For several weeks at the beginning of 2002 I was using an evaluation copy of Microsoft Windows XP Professional on my home PC.  I can sum up the experience in one word – WOW!

 This is by far the best, most user friendly and stable operating system (OS) yet to be released by Microsoft.  The first thing you will notice when you install this OS is that your desktop is not cluttered with icons.  Although there are probably more programs and features than you will ever use in two lifetimes, they are conveniently tucked away and out of sight until you need them.

 When you click on Start, a customized menu will be displayed for each user that has set up a profile on the machine

 This menu will display your most frequently used applications and is dynamically updated as your usage patterns change.

 If you have a CD-ROM read/write drive on your PC, you may discard all that confusing software that came with the drive.  WinXP allows you to simply drag and drop to burn CD’s; as easy as writing to the floppy disk in your A drive.  Also included are the latest Windows Media Player (Version 8) and Internet Explorer (Version 6).  With the Media Player you can listen to music and radio, watch videos and live broadcasts, organize your music library and create custom music CD’s.

 Microsoft has also spent considerable effort to expand the help capabilities, make them more user friendly and provide a simple means for user feedback  if and when problems are encountered.  For example, clicking on Start – Help and Support and then entering the phrase “dual boot” in the search box   provides you with a full description of the dual boot process including “hot link” references to related information and direct links to the Microsoft  Knowledge Base if your Internet connection is active when you perform the search.

 Another area that has been vastly improved is the search capability.  Not only can you fine tune searches for files on your hard drive, but you can also  search for data on the Internet using this same tool. In the example below, I ran a search for music on my local hard drives and limited the search to music containing the word sinatra.

 The search quickly found 82 files and right clicking on a file and selection properties displays all the details such as song duration, audio sample rate and year of recording.  If your search is for images, WinXP will automatically display a small thumbnail rendering of the image.

 Overall, I believe Microsoft has a real winner here.  The colors and graphics are pleasing to the eye, the interface is easy to follow and IT HASN’T  CRASHED ONCE.  Do be aware however that WinXP likes lots of RAM memory and hard disk space. Using the above search capabilities for files greater than 1 megabyte in size, XP found 453 of these consuming close to 3  gigabytes of hard drive space so plan accordingly.

This page last updated on Thursday, December 14, 2006