XP Owners install SP1 or better yet Xpdite

[Gordon Moore]

You may or may not know about XP's serious security hole....probably the worst ever in the history of Windows....Simply by clicking on an email link is enough to delete system files. If you already know...then great, but if you have been leery about installing ServicePack 1 due to the major headaches reported then an alternative is available from grc.com.

read about it here: http://grc.com/xpdite/xpdite.htm

[Kevin P]

Sounds like the lesser of two evils... either install SP1 where the license allows Microsoft to snoop your PC, or leave it off which allows hackers to trash your PC. Xpdite sounds like a better idea, or just install the Windows Update security patches.

As for me, I'm running Win2K SP2 so I'm probably as safe as one can get without going the Linux route... but then I have a Linux firewall to keep bad guys out anyway

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[JonMarsh]

Most of my PC's are off line, so I ended up going with SP1 for them. (audio test system, bedroom HTPC, HTPC, etc). The others are only online a small amount of time (DSL PPPoE connections).

Otherwise, it is rather annoying what they feel they should be entitled to with regards to information gathering.

However, it hasn't been enough to make me want to go back to WIN2K. Microsoft is playing wiley games by making some of of the driver upgrades and patches which should be available separately only available through SP1. Grrrrrrrr! :x

-Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Gordon Moore]

Jon and Kevin...both seem to be on each side of the operating fence which works out great for me because I'm in that postion where I have worked with 98SE long enough and I'm looking to move up. 2000 and XP are there advantages to one over the other?

I know 2000 isn't supposed to be great for PC games so with that already in mind my thought is to have 98 still running on a smaller drive for games and 2000 for my work/browsing. Or XP across the board and dump 98 altogether.

I wasn't aware Microsoft was getting into the spyware business unless you count their bloated MediaPlayer. Do you have a link that tells more on the drive snooping.

Jon why would you not go back to 2000 is it for HTPC reasons?

Thanks for any replies Guys!

p.s. Happy NewYear to everyone.

[JonMarsh]

Hi Gordon,

I've used WIN2K for over a year on one desktop- it seemed always an annoyance because of the lack of driver support (even from HP!), problems with most games, problems with HTPC support, etc. I adopted the service packs as soon as they were released, but the OS never seemed "finished".

XP is what WIN2K was intended to be, but which Microsoft couldn't get finished by the release date of WIN2K. I may be prejudiced in that I was a beta tester for XP, and even some of the fairly early builds were easier to work with and more "complete" feeling than WIN2K in many regards.

Now, I have a lot of the garish eye candy/UI stuff in XP turned off, but I do use the ClearType font technology, which is a big step up. Also, the promised compatibility modes for 2K which mostly never materialized are implemented fairly completely in XP, and for the most part work fairly well.

As one of our IT administrators at work put it, the various wizards and more complete plug and play make setup of XP very quick and straight forward. It's interesting that I can install and setup XP faster than 98 or ME, and usually with less hassle.

For Xmas I rebuilt my girlfriend's boys PC, and installed XP so she has some account control, but still with compatibility with all their games. Running 98, the system used to blue screen at least a couple of times a week or more. Now it never does.

I only have 98 on one system still, which has a dedicated audio test board (CLIO) running on the ISA bus, in both DOS and Windows mode. Hardware write protection prevents these programs from running on an NT based system.

The big drawback to XP, of course, is the whole product ativation folderol. I usually do it by phone, since the systems aren't hooked up to the net. It's a pain. Corporate versions don't require activation, but very few companies are adopting XP- we're just rolling out WIN2K where I work company wide. I only got it the end of December.

-Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Kevin P]

The big drawback to XP, of course, is the whole product ativation folderol.

This is the #1 reason when I rebuilt my system, I put Win2K on instead of XP. I don't support PC products that have copy protection. I didn't in the 80s, and I won't now either. And add to it SP1, which makes the activation even stricter and whose license basically grants MS the right to access your PC whenever it sees fit (I don't believe they reveal the means of doing this though), I'm not touching XP with a 10 foot pole at this time.

Remember DIVX? This is what MS is ultimately moving to, if we support XP and its draconian measures.




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[John LaCava]

In my experience Win2K is much better than XP pro. My win2k install is rock solid, I have like 3 crashes per year which is pretty damn respectable. My XP pro machine locked up a lot and have very little support for hardware. I do alot of video and multimedia stuff and XP doesn't support many high end video capture cards and scsi raid cards etc. Not stuff you average guy needs, but for stability and versatility Win2k is still the best flavor of windows in this guys humble oppinion. If you borrow XP pro you can screw the activation code. There are many handy "utilities" on the net that will let you and a buddy share a copy of xp pro without MS being the wiser.

j

[JonMarsh]

Well, I have a currently unused copy of WIN2K sitting on the shelf at home- because I've found the support and functionality of XP Pro to be better for me. Many things you have to install drivers and software for under 2K are built into XP Pro and come up automatically- like my HP990, or the ZIP250 drive. But perhaps I'm not unbiased; I was an early adopter for Win2K (can you spell missing IDE drivers, printer drivers, video drivers?), but a beta tester for WINXP Pro.

Of course, YMMV.

With regards to XP Pro, the ideal situation would be to have access to a coroporate edition and one of the key gen tools. But with careful shopping it can be picked up for in the range of $140 on the net for a new OEM install from scratch version.

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Andrew Pratt]

While we can't advocate the use of illegal software I can say the corporate version is easier to deal with in many regards I run win2K at work and XP on both my machines at home and like both versions...they're a far cry from the old 9X series :throwup:

With regard to stability I've yet to crash XP pro at home and they've both been up for about a year now which must be some sort of record for an OS at my place

[JonMarsh]

My experience is similar to yours, Andrew. Probably very similar.

About the only thing which seems to give XP Pro any fits is a bona fide hardware problem- then, it just usually does a stop CPU. (I'm not talking about peripheral hardware, but core stuff like memory or disk controllers).

I had more shutdowns with WIN2K than I've had with XP Pro. It's the first OS that seemed pretty much finished when it was released. Not perfect, necessarily, but really very usuable. It's easy to imaging not upgrading from this for quite a long time, with the overall performance as well as performance of current apps. (Boy, is that a change from my attitude of 4 years ago!) And my XP experience is based on hardware that isn't considered mainstream- Athlon's, VIA and nforce chip sets, ASUS, MSI mb's.

-Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Gordon Moore]

Hmmmm,

Must.....do....more.....research......

From the sound of things XP Pro has it's act together...I'm definately interested butttttttttt what's all the fuss with this snooping clause that Micro$oft added in the EULA?

They are getting into the spyware business? Is thise correct...With XP, part of my bandwidth would be devoted to sending browsing and software inventory back to Gates? Why, does anyone know what exactly they are going to do and for what purpose?....

[Andrew Pratt]

Gordon if you're serious about trying XP let me know