Exacerbate Pain

Running XP doesn't have to be a miserable experience. Here's what you need to know before you try.

Get It Try It

As mentioned elsewhere, XP could and should have been a totally good experience but most likely is not. Yet things are not all as bad as they would seem. If you have the right kind of box for it, you might even like XP.

What You Need

David Coursey at ZD's AnchorDesk claims that any hardware from at least late 1999 will be fine with XP. This is totally wrong. It plays directly (deliberately?) into Microsoft's hands. Rule One: You never believe Microsoft's minimum hardware requirements, or anyone else's when they are as low or lower than Microsoft's. Instead, you double them.

Coursey claims XP will run on 64MB RAM, but Microsoft's own recommendation of 128MB is closer to the mark, and 256MB is your safest bet. On the other hand, RAM prices are way down right now - you can pick up 128MB for about US$20 - so with any luck a serious RAM boost shouldn't set you back so much.

The recommendation for disk space is rarely understated, and if your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM isn't particularly fast it's not the end of the world - you'll just have to be patient on the install is all.

Microsoft may have a Windows XP 'Upgrade Advisor' available - check their site to see. As this is a free thing, it might be wise to use it before taking the plunge.

Product Activation

This is the gizmo that's got the world screaming. According to the Microsoft site, product activation is there to prevent a form of software piracy known as 'casual copying'. New hardware with XP pre-installed should already be activated; when you upgrade to XP you have to go through the activation procedure yourself.

Basically you get a 30-day 'evaluation period' (great terminology for a product you've already paid money for) and each time you start your box you get a nag screen admonishing you to do the production activation jig. You connect to the Internet, follow the activation wizard, a lot of what some may regard as confidential information is transmitted across the ether to the Beast in Redmond, and a super-secret key is sent back to you.

Is this system crackable? Of course it is. Is it a royal pain in the butt? In spades. What happens, for example, if you decide Microsoft made a mess of your hard drive and you want to try to install all over again? Will it work? What happens if you upgrade hardware components? Will it work? As the details of product activation are not exactly broadcast around the net, exactly what will happen in any one scenario remains to be seen. And the fact remains that this is a heck of a way to pay for a product (which according to Microsoft you don't even own, even after you've shelled out good money for it).

We all know by now that all Microsoft operating systems get sluggish over time. This is the result of the accumulation of too much junk in the Registry. File extensions, CLSID's, Interface rubbish, etc etc etc. Installs that don't go the way you want or give you programs you decide you will not use. And of course all the 'hi-tech' garbage Microsoft normally throws your way. Sooner or later your system will start to die, and when that happens, the only reasonable way out is to reinstall the works. If XP throws a fit at this point you might have to call Microsoft (yes on the telephone) and wait a very long time before anyone gets around to you so you can explain what happened. And if this ever does happen to you, do take the opportunity to explain to the hyper-intelligent and not at all arrogant Microsoft representative exactly why you decided to reinstall. Nag the Beast enough and maybe it will trip up.

If all you're worried about is sluggishness down the line, check out Microsoft's own RegMaid application. (Search their site and you're sure to find it - it gets moved regularly.) RegMaid will take out the worst of the Registry rubbish with a noticeable speed boost as the result.

Thirty Two Bits

For those who've run NT the past ten years, this is of course no news, but for those who've waited until now it will be. XP will namely graduate you to 32-bit computing - and just in time, as hardware will soon move to double that.

And thirty two bits means much more than faster machines.It means secure operating systems. One simply cannot run a good multitasking operating system with a GUI and only sixteen bits - it doesn't work. (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE and Windows ME are all 16-bit operating systems.) So there are any number of 'rainmaker' applications you can throw away.

But you will have to re-learn everything you've assimilated since first you connected to America Online. XP is the first Harry Homeowner OS from Microsoft that offers 'secure computing'.

• Your Registry hive files are no longer SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT.
• Your swap file size does not vary while your system is running (except in extreme circumstances).
• Your swap file can be distributed across all your hard drives - using the same name.
• You need a swap area larger than RAM. If you have 1GB RAM, you will need a bit more than 1GB swap area.
• All memory is on disk to start with - and then only when needed goes into memory (yes you read that right).
• Your command interpreter is no longer COMMAND.COM.
• Your command interpreter still isn't a Unix shell, but it's got a lot more control flow than that MS-DOS one.
• You can no longer access your hardware directly (from within programs that is).
• A lot of your 16-bit software (games) will no longer work.
• VxDs are gone. So, finally, are 8-bit device drivers that have still been hanging around.
• Memory optimisers never did any good; now most of them won't even work (hooray).
• You need to login to run your box - it's no longer an option.
• You'll need to make one account other than Administrator if you ever go online.
• You have to watch out for port 445.
• You get a halfway decent task manager.
• You can now run all those other XPT apps you drooled over.
• Applications won't crash your system. System modules cannot become corrupt. Every DLL is mapped individually to its client application. KERNEL32.DLL is not going to send your system into a tailspin.
• You have an event log you're going to have to look into all the time.
• You have a new file system - NTFS. It's slower than FAT, but a lot more rugged.
• You won't find orphaned chunks of disk being recovered by AUTOCHK if you use NTFS. Even power outages shouldn't affect it.
• Even your Registry is transaction-based and should not corrupt.
• Your NTFS file system drivers will normally retrieve information in alphabetical order for you.
• You can stamp (touch) your NTFS directories. They'll take it.
• You can set access rights on NTFS files and directories - recursively too. If people are not you, they can't access your files (ceteris paribus).
• You can lock down a file so good even you can't get at it.
• INI files are more gone than ever, and a few of the stragglers will get wrapped in the Registry.

These issues - and more - will be addressed in later articles. For now, kick back and enjoy not having to jump to Ctrl+Alt+Delete all the time.