I am a big fat hypocrite

from WinCustomize Forums
Yes, it's true. After my little rant about how I wouldn't be upgrading to WinXP for some time yet, I finally caved. My Win2K install was starting to act up, and XP RC2 was up on MSDN, so I did the only thing a big fat liar such as myself could do and downloaded it. My main gripe with it before was the issues with sharing "protected" folders, and since this was on my main machine, I don't need to access these from my other machines. Anyway, after much tweaking, crashing and swearing, I got everything to work except for Gamespy Arcade, which absolutely refuses to co-operate. After all this, I'll probably stick with XP when the official release happens, but I still don't see any advantages whatsoever over Win2K except a few graphical tweaks.

Vaguely on the same topic, I was reading an forum about XP today (may have been on slashdot, if not something of the same vein). People were complaining about the system requirements of XP, and how it would rule many newbies out, as their hardware wasn't up to spec. This reminded me of something I was reading within the last few days, I have no recollection of where (maybe here?), but the general gist of the article was that Microsoft's OSs were being held back by the fact that they were always trying to cater to older hardware, to get more people to upgrade. Because Apple has control of the hardware used to run their OSs as well as the OS themselves, it places them in the position of being able to really get the most out of new technologies, by making their new software, which is bundled with the hardware to take full advantage of this. Anyway, I'm rambling now.

AJ
21,419 views 54 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i'm a widdew dork, and so far, i haven't seen enough reason to get into XP. Win2k gives me everything i want, with half the fat.

-_-
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I was with you when I wrote my little rant on XP the other day, and I'm with you now I'm running XP. There's no new features of any note that I wasn't already getting with 3rd party products on 2k, and there's a few little niggles that WORK ME INTO A RAGE - PREPARE TO MEET MY FISTS OF FURY WINXP...WHAAAAAAAA.
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I might try XP some day, but I won't buy it, that for sure. Either I'll get my boss to pay for it, or most likely I'll wait till I buy my next computer and it'll come preinstalled on it.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
AhHa! Another hypocrite joins the ranks!

I talked trash about Win2k when everyone first started using it and, after a reasonable amount of time waiting for the other suckers to debug it, I switched. Now, I refuse to touch XP, ever! (or at least until someone else solves the major problems, whichever comes first :>)

At least you can openly admit it Kris. Some of us just go on ranting months after we install something new.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Four count em, four instances of svchost, that's the start. I'll get your Ball Rolling. All Four Instances totalling Roughly to 24 Mb's. Explorer in Win2K Pro average 3 to 4 Mb's / XP 18 Mb's.
Winlogon, gets a 5 Mb chunk. Total Usage Runs, Roughly in the 64 Mb's Range, Doing Nothing, but Sitting There. That's flat on it's back, in op mode by itself. Then the overhead with, the Restore Feature, Prefetch (and don't get something wonky in there.) And if someone can tell me how to disable the Low Disk Space, warnings, I would appreciate it. Not being able to get rid of the alternative log on screen.
(although I might have missed this one)

Now don't get me wrong, XP is kinda nice, but I think that, last about 20 Minutes.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Come on, the XP crowd hasn't shown up yet? Hey guys, slacking on the job?
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'd only use XP if only someone would do some skins and themes for it....and walls, too....there aren't enough walls....
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
DaWebMassa - Wait until someone else solves the major problems? What major problems? XP is built on the Win2k(NT) kernel, and you're already running Win2k, so if anything, this kernel is at least as good as the Win2k kernel, but with fixes and updates. I've been using XP since Beta 1 and have yet to see a 'major problem' in my day-to-day use. The big thing that XP has over Win2k is app compatability. I'm a big gamer and I've yet to find a game that I can't run. I'm sure that there are some games out there that don't run under XP, but I've yet to come across them. I'm also big into old school DOS games, like the Ultima Collection. Under Win2k it pretty much wasn't an option to run those, however under XP they all run as if they were running on the 9x kernel... minus the 9x crashes
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh yeah, as for the Product Activation hype that I see people ranting about: I've swapped out/upgraded everything on my machine except my motherboard and my NIC and have never been prompted to "call Microsoft" to re-install XP to verify anything.

Also, for those of you who don't like the built in XP themes, new start menu, or new windows explorer layout, it can all be turned off to look and feel exactly like WIn2k, and you can DesktopX it from there
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
CygnusXII: This will get rid of the Low Disk Space warnings:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
NoLowDiskSpaceChecks REG_DWORD 1

hoverboy: I don't believe WPA is fully enabled in the betas. In fact, MS has said they don't care how many machines you put the betas on. So I wouldn't put too much stock in how it's working now.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Argh...It looks like WC truncated that key. Let me try it again.

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

NoLowDiskSpaceChecks REG_DWORD 1
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks, Tarkus..giving it a try.
I already hacked the reg to get rid of Messenger, and the other crap.
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Still haven't managed to try XP BUT I have got Media Player 8 RC1 running on Win2K and it's fantastic compared to the sloth that is 7.1. It's fast, good looking and doesn't crash at every opportunity it gets. Well worth getting if you have 2K and hate 7.1's complete bloated uselessness.

www.winoscentral.com in the downloads section under MP3.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hoverboy spake thusly:
The big thing that XP has over Win2k is app compatability. I'm a big gamer and I've yet to find a game that I can't run.
-and-
Oh yeah, as for the Product Activation hype that I see people ranting about: I've swapped out/upgraded everything on my machine except my motherboard and my NIC and have never been prompted to "call Microsoft" to re-install XP to verify anything.

Uncle AJ Replies:
I never had any trouble getting anything running on 2k (except Dungeon Keeper 2, for which a patch was released). I have had trouble getting a number of things running on WinXP (eg Gamespy Arcade), and have had to spend a long time messing with other things so that they will work (eg SBLive drivers and software for surround sound).

And as for product activation, the crackers are never too far behind. I will own a legal copy of WinXP, but I'll probably crack it rather than activate it anyway. I really don't care much for the principle of the new product activation, and activation keys are only good for 10 installs. I reformat frequently, and really don't feel like explaining this to MS to get a new key when the time comes.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hoverboy: Have you tried Tomb Raider on Win XP? It'S the only game I can't play on Win 2k...
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh, and BTW, although I'm generally not in favor of cracks and warez, in XP's particular case I am not opposed to it. Microsoft will never make me cry over a loss of money... boohoo!
Anyway, I evaluate to one out of two the chances that if I ever get XP it will be a legal copy...
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Jafo: "I'd only use XP if only someone would do some skins and themes for it...."

Use WindowBlindsXP. It uses the same API's as "Visual Styles" uses and integrates into the "appearance" tab with the visual styles.

M$ isn't supporting third party skinning of XP (yeah, there are hack ways of doing it, but not reliably). But, WindowBlindsXP does it wonderfully.

There. I did my Stardock plug for the day. I'll shut up now...... at least for the next 30 seconds....

BTW, before anyone flames me, I know he was poking fun at all the XP "stuff". I just needed a reason to plug WB!
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hoverboy... I understand from whence you speak. However... Win2k was built on the existing NT kernal and while it expanded the useful apps arena (games mostly), it also created it's own share of compatibility problems. To this day I still cannot reliably burn a CD even after trying no less than four different apps and two different drives. I know I'm no alone because the newsgroups and support boards are full of people like me. Soooo, what do I do to burn CD's? Boot 98 or NT (I have four OSs installed) which I should NOT have to do.

Thus, as I was saying, I will wait...

As for registering stuff... as AJ said, I don't think I'd ever feel bad about M$ losing money but I do buy what I use frequently. However, the thought of M$ having anymore info about me than I give them is FRIGHTENING! Therefore, ditto to what AJ and Paxx said too.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
DaWebMassa: MS collects no personal info when you activate. That is a myth spread by the paranoid and MS bashers. They don't ask for your name, address, email, anything like that.

http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/guide/activation.asp
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Very true, they do not collect personal info with the activation. I can understand where MS is coming from with the product activation feature in WinXP. What they're trying to do is protect themselves against "casual copying" (ie: I lend my new windows CD out to my grandma to install on her box). They've got a product and need to protect it against theft. It also seems to be a pretty reasonable activation scheme. No personal info is needed, you can still switch around most of your hardware and not need a new activation number, and if worse comes to worse and you flat out buy a new computer getting a new activation number is just a toll free phone call away.

I've used WinXP a good bit and I gotta say it's nice. As far as stability goes it's about the same as Win2k. As far as features are concerned it offers a lot to computer novices who like everything they need bundled into one tidy package (ie: digital picture managment, DVD playback, CD burning, etc..). For those who really do love Win2k turning XP into basically "Windows 2000.1" is easy enough. Just turn off all the eyecandy and disable the features that might otherwise bloat the OS.

I'm done messin' with the Betas for now but I'll definitly grab a copy in October when it comes out.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ehh, we all will upgrade soon enough. First we'll be reluctant, then we'll see it working at some friend's computer, say something like "hmm, it does have some nice feature, ya know?" and then switch, after all the fuss we previously made about stability.

But the reality is, I program critical systems for which stability is imporant, and I don't see MS being able to offer the kind of uptime that *nix has. I love win2k, but they're not there yet, and XP won't change that. It's some basic things about the OS infra-structure.
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There are some legitimate concerns about WPA, but I don't think privacy is one of them.

People who love to constantly tinker with their hardware are likely to run into problems (even with the relaxed rules).

People who have two or more computers are going to hate it. While technically, it could be considered piracy to install it on two home computers, even though only one is used at a time, I think most people would consider this fair use.

And what scares a lot of people is the fact that MS can pull the plug at any time, and simply stop all activation, forcing you to upgrade to whatever OS they're selling at the time (assuming you make any hardware changes or have to do a clean install).

That would be a PR nightmare, so I don't think it will happen anytime soon, but it's still a legitimate concern, especially if their monopoly gets even stronger (where bad PR will be pretty much irrelevant).

I still wouldn't be shocked of WPA is removed before WXP goes gold, because of pressure from the states and the DOJ. If not, I'll be looking for the hack that disables it, even though I'll be buying a legitimate copy.
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Actually the way things are going so far with the whole DMCA/DeCSS issue, it looks like MS could lock you up and throw away the key if you do the simple regedit and couple of "regsvr32 -u"s that are required to remove the WPA from XP. That's assuming they don't toughen it up for the release version. I once saw this movie about people who did these cracks, and they said that there's always a back door, and the password is usually "love", "god", or "sex", then there's the old favourites such as "trustno1". Sorry to all the millions of sys admins who's secret passwords I've just posted on a public message board, but these are virtually GUARANTEED to work when cracking WPA, just be careful that you don't meet any countermeasures, cos I heard that if you like die in cyberspace, your brain thinks you're dead and you die in real life.

erm......sorry.
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I wasn't concerned about transmitting my personal info and such to M$ , but more, what I have on my system. It's none of their damn business.

As Tarkus points out, having M$ have ANY control over the OS on my system is more than they should have. The fact that I run they're OS is shameful enough without having to admit they managed to pull the plug on me.

Also, IF and when I buy a copy, I too will be looking into disabling it. And if they don't like it, tough nuggies! I've sold (was a consultant) and purchased enough M$ junkware in my life that they should credit me for a few years of freebies.