warning - windows xp!

[ceobob]

Well..I just finished putting windows XP on my computer at home. It is great! Really good stuff. However..it was the biggest mistake of my life. Alot of my other software and hardware no longer works with it. This includes my scanner,printer, zip disc, and cd burner to name a few. I was lucky to be able to download the new updates and drivers off of each web site, but with my other stuff I had no luck. So if you have alot of extra software and hardware, think twice about upgrading to Windows XP! Make sure everything is compatible with it. By the way, once you upgrade, you cannot downgrade or switch to Windows 2000. You could switch to 2000, but you would have to wipe out everything and start form scratch. So far, I have spent about 50 man hours trying to get everything back to normal. Just thought I would throw this out to all of you.

[DelC]

I know what you're experiencing. I went from 98 to 2000 and had the same problem. My problem was mostly with software, and when I reverted back to 98 I found 2000 had changed all my files/programs and 98 couldn’t read them. Fifty hours was about what it took to gets things back to normal. Starting from scratch is lots of fun.

Kind of late now, but Microsoft has made available a free software application, "Upgrade Advisor", that will check to see if your system can be upgraded to XP Pro, but only for the Professional version. It checks for incompatibilities, then returns a sometimes long list of them. You then get to decide which apps and devices need updating to run under XP Pro and which you are willing to do without. It’s available on-line for downloading at their web site. There was a discussion about XP in this very Forum. In case you missed it, (Click Here) (http://63.144.255.254/vB/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=6184)

P.S., As someone once said, “You should throw that old thing away and get an up-to-date one”. Maybe Santa will drop one under your tree!! (he, he)

[gr8tfuldude]

I too have "XP"erienced the joys of upgrading. Now, my DVD rom doesnt work, and everytime someone calls me (with my modem cord plugged in to a phone jack) my computer freezes. It has been a very frustrating chore. I cant even get updated drivers for some of my hardware.

[Mongo]

I know I have my "other" beefs with XP (mainly security), but to just push a product out that screws with most of your existing programs just plain flames me.

Micro$oft has built a dependency on it's windows products, now they switch their products...and a new dependency has been built, they have what is commonly called.....a racket. They could have easily built in compatibility capabilites for some years of releases of their different Operating system until software vendors had caught up to them..but they didn't.

Ugh...Microsoft.

[williamssd]

Mongo and I view M$ very similarly.

Long-live Apple and MacOS X!

Ahhh, the power of UNIX -- and the ease-of-use of an Apple... ;)

I will admit that IE and M$ Office v. X are quite nice. However, as soon as either Netscape or Opera get their act together I'm dropping IE. Office will always have a home (and it totally cross-platform compatible with other versions, Windows and Mac, of Office).

Steve
- a "Mac-oholic"
- a "Glock-oholic"
- a "Bimmer-oholic"