a lot of docs open, but if you just have three open, you have to click on the button to get a list of your documents instead of just clicking on the document directly.

As I posted previously, I'm sure XP is a nice upgrade, but features like the above are hardly selling points to someone like me who is already running Windows. Windows is getting to be like Office. They're starting to put in a lot of nice but not necessary features to try to get people to upgrade.

'I'm not sure how "complex" your work was, but there's a reason that every development studio I've ever worked in has standardized on NT/2k (and soon XP).'

Business development isn't going to switch to XP anymore than it's going to switch to the Amiga.

>I flat out don't believe this. I am not trying to be rude here, but.. let me just try to duplicate this.

Here's the URL for the freeware:

http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware/default.asp

The problem I encountered stemmed from PGP's integration with office applications and network hardware. When the warning box popped up telling me that the hardware integration hadn't been tested with Windows XP, I ignored it just to see what would happen, and that's when my input devices were hosed. The keyboard and mouse worked when I accessed the BIOS to change some settings (like booting from a CD), but as soon as I got to the Windows desktop the keyboard and mouse were completely unresponsive. Couldn't even do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reset the machine.

When I attempted to reinstall Windows XP I couldn't get past any prompts because the inputs were disabled, so that's when I decided to wipe the drive and start over.

I'm not saying the problem I had can be duplicated. Maybe my particular mix of hardware and software triggered it, or maybe it was because I upgraded from ME without doing a clean install. I am saying that I got far more of those pop-up boxes saying software and hardware hadn't been tested for compatibility than I was comfortable with.

The bottom line is that XP is not 100% backwards-compatible with older versions of Windows, and for some people that's very important. For those who don't need the compatibility, XP is undoubtably the biggest leap forward Microsoft's consumer OSes have taken since we transitioned from Windows 3.x to Windows 95.

>Heh. It's handy if you have a lot of docs open, but if you just have three open, you have to click on the button to get a list of your documents instead of just clicking on the document directly.

That's not necessarily true. The buttons expand back to their normal proportions once there are few enough that they don't spill beyond the taskbar. Regardless, that "feature" became really annoying after about a week and I turned it off. It definitely should not be touted as a selling point for the OS, as XP's other merits (stability, in particular) are far more advantageous to the average user.

"I'm not sure how "complex" your work was, but there's a reason that every development studio I've ever worked in has standardized on NT/2k (and soon XP)."

Try molecular modeling and design of molecular systems at an atomic level (including inter- and intra- molecular relationships.) Pretty damned complex. However, the most complex work I do I am never going to attempt to do in XP - this is stuff that we used to do on the Cray's next door until we developed parallel processing systems that are faster and more effective (both cost and performance) than the Crays.

Our base substructure here is NT. We also run some versions of Unix here and there. Individuals' PC's have 98SE as the default OS, hooking into the company's intranet. Individuals are free to run 2000 or NT (many of us run 2000 - I have 2000 on one work machine, ME on another.) We never upgraded to ME as a standard at work because the cost of upgrading about 50,000 PCs could not be justified by the minimal gains to be found in ME. Our Informations Research and Informations Systems folks are less than blown away by what XP offers, in return for moving so many machines to that platform. For our work environment, which covers everything from global accounting to HR to marketing and sales to "Office style" work to extremely complex scientific applications, the neat new interface of XP doesn't carry the day.

That, I suppose, is one of the marketing issues for Microsoft to deal with. For novice users and new users, XP is probably a good deal. For experienced home users, it has some plusses and minuses, but for these experienced folks I haven't yet seen enough to spend $100 on the new OS. Most of the people I know who make a living with complex applications, who use NT/2000 as a base, haven't been real impressed with XP's neat new GUI or the bundling of consumer apps such as CD burning and digital photo handling.

Again, I don't dislike XP - I just haven't seen any substantive advantages in it for the "at work" me and the systems I use at work, nor the "at home" me and the tasks I do at home. "For me" being the operative phrase. Also, another factor for me is that I would never install a new OS on my main reviewing machine at home until the OS had been out for a while.

"In Windows 2000, Windows Me, and previous versions, those Taskbar buttons got smaller and smaller as you opened more documents. Each new document created a new button and squeezed it onto your taskbar, until the buttons were so small you couldn’t read them. They were worthless."

Well, that's why I expanded the taskbar to several rows and use that in conjunction with autohide. That's still my preferred way to work, and like Tracy, I found that "feature" never grew on me in XP.

Again, there are a lot of these touches in XP. Some folks may love them. Some folks may grow to love them. We'll probably all end up running some version of XP (although perhaps not this one.) But I haven't yet heard anyone give reasons to people like Mark and others, who have asked "what will this OS do for me that is worth spending money on?" that were concrete enough to be persuasive.

Perhaps a different take on this would be: Mark, what features would you like to see in a new OS that would persuade you to switch?

I've always had Windows 95 or 98 as a fallback for games that wouldn't run properly under Windows NT, then Windows 2000, and now XP (RC2). There's very little in the way of recent titles that don't run under XP, and for the older stuff, I can always boot up 98 instead. Frankly, I spend so little time trying to run DOS titles like MOO, MOM, System Shock, or Terra Nova that backward compatibility has almost become a non-issue. Almost. :-)

Hey, speaking of backward compatibility, did anyone ever write Glide drivers for Nvidia cards?

"Mark, what features would you like to see in a new OS that would persuade you to switch?"

Good question. Well, I'd like a more powerful word processor bundled within Windows so I didn't have to rely on Word. I wouldn't expect it to be as robust as Word, but Wordpad could be beefed up a bit and made much more useful. Doubt that'll ever happen.

I'd like a more robust print screen utility. (I'd like one as good as Hypersnap, essentially.)

I'd like the OS to boot a lot faster. Instead of taking 30 seconds, I'd prefer it to only take 10 seconds or so. This will probably never happen either.

I'd like a smarter backup utility. I'd like it to recommend to me what files I should back up. It should be smart enough to say hey, let's back up your registry, your address book, your documents, and these data files that have recently been modified. Don't make me hunt around for things to back up because I'll forget something.

I'd like the OS philospophy to be less registry-centric. I'd rather choose where all of an app's files go instead of Windows scattering them everywhere and tracking them with the registry.

I'd like to get one activiation code from Microsoft and have that be the end of it.

I'd like better error messages. Telling me that a fault occurred somewhere tells me nothing.

I'd like Windows to monitor my hardware performance, alert me to heat issues, etc.

I'd like more stability.

Etc.

'Hey, speaking of backward compatibility, did anyone ever write Glide drivers for Nvidia cards?'

I think a few underground people were writing wrappers before they were sued out of existence. No idea what happened to Creative's wrapper, either.

What old games do you need Glide for that you actually want to play, though?

"What old games do you need Glide for that you actually want to play, though?"

For me, only one that I can't love without: Red Baron 3D plus user mods. Unfortunately, Glide wrappers don't work for this game.

"only one that I can't love without: Red Baron 3D"

Freudian slip - live without. ;)

Heh -- Old Man Lackey can't get his mojo working unless he gets some Red Baron in first.

"I'd like more stability.

Etc."

My desires in an OS are apparently the opposite of what Microsoft wants to do. I want less and better.

I don't want a lot of utilities and apps built into the system. I want an operating system that is purely a lean and efficient and fast OS. I want it to use LESS memory than the one before, and use the memory more effectively. I want the whole registry mess redesigned. I want it to serve the purpose of running my software as fast and efficiently and as stable as possible. Give me superb error catching and reporting and recovery. Give me very efficient file storage. I do want an interface that is clean and effective. I do like built-in sound and graphic APIs because they make programmer's life easier and prevent us from having to set the DMA and IRQs for our boards for every program.

I really don't want a ton of integrated apps in my OS.

Another Voodoo only game that I like is Incubation. There's no D3D mode. It's either Voodoo or 2D.

"Heh -- Old Man Lackey can't get his mojo working unless he gets some Red Baron in first."

New Box Art:

"Jeff Lackey says 'Red Baron 3D is better than Viagra!'"

Old joke - I took a Viagra last night and it stuck in my throat - all I ended up with was a stiff neck! Badda Bing!

"What old games do you need Glide for that you actually want to play, though?

There's four that I still think are very playable, and I boot up from time to time:

1. Red Baron;
2. Independence War
3. Myth - The Fallen Lords
4. Incubation.

I'm not aware of workable glide wrappers for any of them.

"That's his favorite XP feature. Heh. It's handy if you have a lot of docs open, but if you just have three open, you have to click on the button to get a list of your documents instead of just clicking on the document directly."

That's not how it works, actually. It only groups things on the taskbar if you have more items than the taskbar can display at full size. If you only have three windows open, you get three seperate taskbar entries, even if they are all from the same program.

"I'd probably have to buy more RAM to run XP too, it looks like. Everything I read recommends 256 megs. No wonder you get a performance increase."

I hate to be a pill, but that's a $35 upgrade you're talking about there (assuming you already have 128 MB), and one that's probably worth doing even if you don't have XP. The upside is that XP manages large amounts of RAM better than previous versions of Windows.

---

Quote:

Supertanker said:
I didn't upgrade from DOS/Win3.11 to Windows95 until games that I wanted to play required it. I still run the original version of Win98, patched out the wazoo. Until I absolutely need XP, I'm not planning to upgrade.

---

"I hate to be a pill, but that's a $35 upgrade you're talking about there (assuming you already have 128 MB), and one that's probably worth doing even if you don't have XP."

Yeah, I know it's relatively minor. I was just trying to look at the real cost.

---

Quote:

The upside is that XP manages large amounts of RAM better than previous versions of Windows.

---

"Especially true since an architectural limit prevents Windows 95/98/ME from doing anything with more than 512MB of RAM."

Not really. You just need to edit your vcache settings to use more than 512MB RAM in Win9x.

er, I didn't explain that very well, but here, see for yourself. From the MS knowledge base:


"On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine).

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less"

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=vcache&rnk=2&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98

>What's it got that ME doesn't have that I really need?

Absolutely NOTHING. You don't NEED anything in XP, just like you don't NEED anything in ME over 98, just like you didn't NEED anything in 98 over 95 OSR2.1.

Just like the last $400 worth of games you've ever bought didn't have anything you "really need." But they are enjoyable (hopefully).

There is absolutely nothing anyone can tell you about XP that will make you feel like you should upgrade. But for the love of god, if you're convinced you don't want it, could you please stop responding to EVERY MESSAGE to tell us you don't want it? I get the picture. Honestly, I do.

>did anyone ever write Glide drivers for Nvidia cards

Drivers, no. That would have been illegal. Even when they open-sourced Glide, the VERY FIRST item in the open-source license agreement was that you wouldn't use the code to make something for a non-3dfx product. When NVIDIA bought 3dfx, they didn't want to do anything with glide - it was a good opportunity to totally kill something that needed to die.

There were some wrappers, Creative's being the most famous, which had dubious legal qualities.

Jeff - if you like the GUI in XP but don't like to use the integrated apps, preferring 3rd party ones, why not just install those on XP? Nothing in XP prevents you from installing and using other media players, rippers, CD burners, etc. as your defaults.

"There is absolutely nothing anyone can tell you about XP that will make you feel like you should upgrade. But for the love of god, if you're convinced you don't want it, could you please stop responding to EVERY MESSAGE to tell us you don't want it? I get the picture. Honestly, I do."

You know, I was asking what value there was in the OS, what kind of really compelling new features there might be, because you and Wumpus were so enthusiastically recommending it. I guess you answered that for me by providing absolutely no examples.

Instead I get pointed me to articles about XP that tell me it will protect my Quicken data from Quake players and that it's the greatest OS ever made for those of us who like to have 18 emails open at once. When pressed, I'm then told it's the most signficant upgrade since W95.

But thanks for recommending it because it's really cool!

"I'd like a more powerful word processor ...[and] a smarter backup utility."

These are actually pretty decent suggestions. I was half expecting one of the pro-XP camp people to say that the back up thing was already in there, but no such luck I guess. I agree that MS fleshing out WordPad is probably not going to happen, but it would be nice.

XP proably is pretty great. But I don't think I would pay full price for it right off the bat, either. Why? The upgrades XP offers are the kind of thing that you can take for granted easily. But you know, after you use it for a year or so, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it before, kinda like an ATM card.

And for whoever brought it up, Red Baron sure is worth hanging onto a Voodoo card. More campaigns should be that much fun. Also, although there are D3D ports for games like Longbow2 and F-15, you really need to have a Voodoo card for the games to look and play their best. I bet their are more, but I can't think of any off the top.

Thanks for the correction, Tim.

"Jeff - if you like the GUI in XP but don't like to use the integrated apps, preferring 3rd party ones, why not just install those on XP? Nothing in XP prevents you from installing and using other media players, rippers, CD burners, etc. as your defaults."

I'm sure that eventually I'll end up with some form of XP. If I get a free copy (legitimately, of course) I'll probably install it on the kids' machine downstairs and test it in my home environment. I just don't see enough in XP to purchase it at this point, and particuarly not enough in it to purchase three copies for my three home machines. Also, I really don't want to put it on my primary reviewing system until it's been out a while and I understand all of the "wrinkles" that need to be ironed out. On the other hand, it may be worth having XP on at least one of my systems specifically to test review items and programs for potential problems with XP.

Also, while I've been an early adopter for most computer related "stuff" since I started this trek back about 1979 (wow - could that actually be 22 years ago? sheesh)I find that a lot of the "help" that Windows continues to add on isn't my cup of tea. For instance, I didn't like the performance hit when Active Desktop was introduced and immediately deactivated it, I prefer my folders viewed in "Classic" mode, etc. So while there are some nice GUI touches in XP, they alone aren't a significant motivator for me.

"But I haven't yet heard anyone give reasons to people like Mark and others, who have asked 'what will this OS do for me that is worth spending money on?'"

Two words: hookers and blowjobs.

"Our Informations Research and Informations Systems folks are less than blown away by what XP offers, in return for moving so many machines to that platform."

FWIW the place I am consulting now, Glaxo, is moving all of their systems to XP (from ye olde NT 4.0) next year. That's probably around 100k desktops.

Coming from Win2k, I can see some corporate resistance. But from NT4 (or really any version of 9x) it's a no brainer.

"So while there are some nice GUI touches in XP, they alone aren't a significant motivator for me."

I think you are in a distinct minority here. Most average users are heavily motivated by aesthetics. Eg, the Pamela Anderson factor.

XP is the best OS Microsoft has ever released. The looks are just icing on the cake.

'XP is the best OS Microsoft has ever released.'

That would probably be 2k, actually. XP is the best consumer OS they've ever released, though. Coincidentally, it's also the most anticompetitive ("Let's work on owning the digital media market! Drop support for Java while you're at it!").

"XP is the best OS Microsoft has ever released. The looks are just icing on the cake."

So far the GUI is the most significant aspect of the OS that I've seen. I was reading USA Today at lunch today - the full page ad for XP said "You know how you searched everywhere for that email address that you just couldn't find?" Uh. No. "You remember how you just couldn't find that important document on your computer?" Uh. No. "Those days are behind you with XP!" Uh. Ok.

"I think you are in a distinct minority here. Most average users are heavily motivated by aesthetics."

I think folks that frequent boards like this and Usenet, etc. may have a very inaccurate view of the average user, the one to whom a pretty interface is a motivator. I was at a picnic with a group of about, hmm, 70 folks this weekend. These are all people who live in a town that is very white collar, very middle class to upper middle class. They know that I write for some computer outlets, so they always corner me to ask advice on this or that (and to get free games from my pile of stuff. ) It was amazing how many of these people are still running Windows 95. I asked one guy why he was still running Windows 95 instead of 98 or ME and he looked at me like a chicken watching card tricks. "Why?" he asked. "Why do I need to change it?" He plays games, he surfs the internet, his kids play games and do homework, he uses Quicken and Office (probably Office 97) and it's just never occurred to him that the OS is something he even needs to think about. It's just there for him, and he worries about whether games will work or how to make his internet surfing faster. Most of the people in the group were still running 95 or 98, some 98SE. The only ones running ME were those for whom it had come on the computer they purchased. In fact, with very few exceptions, for this cross section of people, they were all running the OS that came on their computer and they never seriously thought about upgrading the OS.

I'm sure Microsoft knows the buying (and non-buying) habits of this computing middle class. And this group becomes larger every month, as computer prices get so low and computer ownership becomes more prevelant. I knew the masses had finally been assimilated when my Mom and Dad, to whom the VCR is still more complex than they like, bought a computer, primarily to be able to email my brother and I and to do a little Web surfing. I imagine that these demographics are what make Microsoft realize that a "rental" OS system may be their most economically viable path.

"I think you are in a distinct minority here. Most average users are heavily motivated by aesthetics. Eg, the Pamela Anderson factor."

I'll buy that. Of course nearly all users are heavily motivated by cost, too. XP costs $100. Their current OS is paid for. I imagine there will be some resistence, especially in households with multiple PCs that will now require multiple purchases.

"the Pamela Anderson factor."

I think that we established earlier in this thread that as long as I have Red Baron 3D I don't need Pam Anderson.

"I imagine that these demographics are what make Microsoft realize that a "rental" OS system may be their most economically viable path."

Actually, you've made a compelling case for the OEM market as the only market that actually matters. I'll buy that, too. So will 3dfx, since they led the retail market video card sales for what.. 3 years running? Now they're dead.

In the big scheme of things, retail simply doesn't matter when it comes to computers.

OTOH, I believe new computer purchasers WILL want WindowsXP when they see it. As will many savvy users, though certainly not all.

"Coincidentally, it's also the most anticompetitive ("Let's work on owning the digital media market! Drop support for Java while you're at it!")."

You've just disproven your own point. What did you spend 2 paragraphs going on and on about? How people don't install aftermarket software. They use the computer as it's configured from the seller-- they just use whatever OS dell or gateway slapped on there.

If that is true, then why fault Microsoft for trying to deliver the best out of box experience WITHOUT requiring the user to go out and purchase, install, and configure a dozen different software packages? Ease of use, thy name is not "let me buy a copy of Nero so I can burn CD-Rs, and I hope I can figure out how to use it". Core features should be in the box.

Microsoft is damned if they do bundle (anticompetitive!), and damned if they don't bundle (I have to buy MORE software?!).

Someone may have addressed this already, but I'm going to ask anyway. I've read that XP comes with a built-in software firewall; has anyone tested it? How reliable is it?

I currently use Sygate Personal Firewall and one of the reasons I like it is that I can easily manage both incoming and outgoing traffic. (You'd be amazed how often Windows tries to access the Internet, especially when you've installed new software.) I just want to know how XP's built in firewall compares.

It's pretty amusing that XP *has* a built-in firewall. Why is it there? Is a good reason for it to be there *other* than as a massive, pre-emptive MS bugfix?

'You've just disproven your own point. What did you spend 2 paragraphs going on and on about? How people don't install aftermarket software. They use the computer as it's configured from the seller-- they just use whatever OS dell or gateway slapped on there.'

What are you talking about? That wasn't me. Regardless, I have no problem with MS adding an integrated media player and cd burning to their system; as long as customers can easily install their own methods to do such without jumping through hoops, it's not all that anticompetitive.

What is, though, is that they mysteriously cap MP3 encoding at 64k, while their propriatary format doesn't have a rate limit, and the media player automatically grabs Real Audio associations, and.....they're doing the same old FUD & difficulty methods to take over the digital media market. I'm not sure I agree that this is technically antitrust actionable, but it sure smells like the IE/Netscape debate the government just went through.

Dropping Java in XP, and plugin support in MS, though, is just completely indefensible. What's their biggest media competitor? Real. Whose plugin now doesn't work in IE6? Hmm.

"Actually, you've made a compelling case for the OEM market as the only market that actually matters."

Yeah, I agree. The problem is that PC sales are down and are forecasted to be down through 2002. Microsoft may be looking at reduced OEM revenue.

I also wonder how consumers will embrace new PCs that come with a subscription service OS if Microsoft implements that plan?

"You've just disproven your own point. What did you spend 2 paragraphs going on and on about? How people don't install aftermarket software. They use the computer as it's configured from the seller-- they just use whatever OS dell or gateway slapped on there."

Um - I didn't post the sentence to which you just replied. But I do think it's an conundrum for Microsoft. They do hold a monopolistic position in the PC OS market. Fine, that's the American system, they managed to take on all comers (e.g., OS/2) and kick their tails out of the market. But - that position does come with some hazards. I think that when they start bundling digital photo printing services, and as you put it, "a dozen different software packages" worth of applications into the OS, they are probably crossing the legal line. Although specifically where that line should be is pretty fuzzy to me.

Oh - and I didn't say that people don't install aftermarket software. They do. If they want to burn a CD, they find out what software they need to do that and they purchase it. They don't see that as any different from when they want to do their taxes and therefore purchase TurboTax. They just don't think of their OS as a piece of software that needs to be upgraded, until they can't do something that they want to do, and then discover that the OS is the problem.

Again, one issue is where you draw the line. When you subtly make other music formats inferior to your own, as referenced above, or make a change to your operating system that makes another media player inoperative, and so on, they really are playing on the mass market consumer who won't know enough to understand there are alternatives and work-arounds. And the question that will always dog Microsoft is where is the line? Is inserting your own CD writing applications and digital photo handling applications OK? Is inserting Microsoft Money as an integral part of the OS OK? How about APIs that work fine with Sidewinder sticks and pads but render other manufacturers somewhat crippled? I'm using some extremes, but the line can get real fuzzy - turned around the other way, do we really want them to eliminate notepad because it hurts shareware text editors, or eliminate Windows Explorer because it wipes out XTree Gold?

Why I will never buy XP.

Just bought visual foxpro 7 - its what erik and i program in. Its by Microsoft. During the install it "fixed" a problem with my current help system and my browser.

Now I can't play anything on the zone. Hitting ctrl-F does bring up the search box, but it greys out the search button - and the cancel button. MP3's no longer play. Clicking on last day messages here just brings me to a blank screen with the view text only button.

How great!!! Why does microsoft always feel the need to upgrade someone's system when they install any of their software? It would be like if my GE oven decided it needed to change the color of my GE fridge when I installed it.

To be honest, the browser thing doesn't really bug me too much. After all, the computer now only stays up for about 15 minutes at a time before crashing.

Letting MS run my firewall? You have to be kidding me. Will they just let any MS software thru to randomally change my desktop to make my life "easier"?


Did you ever try to uninstall and reinstall IE? *cry*

Chet

I'm guessing here, but I'll bet your problem Chet is related to some .dll's getting overwritten. With XP, you actually would have AVOIDED your trouble because it would have kept the originals and the new ones and switched which ones it used on each app startup.

I dunno guys...I think all this bluster about not buying XP is kind of silly. Within a year or two, if you choose to continue computing, you're going to have to upgrade your OS. Microsoft really wants to leave the 9x kernel in the past and who can blame them? Sure, if you're running Win2000, the changes are minimal. But most people are NOT running that at home nor did they need to. I'm ready for XP. The beta I used was super solid and the interface is a nice change that I'm looking forward to.

Compared to the alternatives (lots of OSes with no games or sticking with the instability of the 9x world), I'll take XP.

--Dave

"it would have kept the originals and the new ones and switched which ones it used on each app startup"

You know, I hate shit like this. It just sounds like such cluster f*ck. I'm sure it works most of the time, but it's the kind of thing that when it does get hosed, how are you really going to troubleshoot? What are you going to do? Same old win9x shuffle: fdisk, reinstall.

---

Quote:

I'm sure it works most of the time, but it's the kind of thing that when it does get hosed, how are you really going to troubleshoot?

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Dave, this is microsoft changing something because they say - okay so XP can fix it - so what? Will my software run right? Why can't they write software that stays within the bounds of my system?

As for having to upgrade. I am sure that is what sold people on Windows 2000 - now where are they? You were a sucker if you upgraded to 2000. My win 98 2nd edition has lasted me past win2000, winme, with zero reason to upgrade. Zero. Zero. Zero. None. Nil. It does what I want. But now I should upgrade so the next time I install a Microsoft app it won't break my OS?

Hmmmmmmmm, yeah. And I should only buy games that are released buggy to help support those game developers who still need more time to develop a product. PC's are all about supporting stupidity.

Lets say Sony made cars. You buy a new Sony music cd, it will not work in the sony supplied car cd player. Would you buy a new sony car because the latest sony music cd will not play in the sony car cd player? What if you called Sony and that is what they suggested. Would you ever buy another sony car?


Chet

"Jeff - if you like the GUI in XP but don't like to use the integrated apps, preferring 3rd party ones, why not just install those on XP? Nothing in XP prevents you from installing and using other media players, rippers, CD burners, etc. as your defaults."

In fact, XP supports 3rd party apps pretty seamlessly. I did an "upgrade" install to RC-1, and I already had WinZip installed on my machine. XP comes with native support for file compression, but because I had WinZip installed, it kept that as my default zip utility (i.e. when I would right click on a file, I'd get the option to use WinZip instead of the native "create a compressed folder" option). That's the kind of 3rd party app support I can live with.

Other things I like about XP: It's more stable than Me, and supports games better than 2k (that's actually somewhat of a guess on my part, since I've never used 2k, but from what other people have told me it's not a great gaming platform). I have yet to see a program bring down the entire OS. Typically when things crash, the taskbar disappears for a moment, then reappears and everything is working just fine (including any other programs I was running). In Me/98, the disappearance of the task bar is usually a prelude to a hard reboot. This fact alone is enough to make the upgrade worthwhile to me. I hate rebooting.

Native support for my CD burner (I dumped Nero; it's much easier to simply drag files to the burner in explorer).

Better organization. I can sympathize with Mark's (or was it Jeff's?) desire for a slimmer OS that installs things where you tell it to, but if my OS is going to go the other way, I'd rather it be invisible to me. Because really, I don't need to know where things are physically located on my drive--it's more important to have all the stuff that I use (files, mostly) available and organized in a practical fashion. The other stuff (program files and directories, system files, etc.) I don't need to see at all. I've grown to appreciate the "My Documents"-centric approach that XP uses, and I really don't browse the rest of my C drive much any more.

Interface. This has been beaten to death already, so I'll just add that I like it. It's something that I have to use every day, so looking good and working intuitively is worthwhile. I also like the way the start menu displays the ten (you can set any number you want) last programs I used. That allowed me to nuke all the icons off my desktop, save for the recycling bin. I've found that I don't use much more than ten programs on a regular basis. I like the program manager, and all the info it tracks on system performance (2k also has this feature). I like the new add/remove programs interface--it gives you a lot more info about each program--how much space it takes up on your hard drive, how often you use it, and more--that's good stuff. I love the better plug and play support, and the fact that I don't have to go through the hardware configuration wizard for most new hardware. I plugged in my new scanner and got a message that said "New hardware detected..." That stayed on the screen for a few seconds and was then replaced by a new message that read "Your new hardware has been configured and is ready to use." Right on.

Multiple user support. I like the fact that my wife and I can keep seperate user accounts, configured to our own tastes, and that I can switch over and use my account without terminating any of the processes that she is running.

It looks nicer. What can I say? I dig aesthetics.

I understand where you're coming from Chet and to a point I agree.

The reality of the situation is such that you want to use Foxpro and it nutsed up your Windows. How do you fix it? Dump either Foxpro or Windows...?

Have you checked TechNet for a fix for your problem? It's not likely to be just you experiencing this.

Computers are fucking complex machines. Sometimes they get fucked up. Doesn't matter if it's Unix, Linux, Windows, MacOS...there are going to be problems. Microsoft has decided to implement some great new features in their operating system designed to limit fucked-upness. The new OS is proven to be more stable in reviews appearing everywhere on the web. What's the alternative here? If you dump Windows, you effectively dump gaming. I'm not saying don't complain...I do it myself when stuff doesn't work. I'm just saying that XP may have prevented your problem.

Many, many developers write software that won't stay within the bounds of your system. That's a reason the .dll stuff has come about. Programmers are a shady bunch sometimes. They think they can do better than the OS or more specifically another programmer. So they change stuff... even the Foxpro guys are probably doing this. But with billions of hardware combinations all trying to run the same code, some things are going to break.

No one who upgraded to Win2000 was a sucker if they got what they wanted from it. 2000 was designed for business, not home users. Microsoft always promoted it as such. Many businesses got very good mileage out of it and will continue to do so after XP is released. Many home users will stay with ME or 98 which is also a-ok.

I'm not suggesting you upgrade to XP...try TechNet. I'm just noting that XP fixes something that programmers were breaking...a lot. It may be what bit you. That's it.

--Dave

"It looks nicer. What can I say? I dig aesthetics."

Bah! Gameplay's more important than graphics! Oh wait, that's another argument.

>It's more stable than Me

I gotta bring this up again. Who are all these people that are having stability problem with Win98/ME? I've never had either crash on me, ever, and I'm on computers constantly. The only "stability" feature that's been nice about NT/2000, is that you can more effectively isolate individual application problems. The "enhanced stability" feature, which is touted by virtually every XP ad/supporter, isn't meaningful.

>I don't need to know where things are physically located on my drive

I gotta side with Jeff on this one. How can having less control over your system be considered a good thing? You're less able to problem solve when individual applications do go wonky, and the additional complexity always ends up requiring additional system resources.

>I like the new add/remove programs interface--it gives you a lot more info about each program--how much space it takes up on your hard drive, how often you use it, and more--that's good stuff.

That's the first feature anyone has listed that I actually think has utility.

Stefan

---

Quote:

Who are all these people that are having stability problem with Win98/ME?

---

---

Quote:

You're less able to problem solve when individual applications do go wonky, and the additional complexity always ends up requiring additional system resources.

---

Me: "I'm sure it works most of the time, but it's the kind of thing that when it does get hosed, how are you really going to troubleshoot?"

Dave: "What's the alternative?"


Dave, what I'm saying is this feature looks like it's going to be difficult to troubleshoot when it goes awry. I suppose you agree because you seem to be saying that I should just stop whining because Micrsoft is doing the best they can.

*shrug*

Who cares? I mean really. Have they added any tools to help me troubleshoot the situation when it gets fucked up?

Do you remember when DirectX first came out and how it was supposed to make it easier to play games and shit, but it had the potential to really hose your machine? To me, this seems like that type feature.

Hey, maybe it works great and I'll never have a problem, but I would like to at least have the option to have more control over my machine, not less.

Well, this will reveal just how odd I am and probably invalidate any further comments I make with regard to PC OSs. I've been in the PC world since 1979 (Apples, Ohio Scientifics, Northstars, Trash 80s, etc.) At one time I had a room in my house with an Apple IIe, an Apple IIGS, a Mac, an Atari, and a PC. And one of the things I hated about the Mac was how it kept a "layer" between me and the system. There was no simple way to get down to a system prompt and do a lot of the basic stuff I could do on other systems. One of the major reasons the Mac was so popular was that it insulated the user from all of that nasty computer stuff. But I hated it.

As long as MS OSs continue to allow me to simply manipulate things at a directory level (and XP does)then more power to them if they want to make access to files, etc. more transparent for the mass market. However, my fear is that the more they attempt to simplify an OS set up for the Mom and Pops who buy a PC from Best Buy, the more tangled they will make it for those who don't need Microsoft's "help."

Again, I have no massive dislike for XP - I just rate it as a "nice to have" and not a "need to have" for myself, and certainly not worth $300 to install on my three machines.

"I just rate it as a "nice to have" and not a "need to have" for myself"

Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Some nice features offset by at least one irritating one (activation), but nothing new that's essential, and not worth the $100 to upgrade.

Even if it is the best OS Microsoft's made, it doesn't seem better enough than what I have to justify the cost.

>I gotta bring this up again. Who are all these people that are having stability problem with Win98/ME?

Me, for one. I hate ME. I hate 98. I like MS's other products, like Office XP, for example, but their OSes suck. I have to reformat my computer every three to four months, and I'm not doing substantial hardware or software installations or removals. Random blue screens, crashes for no reason, the list goes on and on.

"I gotta bring this up again. Who are all these people that are having stability problem with Win98/ME? I've never had either crash on me, ever, and I'm on computers constantly."

Well, me, for one. Mine's crashed (hard) here at the office three times today. Granted, I run a lot of beta and alpha software here, so things are bound to get screwed up. But it hasn't happened at home, where I run XP, even once.

Heh - I will say that at least XP tends to actually shut down without hanging up and requiring holding the power button down for 10 seconds.

Now how's that for a ringing endorsement?

"I gotta side with Jeff on this one. How can having less control over your system be considered a good thing? You're less able to problem solve when individual applications do go wonky, and the additional complexity always ends up requiring additional system resources."

I didn't say it gives you less control, I said it's better organized. All that stuff is still there, but it's more segregated from all the stuff in My Documents in the interface, which is fine by me since the times I actually need to access it are pretty rare, I'm finding.

Even so, I can't remember the last time something going "all wonky" has required me to go slogging through system files and application directories in explorer. Do you really do this often? Do you really have to?

"Who cares? I mean really. Have they added any tools to help me troubleshoot the situation when it gets fucked up?"

Yeah, there's system restore, which can come in pretty handy. It doesn't help you troubleshoot, per se, but it does return your system to a stable condition, which is a start. They've also got a nice error reporting feature built in, though I'm not sure whether that's just part of the beta or part of the final OS.

"Some nice features offset by at least one irritating one (activation)"

So far, activation has been about as annoying as entering a CD key when installing a game. Which is to say, it was slightly bothersome once, for about fifteen seconds, and I haven't really though much about it since. You may have an idealogical aversion to it, and that's fine, but as a practical issue it's... well, a non-issue.

I just wish it were a one-time activation thing. I don't like the idea of the OS being able to deactivate itself.

You do realize how unlikely that scenario is, right? You can do a lot of hardware changes without forcing reactivation (I switch stuff around quite a bit, and haven't had to do one yet), and even if you did force a reactivation, you'd have to do it pretty often before the OS would shut itself down.

Like I said, I understand your concern from an idealogical standpoint, but as a practical matter it just doesn't seem to be a problem.

I'm more concerned about XP getting bugged and thinking it needs to deactivate itself for some reason. I just don't like the idea that the OS can choose to not function properly. What if I'm on deadline with an article and it goes nuts on me?

(Side question: If I have to activate by phone, does Microsoft provide a toll-free number?)

But otherwise, yeah, I find it annoying to think that I'll have to reactivate it just from the routine course of making enough hardware changes. If I get a new master drive, for instance, I'll have to reinstall and reactivate. Currently all I do is reinstall and use the serial number. Heck, even if I just reformat I have to reactivate it.

The reactivation number is toll-free. Activation after reinstalling is nearly as simple as entering the serial number. Just get your Internet connection running and activate it. It doesn't take long.

"That's the first feature anyone has listed that I actually think has utility."

Well, it's hard to list them all. But XP is packed to the seams with cool, useful features. That's why I'm so excited about it. Standard disclaimer: again, doesn't mean YOU must rush out and buy it. If you're happy with your current system, by all means, stick with it. But XP is a truly great product if you decide to go that route. The only real beef people have with it is the activation, and I think that's a case of kids crying wolf.

"Did you ever try to uninstall and reinstall IE? *cry*"

The question is, Chet, when are you ever not crying?

"What is, though, is that they mysteriously cap MP3 encoding at 64k, while their propriatary format doesn't have a rate limit, and the media player automatically grabs Real Audio associations, and....[snip].Dropping Java in XP, and plugin support in MS,"

Except, if you had taken the time to actually research the issues instead of going with knee-jerk assumptions, you'd find out that none of that stuff is actually true. Media Player doesn't grab associations. Java is just optional, like a lot of other stuff in IE, and will auto-download if you really need it. Plugins are an archaic, backwards, and netscape-proprietary mechanism that should have been dropped. Finally, this is the biggie: folks, MP3 is not an open-source format. It's owned by FhG. Look it up if you don't believe me. And MS would have to pay a licensing fee to include their encoder. You can rip MP3's till the cows come home if you just install a licensed codec for $10 or whatever.

"The underlying code of the OS for Win9x is simply not built for stability like XP/2000/NT. You point out the reason yourself...separate memory spaces per running app. That's one incredibly huge reason the XP upgrade is a significant one for home users."

Correction: Win9x HAS protected memory. That's why Win9x can run most WinNT code.. it has all the core functionality such as multithreading, and protected memory. Of course, it's trivial to install a vxd driver to write all over other processes' memory if you want, though. The real problem with Win9x is limited GDI/kernel 16-bit resource pools, as well as some of the old 16-bit DOS architecture hanging around (at boot time, mostly) for backwards compatibility.

I actually agree with stefan-- Win9x is a fairly stable system, properly configured (good drivers, good software), as long as you don't open too many windows at once-- thus exhausting the 16-bit resource pools. Try opening 20 copies of MS Word if you want to see what I mean.. personally I got sick of running into those limits with today's graphics-heavy apps. Also, as others have pointed out, NT protects itself better from sloppy programs and sloppy programmers. No shortage of those going around..

"Oh - and I didn't say that people don't install aftermarket software. They do. If they want to burn a CD, they find out what software they need to do that and they purchase it. They don't see that as any different from when they want to do their taxes and therefore purchase TurboTax. They just don't think of their OS as a piece of software that needs to be upgraded, until they can't do something that they want to do, and then discover that the OS is the problem."

Why should I have to install aftermarket software to play back a DVD? Or to burn a CD? Or to protect myself with a software firewall? These are fundamental, basic features of a computer's hardware and OS. There's a world of difference between this, and bundling something like MS Money.

"And the question that will always dog Microsoft is where is the line? Is inserting your own CD writing applications and digital photo handling applications OK? Is inserting Microsoft Money as an integral part of the OS OK?"

I see this line as hardware delimited, mostly. Anything that deals with common hardware (CD-R, MP3, DVD, etc) at the time of release, should be a bundled OS function. It's also delimited by browsing vs. creation. Integrating IE, designed for read-only BROWSING of documents, is absolutely necessary. What good is an OS that can't display the essential core formats-- the images, documents, audio files, and video clips that are on your computer? On the other hand, integrating a great HTML editor, which is designed for CREATING documents, is hardly defensible at all.

Plus, if you don't like the ones MS uses, you are free to go out and install your own. It's not like Bill Gates is at your house with a gun to your head forcing you to use media player for MP3 playback, or IE to browse web pages.

Activation will lose Microsoft some sales, though. I would have happily shelled out the $99 to buy an XP upgrade-and put it on both my desktop PC and my notebook. But I'm not spending $200 when I only use one computer at a time. I wonder how many folks will warez a cracked copy when they would have bought one disc if they could have installed it on all their PCs?

At any rate, I ain't buyin' till I hear reports of how compatible existing games are. I see reports all over the Preview Program newsgroup of various games not running... B-17 II, for instance. Not givin' up my flyin fort!

>>Plus, if you don't like the ones MS uses, you
>>are free to go out and install your own.

Except there's not as much incentive to develop them when so many people will use what's free instead of buying something. Look at Ben Somes -- he won't be paying for more Nero upgrades. Look at what happened to Netscape, which is about dead now. There will be alot fewer choices.

When people bitched about MS including TCP/IP in Windows 95, I thought they were full of it. That's a function that SHOULD be built in -- it's a low-level system function. But stuff like music ripping -- especially when it only rips into Microsoft's proprietary format with any decent quality -- doesn't belong in an OS.

Oh, come *on*, Wumpus. What, are you going to defend Standard Oil next? "Hey, they didn't force everyone to buy their oil!"

"Except, if you had taken the time to actually research the issues instead of going with knee-jerk assumptions, you'd find out that none of that stuff is actually true. Media Player doesn't grab associations."

Are you sure? It does in 2k and 98.

"Java is just optional, like a lot of other stuff in IE, and will auto-download if you really need it."

Ok, this is the first I've heard of this. Still, why isn't it included by default? This is the desktop-icon thing all over again.

"Plugins are an archaic, backwards, and netscape-proprietary mechanism that should have been dropped."

Erm, so? When else has MS dropped support for stuff lots of people still use?

"Finally, this is the biggie: folks, MP3 is not an open-source format. It's owned by FhG. Look it up if you don't believe me. And MS would have to pay a licensing fee to include their encoder. You can rip MP3's till the cows come home if you just install a licensed codec for $10 or whatever."

Actually, MS payed an unlimited licensing fee of a few million to Fraienhauffer (sp -2) a while back for media player, so they actually wouldn't need to shell out anything else to include it.

Additionally, why does this matter? MS includes an Mp3 encoder, they just cap it at 64k, from what I've read. So, they included it, but it just *happens* to be artificially rate-capped to be inferior to MS's own product.

What, do you need a signed confession from Bill for this one?

"Plus, if you don't like the ones MS uses, you are free to go out and install your own. It's not like Bill Gates is at your house with a gun to your head forcing you to use media player for MP3 playback, or IE to browse web pages."

Oooh, you kooky libertarians.

"Plus, if you don't like the ones MS uses, you are free to go out and install your own. It's not like Bill Gates is at your house with a gun to your head forcing you to use media player for MP3 playback, or IE to browse web pages."

The problem is that things like this installed by default with the OS become the defacto standards. Microsoft did it with disk compression and killed the third-party disk compression companies. They did it with the browser and killed Netscape.

In the short term it's benign because we get more with our OS. In the long run it could be problematic if MS decides to start raising the price, trying to force subscription plans on us, etc.

Why do I picture wumpuss with two little microsoft pom poms and a home made cheerleader skirt made out of a compusa bag?

Micrsoft did some odd little things that you are not mentioning. Like why in the hell did they drop support for NetBEUI in xp? Considering most clued in users use this protocol locally instead of TCP/IP. Instead now, all of my shares would have to be bound to tcp/ip? Yuck. Do you remember the excellent MS bug where all people had to do was guess the first letter to your share password to get in? If you were always connected and had your shares bound to tcp/ip you do. Because hackers came in and did whatever they wanted to your system.

As for a firewall built into the operating system. 1. That is not a firewall. That is microsoft redefining what a firewall is. That is not a firewall. If it is part of the os, it cannot also be protecting the OS. If you cannot understand that concept, the idea of a company having an outside audit is also probably confusing to you.

Back to opening my 20 copies of word so I can get into some serious work.

Chet

> "The problem is that things like this installed by default with the OS become the defacto standards. Microsoft did it with disk compression and killed the third-party disk compression companies. They did it with the browser and killed Netscape."

Yeah, uh, thank god that they didn't integrate a TCP/IP stack / modem dialer into the OS, coz i'd sure f'n hate to give up Trumpet Winsock!

> "Like why in the hell did they drop support for NetBEUI in xp? Considering most clued in users use this protocol locally instead of TCP/IP. Instead now, all of my shares would have to be bound to tcp/ip?"

Most clued in users will browse their XP cd's, find the little directory with NetBEUI in it, install it, and be done with it, instead of bitching. ;) This isn't something that I think is all that big of a deal, since you've always had to click other shit to install it previously, anyway.

> "Actually, MS payed an unlimited licensing fee of a few million to Fraienhauffer (sp -2) a while back for media player, so they actually wouldn't need to shell out anything else to include it."

I'm having a very tough time finding anything on Microsoft's, Fraunhofer's, Yahoo's, or Google's websites/search engines regarding such a license. If you could point to it, I'm sure that'd validate what you said, at least in regards to the mp3 codec.


In regards to the non-inclusion of Java with WinXP, please visit the following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/java/issues/openletter.htm

Obviously, it spins the situation around a bit, but the fact is: There's legal reasons WHY it isn't included.

- mike - hey, there's always MacOS -

I am surprised to see something like that on their website. It seems a little abrasive for the general public, especially from a company with an image problem.

Re: stability of Win9x:

>I have to reformat my computer every three to four months.... Random blue screens, crashes for no reason, the list goes on and on.

and

>Well, me, for one. Mine's crashed (hard) here at the office three times today.

Those are really crazy anecdotes. What kind of state are your systems? Are you running a lot of unnecesary applications (you shouldn't be running anything other than systray and explorer). How many programs are in your start-up tray (how many icons are on your taskbar -- should be none, other than volume and perhaps anti-virus software). If my computer crashed three times a day, I'd go back to a typewriter. That's crazy stuff.

I've never seen a well maintained system have stability problems, which is why I don't see any value in the "enhanced stability" of the NT platform. Unstable systems are usually clogged with unnecessary applications. But maybe it's a real advantage that an NT system will be very stable, in spite of the fact that so many applications unilaterally install themselves into your system start-up, so you don't even have to perform rudimentary system maintenance (which most people probably don't do).

Stefan

"Those are really crazy anecdotes."

Why? I merely pointed out that my home machine suffers fewer problems than my office machine. I use both for roughly the same things. So what's your problem?

"What kind of state are your systems? Are you running a lot of unnecesary applications (you shouldn't be running anything other than systray and explorer)."

I don't run anything other than Systray, Explorer, and Speedkey (for my funky keyboard) at work, on my Me machine. I run pretty much the same things on my XP machine, without any noticeable problems. I'm not exactly a computer newbie--I do know how to configure my system for stability. Unfortunately the best laid plans... especially when you run lots of beta and alpha software on a regular basis. I do the same at home, however, and while the software itself crashes about as often, it never brings the OS down with it.

"If my computer crashed three times a day, I'd go back to a typewriter. That's crazy stuff."

Yeah, well, it's not like that's an option. And I didn't say that it crashes three times a day--it just crashed three times yesterday. My home machine still crashes far less often, though.

"I've never seen a well maintained system have stability problems"

Well, if you get to complain about crazy anecdotes, I'll have to complain about yours. I find that really hard to believe, but I guess it all depends on what you consider a "well maintained system." I keep all my systems clean, I don't run anything unnecessary at startup, I defrag once every few weeks, and I do a full wipe and reinstall Windows a couple times each year. But ultimately you can't get around the fact that I use a lot of different software, and some of it is inherently unstable. I'm sure if I used my machine exclusively for Office apps and the occaisional (non-beta) game, I could run a pretty stable system, but I don't have that luxury. Still, if things are going to crash, my money goes on the OS that doesn't crash with them.

---

Quote:

(you shouldn't be running anything other than systray and explorer

---

"I've never seen a well maintained system have stability problems,"

Even though Desslock is on crack with his P4 recommendation, he's right about this. The key words are WELL MAINTAINED SYSTEM. Yes, a well maintained Win9x system is quite stable (again, until you run into the 16-bit GDI limitations with too many windows open). Most users don't have the time or inclination to be this careful about their software and OS. With XP, they don't have to be, since the OS protects them from.. themselves. And sloppy software developers worldwide.

"Most clued in users will browse their XP cd's, find the little directory with NetBEUI in it, install it, and be done with it, instead of bitching. ;) This isn't something that I think is all that big of a deal, since you've always had to click other shit to install it previously, anyway."

To be fair, I couldn't find this either. No matter. At this point NetBEUI is a legacy protocol. We're all better off with TCP/IP anyway, as it peforms the same functions, and it's a worldwide standard. Imagine that, folks: MS dropping a proprietary format in favor of a standard one! Guess they had to take time out from their worldwide domination plans, or something.

"Why do I picture wumpuss with two little microsoft pom poms and a home made cheerleader skirt made out of a compusa bag?"

Oh, I dunno, because you're a pervert?

"As for a firewall built into the operating system. 1. That is not a firewall. That is microsoft redefining what a firewall is. That is not a firewall. If it is part of the os, it cannot also be protecting the OS. If you cannot understand that concept, the idea of a company having an outside audit is also probably confusing to you."

I've got your audit right here in my pants, buddy. And if firewall software running under the OS can't protect the OS, you better write a letter to ZoneAlarm post haste, because GRC and Steve Gibson seem to think it does. Caveat: Microsoft's firewall is traditional. Eg, it only blocks _incoming_ connections. So don't put up that copy of zonealarm just yet..

That said, I am a HUGE fan of the SOHO firewall/switch products like the Linksys BEFSR41 and I would always recommend that first and foremost over any software.

"Especially when that added stability includes me not having to sit and tweak shit all the time to make sure I'm not running this app and breaking that one. I'm really kind of sick of playing in the insides of the OS."

This is the key for me. Yeah, sure--paring down your running processes to practically nothing provides a more stable OS. That's hardly a big surprise, but also not much of an endorsement for Windows 9x. "It's really stable if you don't make it do anything." Well, duh. But what if I want an OS that can run a bunch of processes without choking? Is that so much to ask for?

>if you get to complain about crazy anecdotes, I'll have to complain about yours. I find [no OS crashes] really hard to believe,

Really? I honestly don't think I've ever had an OS crash, ever. Applications occasionally crash (almost always due to conflicts with other background apps, video driver problems or sound driver problems). If you're just stating that you prefer the way NT handles application crashes (they're easier to isolate), then I agree -- if it's part of your job to run inherently unstable, beta products, then I can see the value in having a system that is better able to isolate application crashes. But that's not a typical user, who is only running retail products. Most users who have unstable systems have poorly maintained systems.

>I don't run anything unnecessary at startup, I defrag once every few weeks, and I do a full wipe and reinstall Windows a couple times each year.

That's above and beyond what should be necessary, for most users.

> I don't want to have to start it every time I've got pictures to download.

Well, that's fine, but the more applications you have running, the more likely you'll have application crashes. I think it's less burdensome to just manually start up applications when needed, than to tolerate have reduced system resources available and a higher probability of a crash.

>I run the United Devices cure for cancer thingy in the background.

Altruistic, but clearly this can be shut down before playing a resource intensive app. like a game.

>Trillian/ICQ/AOL IM/Insert your favorite IM program here

Ditto.

>USB device stuff

What USB device stuff is needed? I run USB devices without having applications loaded.

>Display Director for the GeForce2 vid card in my system...

I highly recommend you only boot that one up when needed --- which is, well, almost never.

>The United Devices thing was crashing Baldur's Gate to the desktop for one nutty example.

Like I said, you're taking unnecessary risks running ancillary applications at the same time you're running resource intensive applications, like games. I don't think running XP, or any NT platform, changes that analysis, although the resulting crashes are less likely to require a reboot.

>I just don't see how anyone can look at added stability and criticize a company for touting that feature.

I'm definitely not. I just have never had a problem with the stability of recent O/Ss either, so I think the "instability" of those older apps is overstated, and therefore the "enhanced stability" of XP aren't particularly meaningful.

>to sit and tweak shit all the time to make sure I'm not running this app and breaking that one

That's a fair point. I'm sick of applications that automatically install themselves and needlessly demand system resources for the same reason. Like the two (or three) "enhanced accessibility" applications which office XP automatically installs (and you can't get rid of, even using msconfig), which take up 10-20% of system resources for applications (allowing you to use non-standard input devices for handicapped people) that have no value, whatsoever, for almost every user. If WinXP is less likely to crash when you run a dozen of those apps -- that's nice, but it ignores the underlying problem -- you're still going to incur a significant cost in system resources if you don't manually tweak your system to prevent those applications from running.

Stefan

"At this point NetBEUI is a legacy protocol. We're all better off with TCP/IP anyway, as it peforms the same functions, and it's a worldwide standard."

Don't take away my NetBUEI. I fought TCP/IP on my home systems forever - it was just a crap shoot as to whether computer A showed up on Computer B's Network Neighborhood under TCP/IP. I tried a lot of recommendations for a year or so, then a pro told me to switch to NetBEUI for internal network use, and I've never had a problem since.

>Those are really crazy anecdotes.

Not really. I've been around computers long enough to know what I'm doing. In my system tray I run explorer, systray, Norton antivirus, and Sygate firewall (because I have a cable modem). I defrag/scan disk every 40 hours of use, I have a manually created memory cache, I clean out my registry, and I use the latest approved drivers, no beta drivers. I know how to properly maintain a system and keep it lean and mean.

I've had problems on a Pentium II system, a Pentium III system, and my 1.33GHz Athlon. Second-edition Windows 98 was pretty stable, but ME is complete crap.

As an aside, I do find it surprising the number of people that think the problems people have with Windows is somehow the fault of the user.

--Billy

I think Stefan's system is so stable because it's an Intel Pentium 4(tm).

Stability is more tied to the hardware, methinks. Motherboards, in particular.

I have the system from hell from home. It's been upgraded from DOS to Windows 3.1 to 3.11 to 95 to 98 to 98SE to Me without a single "plow the Windows folder" reinstall. It's gone through at least two motherboard swaps (maybe three), probably 10 videocards (I recently ran a Registry cleaner utility that found a bunch of Voodoo 2 stuff in there), a couple of sound cards, Ethernet, modems, I have a video capture board, it's been all SCSI, now it's IDE and SCSI with a SCSI burner and two SCSI drives and an IDE main boot drive... in short, it should be the crashingest system in existence.

It runs every game I throw at it, and has about as many crashes as my office machine, which was built a year ago, features a generic IDE CD-ROM and GeForce 2, and an Ethernet card, and hasn't had any changes.

No one's Windows experience, regardless of the apps running in the background, is identical because the hardware isn't identical. Arguing the reliability of their system in relation to others is totally meaningless.

---

Quote:

[The new add/remove programs interface is] the first feature anyone has listed that I actually think has utility.

---

"if it's part of your job to run inherently unstable, beta products, then I can see the value in having a system that is better able to isolate application crashes. But that's not a typical user, who is only running retail products. Most users who have unstable systems have poorly maintained systems."

That's fine, but you were criticizing my anecdote, not the experiences of the typical user. In my original post, I merely stated what *I* like about XP. Your mileage may vary. If you are perfectly happy with your current OS, then by all means keep it. I would. But I'm not, so I won't.

>That's fine, but you were criticizing my anecdote,

No, I was just surprised by your experience, since it's so different from my own -- not being critical. I honestly expected when I posted: "I've never seen a well maintained system have stability problems, which is why I don't see any value in the enhanced stability of the NT platform" for everyone here to agree that it was just marketing hooey, because the Win9x O/Ses are stable. So I was surprised when guys like you and Billy posted anecdotes describing extremely unstable systems. I never doubted you knew what you were doing (or I wouldn't have been surprised by your experiences).

I was just calling someone for posting about a feature that I thought was widely considered fluff -- just brought up when reciting marketing feature lists. But if you think that the "enhanced stability" of XP provides meaningful benefits to you, then I can certainly understand why you'd espouse that as a difference between the O/Ss.

Stefan

>Arguing the reliability of their system in relation to others is totally meaningless.

I don't think anyone was arguing over "who has a more reliable system" - just trying to rationalize pretty dyametrically opposed experiences. You're probably right on the hardware point - I do tend to go with pretty non-exotic components. Whatever the reason, the stability of my system is more important than performance or cost (within reason) to me, so if I thought I'd gain stability by switching O/Ses, I'd be one of the first to do so.

Stefan

(and your system does sound pretty crazy -- it has some serious personality).

NetBEUI - they will not support it any more - so any issues that come up - bugs etc. Too bad. Its on the cd, fine - but its not supported. Running NetBEUI locally instead of tcp/ip is the smart choice, tcp/ips overhead alone is just not made for local networks.

For the firewall - while zonealarm is not a real firewall either - it at least is outside the operating system so it cannot be manipulated by the os. The built firewall is going to trust the os - I want my firewall - albeit a software firewall to trust no one. Also not blocking outbound? Not wanting to show the XP chatter? Thats reason enough to always run ZA now, fun to see who thinks they should be able to connect to the Internet.

Chet

"So I was surprised when guys like you and Billy posted anecdotes describing extremely unstable systems"

I wouldn't call it extremely unstable, but I'm no stranger to crashes. Like I said, it's probably because I install and mess with so many games, many of which are not final code. Given that, I appreciate any additional stability. I also like the fact that the OS handles large amounts of RAM better; I use a lot of 3D software at home (Bryce, Rhino, et al), and I'd like to add even more RAM to my system eventually (currently I have 512 MB). Plus I like the interface. That counts a lot, for me.

Like I said, I don't want to convince you that you need XP--you know the answer to that better than I do. I just wanted to mention why *I* like it, to help others make a more informed decision, for or against.

>No, I was just surprised by your experience, since it's so different from my own.

Personally, I think you've got access to something we don't. Perhaps a +10 Windows Won't Crash spell?

"I defrag/scan disk every 40 hours of use"

Good lord. I think I last ran one of these back in.....1999, maybe? Before the Advent Of 2000.

I am not a techie and I'm filled with apprehension and misconceptions:

Here they are.

As Joe Gamer, I kinda feel that I'm going to have to get Windows XP whether I like it or not. Won't future iterations of DirectX be optimized to run in that environment? Most games and video card drivers need DirectX compatibility, right?

And if I want to get a mainstream computer, one that will be compatible with the next several years worth of games, I'll be buying one off the shelf that's going to have XP in it, right?

What options do I really have?

---

Quote:

As Joe Gamer, I kinda feel that I'm going to have to get Windows XP whether I like it or not. Won't future iterations of DirectX be optimized to run in that environment? Most games and video card drivers need DirectX compatibility, right?

And if I want to get a mainstream computer, one that will be compatible with the next several years worth of games, I'll be buying one off the shelf that's going to have XP in it, right?

What options do I really have?

---

Good lord. It will be a long, LONG time before games actually _require_ Windows XP. At least two years, IMO. So if you're worried about that-- don't be. Win2k and WinME will be fine for the forseeable future.

'NetBEUI - they will not support it any more - so any issues that come up - bugs etc. Too bad. Its on the cd, fine - but its not supported. Running NetBEUI locally instead of tcp/ip is the smart choice, tcp/ips overhead alone is just not made for local networks.'

Not to be pedantic, but what TCP/IP overhead? I just tested out a 700 odd meg file copy, and I got about 7 megs a second downloading, 5 megs a second uploading on a 100 megabit network using both windows network sharing and ftp. That's only 50% or so of the theoretical maximum; does Netbeui do better?

Jason, testing simple low volume networks in that manner does not give you a real world look at how the protocol behaves and even then yes, there is a difference but a small difference, but since it is a constantly used item the small difference over time makes a significant difference, why do you buy PC133 ram over PC100 ram? The difference is in Milliseconds.

Even a mildly busy local network will see a noticeable performance boost by using NetBEUI for local traffic. TCP/IP was not originally designed for local traffic and it still behaves that way, in your local environment the chance of receiving packets out of order, or missing a few is almost non-existent, yet TCP/IP still invests major overhead in breaking up the packets, tracking the packets, Acknowledging the packets etc. While your local network may be able to handle large packet sizes, your net connection may not and mostly cannot. So you are forced to choose to further degrade one in favor of the other.

But my real, bigger concern is security. None of my PCs bind TCP/IP to file sharing, print sharing or our local Microsoft network and I sure as hell do not bind my netbios to tcp/ip. I would be worried to open up my network in this way to TCP/IP.

Chet

Arguably, MS should let you bind to UDP instead of TCP then, as that would remove the overhead and it'd then be comparable to NetBEUI.

If you're worried about security you could block the relevant ports with a firewall or on a per-machine basis, but this is obviously a hassle. I suppose any routable protocol won't be secure, though.

That wouldn't work either. UDP would be a terrible protocol for a local lan. Networks with access to the Internet really do work best with one protocol for your local traffic designed for local traffic and one for the outside (tcp/ip). And it all works best if at least a switch sits between the two segments.

Chet

Chet, I have that exact same setup (NetBUEI internal and TCP/IP external) and it works great. I would also recommend it as the way to setup a home network connected to the internet.

Me too on NetBUEI (inside) and TCP/IP (out). I suppose if NetBUEI goes away the next best thing would be non-routable IPs and a gateway. But then I woudl have to leave a box on all the time.

But whatever. I'm in the not-upgading-to-XP-until-there's-an-activation-crack camp, so who cares.

Disgruntled Microsoft employee disactivates millions of XP-equipped computers. Populace panics, wreaking havoc, causing chaos.

Details...after this.

DeanCo--

I think almost all knowledgeable folks use NetBUEI for their internal bindings and TCP/IP for external. That's why it's puzzling that MS would lessen/drop support for NetBEUI.

---

Quote:

I think almost all knowledgeable folks use NetBUEI for their internal bindings and TCP/IP for external. That's why it's puzzling that MS would lessen/drop support for NetBEUI.

---

"Disgruntled Microsoft employee disactivates millions of XP-equipped computers. Populace panics, wreaking havoc, causing chaos."

Heh. Sort of the 21st century equivlant to going postal.

"Where? At home? Maybe... certainly not in the corporate world. You guys raving about NetBEUI are the first I've ever heard talk about it seriously. TCP/IP is used in just about every corporate setting I've ever seen. Most apps want to use TCP/IP as their protocol."

Sorry - we were talking about small home-style LANs. I don't even think about Win98 or ME or XP in an industrial/corporate network setting.

Is there any way this can be moved to another thread? this page (at the moment) is 486K and counting.

Oh, that's nothing. What was that flame thread that went over a meg last month?

I just wanted to put in my 36 Bytes.

I'm still not planning to put XP on my desktop for a while, till everything I use has been patched or had XP drivers written.

But I just put it on my laptop (finally broke down and got a new WiFi card that's compatible), and WOW. If you use a laptop (or a desktop with a digital LCD connection), there's one feature that makes XP almost worth the $99 -- ClearType. It uses characteristics of an LCD to antialias fonts and they're BEAUTIFUL. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing most of my writing/editing on my laptop from here out. The laptop display was already better than a CRT, but now the difference is dramatic...

"I'm still not planning to put XP on my desktop for a while, till everything I use has been patched or had XP drivers written."

Well, I've installed XP on upwards of 6 computers so far (for myself, friends, or coworkers), and no problems to report. Everything I've thrown at it has worked without a hitch-- old Scanjet 5c with ISA SCSI card, USB connected cable models, ancient AMD Athlon-Classic motherboards.. you name it.

As I install and play more games, I'm finding the compatibility gaming-wise to be excellent, too.

XP has no drivers for an NEC Supersript 1260 printer, which we have at our office, and neither does NEC.

So there.

You can't just use the Win2k drivers? I used the Win2k drivers for the ISA SCSI card and they worked fine in XP.

You don't need XP specific drivers per se, you just need Win2k drivers that work in XP, and the vast majority do.

I installed XP on my machine and my wife's machine and it is great. The interface doesn't look amazingly different when you first look at it but it gives you a lot of "damn that (makes sense/is cool)" kinda moments once you start using it. I heartily recommend it. Game compatibility seems to be top notch as well.

'There's a throbbing techno soundtrack during the "shades of Frank Lloyd Wright" configuration sequence, for chrissakes.'

I looked at the first post in this thread again. Exactly what does architecture design have to do with configuring Windows again? And techno?

Only some Win2K drivers work. There are no functional drivers for XP for the ZoomAir 802.11b network cards I have in my desktops and my laptop.

The Saitek controller software apparently doesn't even work in Windows 2000 yet, much less XP. My USB to serial adapter doesn't work under XP either. I have no doubt that there are plenty of configurations which upgrade with no problems, but a quick look at the XP newsgroups indicates there are lots of old-but-not-outdated peripherals that aren't yet XP-able.

And I'll want to test my older flight sims on my laptop before I make a final decision to upgrade... I still boot up the old Longbow 2 every once in a while. :)

I finally broke down and bought a netgear card on sale so I could put XP on the notebook, at least.

How much do I like Windows XP? It's improved my sex life. I want to name my first born child Jeff Atwood, XP... and activation will be required.

Microsoft is really on a roll. Between .net and XP, I'm in a sort of geek-induced ecstasy right now.

I've always been a MS fan, but it's amazing that the company has such a clear, strong vision for future strategy even after all these years. If there's any sign of MS growing complacent, lazy, or sloppy.. well, I sure as hell don't see it.

>If there's any sign of MS growing complacent, lazy, or sloppy.. well, I sure as hell don't see it.

How much are they paying you?

'I've always been a MS fan, but it's amazing that the company has such a clear, strong vision for future strategy even after all these years.'

That's right, their strategy is the same as it's always been: Take Over The Goddamn World.

As long as they take over the world with great products, and keep innovating, I say more power to 'em. XP and .net are outstanding products.

I guess I've worked with enough competing products (fex, Oracle, Solaris, Linux) to know that the grass is most emphatically not greener on the other side. In many cases it's even worse: not only is the grass not greener, but it's a weed-filled yard with an angry rottweiler and a bunch of sharp tin cans strewn all over.

You can always spot the guys who never owned an Amiga...

He's just trolling. He knows this will piss everyone off so he just decided to be a huge XP/MS cheerleader on the boards here.

Actually I did own an Amiga, one of the first ones.. the one with all the signatures of the designers molded into the plastic on the inside of the case. The A1000?

MS makes plenty of products I don't like. Let's see, off the top of my head.. Exchange is terrible. The original PocketPCs were pretty lame. I don't think Microsoft Messenger is that great, particularly since it still doesn't properly support NAT and it's going on version 4.0..

Nah, he's always been a huge XP/MS cheerleader.

Not to say that he's not trolling, but...

Really, I agree with a lot of what he says about MS. Haven't used XP yet, but it sounds kinda cool. I'll upgrade eventually.

Denny (Atkin) said:

> You can always spot the guys who never owned an Amiga...

you know, as a former amiga user (still own one- A1000 sitting behind me), i don't know exactly what sort of relevance you believe this would bring to bear in this discussion. :)

XP works for me, and i like it, amiga user/owner or not.

also, Denny, FYI: an old amiga mainstay product that we either loved/hated is on the pc's these days... remember DirectoryOpus? :) ( http://www.dopus.com/ )

- mike - something wonderful has happened -

My brother has many amigas for the demo scene. I sometimes will still play games of settlers on the ones he has! What is xp?

Greetz

I give XP a big two thumbs up so far to the tune of it being on all 5 machines in my house now. It is fast, stable, and has a ton of great features you don't notice straight away. I changed my IP address on my machine last night and didn't have to reboot. How freaking cool is that? There are dozens of these things you find after using XP for a while. Sure you don't have to have them but they make the UI and the entire OS so much nicer.

"You can't just use the Win2k drivers? I used the Win2k drivers for the ISA SCSI card and they worked fine in XP."

No, there aren't any of those available for it, either. That printer is an ancient piece of crap.

>you know, as a former amiga user (still own one-
>A1000 sitting behind me), i don't know exactly
> what sort of relevance you believe this would
> bring to bear in this discussion. :)

There was an elegance to the Amiga that Windows has never captured. Most folks who had the Amiga as their primary computer through the Amiga OS 2 days would understand, I think. It drove me nuts to use PCs until Windows 95 came out, and even then there were many things that were much more elegant on the Amiga. It wasn't until Windows 98 that the PC finally started to feel as "comfortable" as the Amiga of 1990. And it's taken XP to kill the DOS/Win 3.1 legacy problems (random driver crashes, lost clusters, BSOD crashes, system files being overwritten with buggy or old replacements by "respected" programs like Norton Utilities) that Amigans never had to deal with.

As for putting XP on five machines, I'm assuming you either have the review copy that allows 10 installs, or the ISO version. Would you have shelled out $500 to do that?

Putting XP on the two desktops in my house isn't even an option right now, thanks to Zoom's poor driver support. (The latest Intersil Prism 802.11 chip drivers do work on XP, but Zoom hasn't released them for its cards yet and Microsoft didn't include any "generic" support for Prism cards in their OS.) So to upgrade right now I'd have to not only buy two copies of XP, but also two desktop 802.11 cards, which would double the cost. Thus, I'm going to wait; that'll give me time to see how game compatibility shakes out.

On the other hand, the older Amigas didn't have hardware memory management (don't know about the newer ones; I programmed these things for a living for a couple of years and bailed from the Amiga scene around 1990.) It was possible for misbehaved software to crash the system in spectacular, pyrotechnic fashion. Instead of BSODs, we had Guru Meditation Numbers, which were much the same thing.

Lee,

AFAIK still to this day, there is no hardware mem management on any amiga which uses a 68K (or derivative) cpu.

- mike - nostalgia waiting to happen -

addendum: no hardware mem management using the native OS (AmigaOS 1.x -> 3.x). if you use something like Linux or NetBSD on one, hey, no problems.

- mike - why do i know these things? -

Denny,

don't get me wrong: i absolutely loved the amiga (and it's os...and all it's flaws) when i used it, but once i had gone to windows (95 was where i truly began, not that i hadn't used 1.0,2.0,3.x prior-to), there really was no sense in going back.

look at the timeline of things... the amiga was DEAD way before win95 even came out- you can bet your ass i was using win3.1 until 95 came out, if for no other reason than the *apps i needed to use* were there, and they certainly weren't on the amiga. certainly, win3.1 was clunky, uncomfortable, unelegant, and very crash-prone, even compared to the Amiga/OS, but it had what i needed so i used it. if i had to wait around for the perfect OS to do all the stuff i wanted it to do, and do it *MY WAY*, i doubt i'd ever get another thing done, ever.

i can argue, also, that until C= shipped a 'standard' installer program, installing software was hit-and-miss as to whether or not it'd wipe some newer library or device handler out or not- and even WITH the standard installer, the person writing the install script had to be careful to check version numbers (IF the driver/file HAD THEM imbedded!)... so, again, hit and miss- and none of that stuff was available on the amiga til like, what, 1991? 1992?..so don't say amigans never had to deal with that stuff, because we did- maybe you just forgot.

..back to XP..

:shrug: i have the warez kiddie ISO that's been floating around the net like everyone else has.

as for shelling out $500 for XP on several machines: hrm, probably i'd opt for getting a license that allowed me to install it on several machines. i *do* like to keep my business legitimate- and if there was a legitimate manner in which i could acquire winXP at this point without paying out the nose to become a developer OR becoming a reviewer (hahaha), i'd do so. until the retail version is out, i'll use my warezed XP for my personal machines, and my licensed win2000 for my business boxes.

- mike - greetz to SPA, billg, and the rest of the homies @ M$ -

Let's just say I don't like M$'s activation scheme and leave it at that. Besides who doesn't use their one legit OS on multiple machines in the same house? I don't run a business, if I did it would be different. This is all just for fun.

And for the game designers out there, I buy 95%+ of my games outright. I have friends who will testify that my collection is beyond insane and that no mortal has time to play all of the games I own.

-- Xaroc

Xaroc, you don't want to start a "my game collection can beat up your game collection" thread. There are at least 10 people here, and I'm one of them (ask my bank account) that can account for anything that got 4 stars or better that came out in the last 5 years, and some lesser games too. Also, count in that a lot of them get press copies of just about anything you could imagine. I get the odd one here and there that just "shows up" like the Jo Wood package I got last week, but some of these guys are A-list with PR.

I don't think he was trying to say that his collection was bigger, just that he came by it legitimately which he apparently did not for four copies of WinXP. :)

--Dave

Oh, I'll actually purchase the first copy of XP... and I'll slap a crack on it asap too, you bet. I don't like handing out my info even when it's legit. I upgrade "something" in the box every 3 months or so, and you can be damned if you think I'm going to call Gates'n'Co every time I do.

My game collection only goes back to about 1986. ;-) It used to be somewhat larger, but I sold off all my Amiga software with my Amiga hardware, back in 1991. A big chunk of the older titles are still on 5.25" floppies, all of which were still readable when I tried them last year. (Yes, I actually have a 5.25" drive that I keep around just to read these things. Heh. It's not normally connected to my PC, though.)

Of course, I know guys that make me look like a complete piker in the game buying department. :-O

I can't claim those kinds of numbers Az but my collection is pretty stupid. I can't count the number of games I have bought, played for maybe a few hours then just plain forgot about or lost interest in. I have become a lot more selective lately just because I realize I don't have so much time. Now that I will likely be pledging my gaming time (aka, soul) to DAoC the number of different games I play will probably go down.

I recently lost about 70 games from my collection. I had the original CDs in one of those zip-up holders with sleeves. While heading to my brother-in-law to do some computer work for him, I grabbed that holder so I'd have a game to "test" his system with.

Got all ready to go, out to the car with wife and kids in tow. Set the games on the roof of the car to bolt the kids into their seats (all three of them). Got in and headed to the other side of town.

While pulling onto a four-lane highway I heard a BUMP from behind the car. I looked at my wife and said, "must have hit a truck tire tread or something". There was a tire from a tractor trailer laying along the side of the road in shreds. Looked in the mirror and saw something black flipping on the road and coming to a stop. Never thought twice about it. Even saw a car behind me swerve to miss it and seem to slow down.

We get up the road about a mile and it hits me. That was no truck tire! I stop the car in record time, get out to look at the roof...nothing. "Did you put those CDs in the car?", I ask. "No, I thought you got them.", my wife replies.

Devastation.

I quickly dropped off my wife and kids at my brother-in-law's house. He was right off the next exit where I had to turn around anyway. By the time I got back to the site of the lost CDs, they were gone. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Someone got a hell of a collection of games. A woman in a van pulled up nearby and asked if I lost something. She said she saw the case about 10 minutes ago and that I was looking at the right place. I figure it was someone right behind me that stopped to pick it up.

The only good to come of it is that I MIGHT be getting back the retail value of the games from my homeowner's insurance. They said they'd cover it and the list is in the mail. That was a chore in itself and shows the devaluation of games over time. Stuff just a year old was only worth $10 in many cases.

Just had to tell someone about that...it was a real downer.

--Dave

That is the saddest story I have heard in... well, in the last 13 days, I guess. My condolences.

Damn that sucks. Sorry to hear that Dave.

If they're installed on your system, I'd recommend a trip to www.gamecopyworld.com and start downloading those -nocd patches. Then, at least, you can still play.

-Andrew

I've replaced a few things. Age of Kings I rebought in the Gold Edition. NASCAR 4 when it was on sale at Best Buy. Sacrifice just this weekend for $10 at Wal-Mart...

...some of the rest of it is still installed and I may try the -nocd patches for some of it. I've been busy enough lately with some newer games that I haven't crossed that bridge yet. Hopefully I'll hear from the insurance soon.

--Dave

Meanwhile... two kids are sitting in front of of their TV set at home.

"Man, what is this shit? NONE of this crap works in my playstation! Sheesh... throw it out, I guess."

Heh...yeah, that thought crossed my mind too. Either that or they're trying to run Quake 3 Arena on their Dad's old 486.

--Dave

Man, that's sad, Dave.

Really sorry to hear about.

If the insurance doesn't come through, maybe we could take up a collection or something...You know, take care of our own...

Dave, we all feel for ya...that would be a crusher to any of us.

Just curious, on a slightly related topic...how do you guys store your games? I try to keep them in the original boxes if I can, much to the chagrin of my wife, who complains about the clutter. There's just something about keeping it all together...and when you can keep it in good shape, it sells better, should you need to dump any. If I ever buy the strategy guide, sometimes it will also fit in the box.

I heard a rumor Tom Chick also lines his walls with the boxes and has quite a collection.

But I know a lot of folks pitch the boxes and use those CD wallets like Dave. What do you do about documentation (I know, less of a problem these days) and any extras?

I usually throw out about 75% of the boxes, and try to put documentation for similar games in one box. For example, the manual for Ground Control is in the box for Homeworld: Cataclysm. I took a look just now to find more examples, but found out what happens instead is that manuals get lumped together roughly in the order they were bought. For example, Mech 3 manuals are in the Tachyon box, not in the Mech 4 box. The manual for Freespace 2 is in the Mech 4 box, not the Tachyon box, etc. My first thought was WTF? I guess I need to resort that stuff...

As far as where the CDs go, I just have a 20 CD jewel case rack on my desk for the stuff I'm currently playing or have recently played. Older stuff sits in a pile somewhere. I'm sure that I don't have that many games compared to you guys. I've only been PC gaming since about 1995. My first PC games were Falcon 3.0 and Mech 2.

Thanks for all the support guys. This happened back in mid-August. I just never really wanted to bring it up until now. I've always been a big anti-piracy guy so it's hard to look at all these installed games and consider cracking them so I can play them again. I know that it seems justified...but well...I dunno...I'm weird like that.

As for how I've stored games through the years. I used to do what Bernie does and keep all the boxes, jewelcases, etc. I had an enormous amount of boxes and I simply ran out of room. I've been buying PC games since somewhere around 1993, Atari 800XL and various consoles before that and during the last eight years too. I have so much game stuff (all still working I might add) that I could probably open a mini-museum.

Now that I've got the three boys, there simply isn't space for boxes...unless they're flattened. :) I take out the insides, pack the manuals separately or pile the ones I'm currently using on my desk and then flatten the boxes for storage. I store the jewelcases in a separate box and keep only those out that I may need an install key from, etc. I found those CD wallets to be the best way to have most of my collection handy at any given moment and I don't use NOCD cracks on anything other than one game (Superbike 2001...EA gave me a disc with the game and a separate one with the copy protection when I did the review). The wallets take up much less space at the desk so I still have room to pile on the peripherals...steering wheel, Microsoft Strategic Commander, MS Precision 2 joystick, Kodak Camera dock, Dreamcast, etc.

I don't want to steer this discussion in another direction...but I've often wondered, what's everyone's prize game? What's that one game you own that you think makes your collection? Mine's Ultima IV for the Atari 800XL with the original box, cloth map, ankh and the lovely manuals. A close second is my copy of 1830. I love that game. My biggest loss from the top of the car was probably an original Master of Magic CD and believe it or not...Dethkarz...it's no longer available anywhere!

--Dave

I have an intact and near-mint copy of Wizardry for the Apple II, manual included and it's hilarious! Ultima IV (with ankh and map) for the Apple II. Ultima V for the PC. I'd never part with my copy of CivII and I have a copy of Sid Meier's Gettysburg signed by Brian, Sid, and Briggs... I did some writing for them a long, long, time ago and the signed game was part of the payment I negotiated.

I covet Bruce Geryk's 7 Cities of Gold. Man, I threw too much of this stuff away once upon a time.

PS: I don't think getting -nocd cracks for games you've purchased is piracy, btw.

-Andrew

What do you mean, "original Master of Magic CD"? My copy, purchased in October 1994, came on a big stack of 3.5" diskettes! ;-) I remember grousing about the size of the installation, too. "Twenty-four megabytes!? Jeeeeeez!" That's what? Half an intro movie now?

When you talk about "prize game", are you talking about packaging, or about the game itself?

You see, about once a year I select a bunch of boxes for crunching. I take out the innards, stick the manuals and other bits of paper in a manila folder, and file it in a banker's box. The CD goes onto a rack. The box and cardboard filler material gets flattened for recycling.

At last count, I had something like 12 CD racks in my home office, holding about 25 titles each, plus a big plastic storage crate full of CDs, which got rotated out of the racks this summer. Plus boxes full of diskettes from the pre-CD-ROM era. I have six or seven banker's boxes full of game documentation. If I kept all of this stuff in its original packaging, I'd have no room left to set up my computer! :-P

I won't be doing this with the Civ III Cookie Tin Edition, obviously. I'll take the innards out and fill the tin with cookies instead. ;-)

Interesting to see that people keep their games a lot of different ways. I have way too many boxes...games from the last few years line the wall, about four or five levels high in my office, and my wife just hates it, though the neighborhood kids think it's neat. Older than that, I have at least 15 or 20 moving boxes filled with games stashed in various closets and the attic. I'm gonna have to go through them someday and throw out the chaff.

Funny Bub should mention the old Ultima packaging. Those, and the old Infocom games, came with interesting props and were really something. If you read the Ultima manuals, you'll notice they take humorous pot shots at software pirates ;)

As far as trophy editions...I have an Age of Empires Collectors Edition that is signed by the development staff. Microsoft auctioned signed copies of numbers 1 through 5 on Amazon for a charity last year. I won #4 for about $90. Normally I wouldn't spend that much, but this was for a good cause (I think the money went to the USMC Toys for Tots program).

One that got lost in a move, that I'd wish I kept, is the original NFL Challenge from XOR Corporation. That came in a nice slipcased box that included laminated spiral-bound playbooks and a copy of the Illustrated NFL Playbook. Just a beautiful set, and the game was great for its time, too.

Outpost, complete with strategy guide (which I bought shortly after purchasing the game, under the assumption that "maybe I'm just not playing it right"). I keep it around as a reminder that sometimes that hype is WAY wrong.

Most of my pre-CD boxes are gone--I didn't keep much through college. I used to have that cool flying saucer-shaped Starcross box, though. I really wish I'd kept that. It's probably worth something. I do still have the hologram-tombstone Stonekeep box, which I rather like (although I'll bet retailers hated it).

Dave wrote:

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I've always been a big anti-piracy guy so it's hard to look at all these installed games and consider cracking them so I can play them again. I know that it seems justified...but well...I dunno...I'm weird like that.

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Most treasured game:
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, signed by Yeager

Game I wish I still had:
M.U.L.E. for the C64, signed "Dan Bunten." Alas, the guy who bought my C128 insisted that be part of the deal. :-(

Don't really have a "trophy" game. I know, that's sad...

I am the world's most unorganized gamer, I think. I keep CDs in their jewel cases in the drawers of my desk. Most frequently-played games go in one drawer, the rest get scattered throughout. (The frequently-played ones wouldn't be in the drawers, except the "study" is attached to the living room with no door between, and my wife can't stand me having things on my desk when company comes over...)

I have most of the boxes from games over the last few years in a cabinet, in absolutely no order whatsoever...

I think the only one I have that counts is a retail copy of Syndicate Wars, box and everything. I was the only person on earth that actually liked the game, unfortunately.

This is the most demented and sad thread ever.

But social.

Oh, yeah!?!?

Well, my Y-Wing can beat your X-Wing!!

Thanks, Brian.

My most treasured game probably isn't much of a collector's item but it was the first title I actually went to pains to track down. I'm a relative latecomer to PC gaming and remembered many titles from bygone days I wanted to check out. When I discovered, after purchasing a rerelease of Privateer, that there was a collection of old Wing Commander games remade for Windows called The Kilrathi Saga I just had to find it. I wasn't only new to PC gaming at the time but search engines and the internet as a whole. By the time I got that boxed set from a small vendor, along with Wing Commander: The Price of Freedom, I felt like a veteran.

Most of my collectors items are autographed pencil-and-paper games. I've got autographed first and second editions of Fading Suns as well as the #2 printed copy of second edition Mummy from White Wolf. All of these are personalized autographs from folks I met during conventions. Also have a bunch of other supplements that are signed from various systems.

Brian, hang onto that Kilrathi Saga. For some reason, it has become rare and tends to grab big dollars on eBay.

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I think the only one I have that counts is a retail copy of Syndicate Wars, box and everything. I was the only person on earth that actually liked the game, unfortunately.

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Brian, hang onto that Kilrathi Saga. For some reason, it has become rare and tends to grab big dollars on eBay.

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Syndicate Wars is the only game I can really think of other than X-Com that had a properly destructible environment. That, and nuclear hand grenades. And orbiting death satellites. And a kooky cyborg cult.

Yes, I'm sociopath.

I think my most treasured game is a couple copies of M1 Tank Platoon (no number following, or, God help me, a damned exclamation point), with the giant manual and keyboard overlay.

Syndicate Wars was fun but tough. I remember one level where I was only able to defeat a massive cultist wave by laying a huge layer of razor wire, and while three of my agents hosed the area with miniguns, the fourth ran into the cultists laying bombs then self-destructing. Hypnotizing 20 or 30 civilians and giving them guns was fun, too. They wouldn't last long against enemy agents, but they would provide a nice distraction while my agents did the real damage.

"Syndicate Wars"

I liked it, quite a bit.

Hmph. Well, if everyone liked it so much, how come the series is dead? ;0

Trophy games? I guess X-COM and Master of Magic in the original boxes for me. My brother and I also have the original D&D books. Somewhere, I hope. I haven't seen them in years.

Akalabeth. Ziploc bag. The first game of Lord British, a precursor to the Ultima Series.

"My brother and I also have the original D&D books. Somewhere, I hope."

Yeah, I got all those, too. All the images in our history of D&D article in June was scanned from my own personal collection. Which makes me a geek extraordinaire... =)

Well, I've got some older stuff but it's not autographed or anything. I've got just about everything I can find associated with Tekumel (including both rare fantasy novels by M.A.R. Barker) and a complete Harn collection(Harnmaster, Encyclopedia Harnica). I also still have some old Judges Guild and Midkemia (Raymond Fiest's D&D setting before he was a novelist) stuff as well as a large collection of Metagaming microgames (including first edition Melee and Ogre).

Most of my pencil and paper stuff was lost here or there in one of my moves or given away during one of my bing/purge cycles. I lost Tradition of Victory that way (a Hornbloweresque RPG complete with naval miniatures rules) and Land of The Rising Sun (Chivalry and Sorcery in medieval Japan).

I wish I had my old D&D books but I've got no idea where they and I parted company.

We have Empire of the Petal Throne too. I had forgotten all about that.

Speaking of old magazines, I met Paul Jaquays of id back in the '70's at Gen Con when he was doing a nifty little magazine called The Dungeoneer. It surprised me years later to see him pop up as a level designer in the game industry, though I supposed it makes sense.

YES! We have that too in a box somewhere, however now you have switched the topic a little!

Let me tell you something, unless you have an entrance onto the underground of the demo scene, you may wait a long time to get games from the U.S. in Finland. I am not that patient! Therefore, I do not own many copies of game boxes, and naturally it's documents, or instructions. I do not have many other discs than copies signed by my brother while he writes the label! ::) BUT, I do have the paper RPG Praedor with autographs by Petri Hiltunen and Ville Vuorela, both. Some fans will tell you it is the Dungeons and Dragons of Finland, although Dungeons and Dragons is also quite popular as you may know. I met them at Ropecon 2000 where the signing was going to happen. That is something I will keep to treasure.

Greetz.

"We have Empire of the Petal Throne too. I had forgotten all about that."

YES! We have that too in a box somewhere, however now you have switched the topic a little!

Let me tell you something, unless you have an entrance onto the underground of the demo scene, you may wait a long time to get games from the U.S. in Finland. I am not that patient! Therefore, I do not own many copies of game boxes, and naturally it's documents, or instructions. I do not have many other discs than copies signed by my brother while he writes the label! ::) BUT, I do have the paper RPG Praedor with autographs by Petri Hiltunen and Ville Vuorela, both. Some fans will tell you it is the Dungeons and Dragons of Finland, although Dungeons and Dragons is also quite popular as you may know. I met them at Ropecon 2000 where the signing was going to happen. That is something I will keep to treasure.

Greetz.

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We have Empire of the Petal Throne too. I had forgotten all about that.

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Holy Mack! That was my fault I think. Sorry.

Greetz.

Paul Jaquays of id back in the '70's at Gen Con when he was doing a nifty little magazine called The Dungeoneer. It surprised me years later to see him pop up as a level designer

Yeah, I remember seeing that name in a lot of game manuals. Do you guys remember artist Erol Otus? His stuff was all over the AD&D first edition and other TSR stuff...maybe he's still doing D&D work, I don't know.

Anyway, at one E3 long ago, I remember seeing him at the Spectrum Holobyte booth...don't know if he was doing work for them or not, but definitely some of the creative talents from the pencil/paper days did cross over to computer games.

Yeah, I do. He did the cover art on the version of the D&D Basic rules that I have, and the original Dieties and Demigods cover. He had a really interesting, uncoventional style. I kinda like his stuff.

I remember the Petal Throne stuff, too, although I don't have any of it now (a shame, too--it's pretty hard to find used copies). I do have all my original Traveller books, and a bunch of the Steve Jackson pocket-box games.

Other things I wish I still had: my original Talisman set, and Kings and Things (the best Tom Wham game ever). Both are really hard to find now; they crop up on eBay every now and again, but usually end up selling for ~$200. =(

So is Bruce Shelly btw.
He was part of ICE's Claw Law, Spell Law, etc., back in the day.

Sandy Peterson of Id, now Ensemble, created Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu. Which explains the heavy Lovecraft influence on Quake and Age of Empires.
-Andrew

"Which explains the heavy Lovecraft influence on Quake and Age of Empires."

What is Lovecraftian about AOE? Did I miss the secret bonus Cthulu mission?

The game that never happened that I most wanted to see was the PC Traveller game that Julian LeFay (Lead designer of Arena and Daggerfall) was working on for Fenris Wolf Games. It seems to have vanished without a trace years ago.

We're hopelessly off topic. Is this a bad thing? :)

"Do you guys remember artist Erol Otus?"

Erol Otus lives in Berkeley now. He still paints, and did two album covers for my friend's band, Slough Feg. As an aside, Slough Feg just recently finished a concept album based on Traveller.

Slough Feg Cover 1:
http://www.slough-feg.com/twilight.gif

Slough Feg Cover 2:
http://www.slough-feg.com/downpic2.jpg

-Ron

"We're hopelessly off topic. Is this a bad thing? :)"

Considering that OS debates are tedious and uninteresting, I'll have to go with "no."

=)

"PC Traveller game that Julian LeFay"

I think it was a DC game, actually. I talked to him about it.

Ron, hoo yah, that's definitely Otus...thanks, it's been a long time since I'd seen his stuff.

Traveller...I remember that game too. Never got into it heavily though.