Should You Upgrade? It Depends on Your Needs
PC makers have been shipping machines with Microsoft’s Windows XP for several weeks, but today marks the first time ordinary users can buy an upgrade disc to install the new operating system on their own boxes.
The $199 Professional edition is designed for businesses--particularly those with big networks--but most users who decide to upgrade should opt for the $99 Home edition, which includes virtually all of XP’s most dramatic enhancements at half the price.
Whether to upgrade at all really depends on how happy users are with their current operating system. If Windows 95, 98 or Me works just fine--and they do for many people--there’s no truly compelling reason to trade up to XP.
That said, it’s clear after testing XP for several weeks on a variety of machines that it is perhaps Microsoft’s best operating system, full of significant improvements over previous versions of Windows. It’s just as stable and robust as Windows 2000, the operating system Microsoft sells to business users.
In fact, XP is based on the same code as Windows 2000 but has a more friendly interface and support for some older consumer-oriented programs and hardware products that don’t work under Windows 2000.
The upgrade process is fairly straightforward. But don’t even think about upgrading a machine until you ensure it meets the not insignificant system requirements. For starters, you need Windows 98 or Me. Windows 95 users have to buy the full version of XP. Frankly, though, a PC old enough to be running Windows 95 probably has outdated hardware that XP won’t recognize.
Windows 2000 users can upgrade only to the Professional edition.
Microsoft says users need at least 64 megabytes of memory and 1.5 gigabytes of available hard disk space. Double those numbers for decent performance and quadruple them for an optimum system. Don’t bother unless your central processing unit is running at 400 megahertz or faster.
Stability: The main advantage to Windows XP is that it hardly ever crashes. Sure, there are times when programs or devices fail to work correctly, but, in the vast majority of cases, you can get out of trouble by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, which brings up a menu that lets you stop the misbehaving program without having to reboot the operating system.
It’s not foolproof.
Despite the improvements, Windows XP occasionally froze up and wouldn’t respond to any commands, forcing me to turn off the machine by pressing the power switch or pulling the plug.
This is supposed to be the operating system you never have to restart, but that’s not entirely true. Sometimes things slow down until you restart, and the file search command sometimes fails to work until the system is rebooted.
One very useful feature in XP is system restore. If you experience a serious problem with the operating system or software, you can restore the system to its state at an earlier point in time. This can be a life saver if a piece of software acts up and affects system performance or other programs.
Adding hardware: XP does a great job of identifying hardware and installing drivers. Most peripherals today are “plug and play,” which means they identify themselves to the computer to aid installation. With earlier versions of Windows it was more like “plug and pray” because it seemed to take divine intervention for peripherals to work properly. Now they work quite well.
I added several new pieces of hardware to the PC, and Windows didn’t even bother asking me to install the proper driver. XP installed it for me and everything worked just fine.
I have a shared printer on one machine on my network, and every time I add a new PC to the network XP automatically finds that network printer and makes it available to the new machine.
Of course, XP doesn’t have drivers for all hardware. Plug and play successfully identifies my Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart 1218 printer, but Windows can’t find drivers for it. The Windows 2000 drivers worked fine, despite a warning that the drivers haven’t been certified to work with XP.
That’s usually the case. About 75% of the Windows 2000 hardware drivers I’ve tested work fine in XP, but a few don’t work at all. Others support some but not all features of the hardware. Obviously, hardware vendors are in the process of providing XP drivers, but users might have a problem with older pieces of hardware.
Adding software: The vast majority of programs tested work on XP even if they were written for much earlier versions of Windows or even MS-DOS. There are, however, programs that won’t run properly or at all. Games are especially vulnerable, as are utility and anti-virus programs and CD-burning software, including Roxio’s popular Easy CD Creator. If you have a program you just can’t live without, you should check with the software vendor first to see whether the software will work or whether an update is available. Roxio is expected to have a free upgrade for CD Creator 5 on its Web site.
Multimedia: Windows XP handles digital cameras well. Nikon’s tech support department warned me the photo transfer software that came with my new digital camera wouldn’t work with XP. But I plugged the camera into the Universal Serial Bus port anyway, and instead of asking for drivers, XP automatically identified the camera and launched the Scanner and Camera Wizard, which guided me through the process of copying the pictures from the camera to the hard disk. No software and no hassles.
XP’s file system also knows how to handle photos and music files. The My Pictures folder lets you preview and rotate images from within the operating system without having to load any software. The “My Music” folder doesn’t just store the files but also lets you play them in Windows Media Player or, if you have a CD burner, copy them to an audio CD that can be played on any CD player.
User interface: Microsoft has made a big deal of its new user interface, which features a larger and more useful Start menu, less reliance on the desktop and a cleaner look that hides some of the operating system’s complexities.
The Control Panel, for example, is now organized by category so it makes more sense to the uninitiated. Click on the C: drive in My Computers and instead of seeing your folders and files, you get the message “These files are hidden. This folder contains files that keep your system working properly. You should not modify its contents.”
That may be good advice for some, but old PC hands will miss the ability to see and modify all their files and folders. Fortunately, there is a button that lets you “Show all the contents of this drive,” which causes Windows to display files just like it did in the good old days.
The Control Panel also offers the option to “Switch to classic view.” I really like the new Start menu, but if you’re nostalgic for the old Windows look and feel, you can opt to use a “classic” start menu.
Windows XP allows multiple users per machine, each with his or her own Start menu, desktop and My Documents, My Pictures and My Music folders, which eliminates users accidentally writing over or accessing each other’s files. Each person has his or her own Internet Explorer home page and favorites.
Parents can remove icons to programs they don’t want their kids using. Unlike other versions of Windows, a new person can log on to the PC without the previous user logging off or even closing his or her programs.
I strongly recommend, however, that you save any files before leaving the PC.
Networking can be a nightmare with Windows 95, 98 and especially Windows Me, but it’s a breeze with XP.
Peeves: There are some annoying aspects to the operating system. Balloons pop up from time to time inviting you to sign up for a Microsoft.net passport account or to sign on to the Windows Messenger service. There are instances--such as making it very “easy” to order prints of digital photos--in which Microsoft tries to direct users to its or its partners’ services.
Bottom line: The extra stability makes Windows XP a worthy upgrade from earlier versions of Windows. But if your system runs fine and you don’t need or want the extra features, you can find something else to do with $99.
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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard between 2 and 3 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) Technology Hour. He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. Sample chapters from Magid’s upcoming “The Little PC Book, XP Edition” are posted at https://www.littlepcbook.com.
