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Home > Archive > Windows XP exams > March 2002 > XP rocks
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| I have been studying for the 270 test all week. I am also writing a study guide for the 270 test for mcsefreakpress.com, and I am totally in love with XP now that I had the time to sit down and play with it.
There are so many cool features! Alternate IP address, ICF, Driver rollback, i can't believe we had to wait so long to get those. Man, now I am pumped about the .NET servers. I was talking to a guy from Microsoft about .Net and it looks like some real cool stuff is coming our wat down the road.
OK, so I may be the only guy who likes MS. 
I know it is not trendy, but we can't all be penguins I suppose  | |
| cross36 2002-02-28, 10:08 pm |
| Freak i just ordered that book for $38 brand new from half.
I was reading it in barnes&noble and came attached to it, so i went online and bought it.
I'm using xp now since it came out. Good OS. I still love though windows 2000 professional.
To me they just launched XP to compete with the MAC GUI to attract market shares. | |
| PotatoHead 2002-02-28, 10:17 pm |
| I love the driver rollback and the remote assistance features with XP. I have a beta .NET server and it seems pretty cool, but I haven't played with it that much. | |
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| driver rollback is one of those things that I cannot believe it was not implemented before. Such a simple idea -- and such great results. As I said, XP rocks | |
| necrophantasm 2002-03-03, 10:36 am |
| I think XP has some great improvements.. but it also has a lot of baggage too. It is a great OS if you have a beast of a computer, but it's definitely not meant for that poor guy running a PII 350. I love the GUI customizations (my personal favorite is the gelcapped theme) the built in unzipping, driver rollback, and other features are nice too. However, the remote desktop assistance irks me (I disable it as soon as its installed.. and delete the group), seems like to big of a vulnerability to me. Also, the system restore points are great if you have no backup tools.. but I dont think it should be enabled by default (a lot of people talk about how slow their machines are.. and don't know how to turn that sh** off). So, I agree with you that its a big improvement freak, but only after you have gone through and disabled all the BS that microsoft is pushing at you (and upgraded your machine to an athlon xp or a p4 with 384+ ram). Just my two cents  | |
| freak 2002-03-03, 11:31 am |
| well, this is the world of the cheaper and cheaper hardware costs, so adding RAM is no big deal as fas as I am concerned. I see XP as a huge step forward for the client side OS. Usually, most of the cool features are developed for the server side... | |
| Teck Shark 2002-03-05, 10:42 pm |
| I agree, XP is quite an OS. I too am still a Windows 2000 guy, but XP is definitely nicer from the support perspective. Expecially considering its predecessor was Windows ME!!!!! ARRRGGG!!!! | |
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| lol
Actually, winXP is Windows NT 5.1, not really a winME successor... | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-13, 12:56 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by freak
lol
Actually, winXP is Windows NT 5.1, not really a winME successor...
Thank goodness for that! | |
| Teck Shark 2002-03-13, 1:49 pm |
| Thank God XP is nothing like ME. If that were the case they truly would have had to call it Windows CEMENT, rather than XP!!
I guess I forgot to mention most of the support I do at my 2nd job is on Retail systems, which run Win XP Home edition! Although not structurally, XP Home Ed. is basically the retail successor to WinME! | |
| cross36 2002-03-13, 2:17 pm |
| A successor of ME!
That's a good laugh.. | |
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| Daviet 2002-03-13, 3:00 pm |
| Wait, Do you mean I can finally upgrade from Windows 3.1? Woo Hoo!
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| TW2001 2002-03-13, 10:09 pm |
| quote:
I know it is not trendy, but we can't all be penguins I suppose
Freak, wouldnt you rather have control over the core parts of the OS(full control over services,recover from fatalitys without rebooting) than the Interface?
Just for arguments sake how efficient is an OS that requires 512mb ram to run optimally(dont talk recommendeds..talk reality)..and the file system...defrag is NOT a neccesasity in certain environments.
Having said that...My Kids love it.I dont need the extra Jazz personally.2K pro I like more.I am very impressed with the level of driver support.The roll back is good.Built in remote desktop support is decent.Media player..Lots of enhancements. | |
| freak 2002-03-14, 10:31 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by TW2001
Freak, wouldnt you rather have control over the core parts of the OS(full control over services,recover from fatalitys without rebooting) than the Interface?
Just for arguments sake how efficient is an OS that requires 512mb ram to run optimally(dont talk recommendeds..talk reality)..and the file system...defrag is NOT a neccesasity in certain environments.
considering that this is a client-side OS, no I have no real need for any of that. Not to mention that I have about 200 XP boxes deployed in the real world, and I am very happy with the reliability so far. There hasn't really been any need to reboot them.
As for RAM, it is a non-issue to me. HW costs are so low, they do not motivate my purchase one way or another. To me, it would cost more to retrain my users and support staff to learn a new OS than it would to add a stick of RAM per box...
This being said, I have nothing against Linux as an OS -- except for my obvious inability to learn it as fast as I wish I coud
But Linux on the desktop? No thanks. | |
| TW2001 2002-03-15, 10:18 am |
| Being a Client OS doesnt mean that an individual wouldnt like to control the system services,thread allocation and overall environment(not the desktop )
I was really posing a question..I also can tell you teaching basic desktop navigation,working with files(through a gui) launching an app..etc with Linux is not that difficult.ie Mandrake distro..if my 9 year old daughter can do these things anybody can.
Its more the mentality.
Yes becoming a "power user" in linux is difficult for even technically skilled people.
How much ram will you be slapping in a Box when Mira(I will admit..conceptually this is awesome..will they deliver?) and the "Longhorn OS' hits the scene.A gig? That could get pricey.
You have proably been around long enough to know the industry(and related products) runs in cycles.I wouldnt make an enterprise wide decision based on HW price now..would you?
Sorry If Ive taken the thread off topic.. | |
| Teck Shark 2002-03-15, 12:28 pm |
| I've ran Red Hat for a couple years now. Don't mind it too much, works great on a lower end machine, something Windows XP would have a very hard time doing I agree. But you certainly don't need that much memory! Yes the more the better, but 128 is plenty, 256 is even better.... you certainly don't need any more unless you want more. It all comes down to system management. Most people that have problems have too many items loading in startup, not enough system resources available, paging file configured wrong, etc. I troubleshoot these machines every day, & once XP is optimized, it runs great... even on 128MB RAM! | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-15, 12:54 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by freak
But Linux on the desktop? No thanks.
The most recent versions of Linux ship with desktops just as easy to use as Windows. It's just a matter of getting used to it. I'd bet that if you trained a new user on Linux running KDE 2.x or on Windows XP, they wouldn't find that much difference in the difficulty level.
And TW2001 . . . efficiency isn't everything. One of the reasons UNIX was written in C instead of assembly was because the developers decided to choose portability over efficiency. A good assembly coder can always write much tenser code than would be possible in a higher-level language. Windows lets you control things just as much as Linux does, it just hides the internals behind a GUI. | |
| TW2001 2002-03-15, 1:08 pm |
| Umm..well Im not exactly an end user
When you consume a lot of memory and then close apps.Do you get it all back? No
When you end the multitude of spawned child process`s do you get it all back? No
All or most-relative
The multitude of programs that are available to optimize XP is astonishing.
Ive playing around with tweak XP.On a tuned box(pfile,reg settings..etc) with 256megs
Ive taken the machine down to say 80megs(Running apps:,Visual Studio-VB_C# ide`s up,notepad,download manager,media player,realtime Virusscan,Terminal session) now if shut all of it down. I get 30 back.Kill childs i get another 10-15 back.So now im at 120-130 with the OS.
Conversely,If i leave it all running use the TweakXP i reclaim 220 megs.Which is more than when the system came up!
This has been my XPerience..The Gui is nice though. | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-15, 1:26 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by TW2001
Umm..well Im not exactly an end user
When you consume a lot of memory and then close apps.Do you get it all back? No
When you end the multitude of spawned child process`s do you get it all back? No
All or most-relative
The multitude of programs that are available to optimize XP is astonishing.
Ive playing around with tweak XP.On a tuned box(pfile,reg settings..etc) with 256megs
Ive taken the machine down to say 80megs(Running apps:,Visual Studio-VB_C# ide`s up,notepad,download manager,media player,realtime Virusscan,Terminal session) now if shut all of it down. I get 30 back.Kill childs i get another 10-15 back.So now im at 120-130 with the OS.
Conversely,If i leave it all running use the TweakXP i reclaim 220 megs.Which is more than when the system came up!
This has been my XPerience..The Gui is nice though.
All true enough, but that just goes back to efficiency, which I have already said is not always the most important thing. If you bave 2 gigabytes of memory, you can afford to be a little less choosy. If you want real efficiency, try MVS, its management of memory is even tighter than that of UNIX, and it runs faster as well. VMS has a more efficient file system but runs slower. ITS machines were poor on file management and flexibility, but maxed out as far as memory management was concerned . . . they had to be since they had so little to deal with. All extremely efficient, but in a mainframe, that is not always the most important thing, and a desktop user probably couldn't care less.
It all basically comes down to personal preference after you get past a certain point. I prefer UNIX personally, but the advantages that it has are not always that apparent if the user or developer doesn't care that much about them, and they are most likely to care about them when running substandard hardware. My first Linux install took all of 8 megabytes, but who would find that acceptable today? Now I have so much disk space I am not sure what to do with it all. if I was running a 286, on the other hand . . . | |
| TW2001 2002-03-15, 2:19 pm |
| quote:
All true enough, but that just goes back to efficiency, which I have already said is not always the most important thing. If you bave 2 gigabytes of memory, you can afford to be a little less choosy. If you want real efficiency, try MVS, its management of memory is even tighter than that of UNIX, and it runs faster as well. VMS has a more efficient file system but runs slower. ITS machines were poor on file management and flexibility, but maxed out as far as memory management was concerned . . . they had to be since they had so little to deal with. All extremely efficient, but in a mainframe, that is not always the most important thing, and a desktop user probably couldn't care less.
Huh???
You lost me..in reference to the thread.
However,
Ive got a decent amount of experience on an MVS console dealing with several very large attached Drive silos.We also use MVS to interface to our VSM box (thats a Virt storage management syste.4 drive array..system sees 60..migrates it all to tape from Buffers reached in an immense)
cache!..yeah I have an idea of mem managemnt)
Initially I was posing my questions to Freak a Skilled IT professional.(as Im sure you are)Not the end user.Its more interesting to discuss these topics in regards to ourselves and our peers.In what we demand and want.Not Ed/Edna End User who thinks his/her hard drive is memory.
Do you think on an everyday PC(todays standards) the NTkernel could be recompiled?
(without unraveling)That the OS could handle that?
Their is your efficiency. | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-15, 3:02 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by TW2001
Huh???
Do you think on an everyday PC(todays standards) the NTkernel could be recompiled?
(without unraveling)That the OS could handle that?
Their is your efficiency.
No, you can't recompile the NT Kernel yourself, but most people don't bother doing that with Linux either. Most people wouldn't notice much one way or the other. And strictly speaking, if Gates and Co. decided that we should be allowed to reconfigure the kernel, it could probably be done (I have done the same on HO-UX, which is closed source but allows kernel configuration). Most people don't care that much about 'efficiency' unless it has an obvious impact on what they are doing. If it doesn't, then it is just of interest to the developer. | |
| TW2001 2002-03-15, 5:13 pm |
| It was Rhetoric anyways. | |
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| Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Linux or whatever flavor of Unix strikes your fancy is not a great OS. I do not compare it to MS NOSs either, because I really don't think that they are that comparable. As a consultant working in the field, I have a hard time making my users agree to move from Office 200o to Office XP because too many things change -- that's their story and they are sticking to it. That's the perspective I come from when I shudder at the thought of changing their OS to something with which they have no experience!
I still prefer MS on the desktop to linux, even if on the server side I have deployed Linux over MS many times. It all depends on the target network, the business-critical needs and the budget available...
Great thread by the way, those are fun and thought-provoking questions and observations... keep 'em coming! | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-18, 6:38 am |
| I agree . . . there is no "perfect OS". Each has its specialty even though most of us have out own favorites. being "loyal" to a particular OS when another one would be more appropriate is not smart business sense.
My office smealls funny today. | |
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| why does your office smell funny today... too many MS machines in it? | |
| The VMS Kid 2002-03-18, 8:36 am |
| I think we either had an exterminator here over the weekend or something got painted. Seems to be gone now. |
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