Windows XP...Worthwhile or just marketing fluff? (1 Viewer)

[Clinton McClure]

I got a chance to play around with Windows XP today and was really disappointed with it. IE: I hate the new look and layout, even when it is set to Windows classic mode.
Is it really worth the $$ to upgrade to the new platform? I'm currently running Win 98 2nd ed. on my pc with the only problem being the microprocessor is only 366MHz. (I want one of the 1.5GHz P4s.

)
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http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollection.asp?alias=mport_drivrCasa del Clint

 

[Steve Kramzer]

In my opinion, xp is a piece of shit, I would stay as far away as I could from it. If your having problems with uptime or anything, I would upgrade to win2k. Even though its minimum specs were more than I was running, I used to run win2k on a 400mhz cele with 64 meg of ram and it ran fine. (New box is 1.2ghz athlon, 512meg ddr...much better...I lub win2k, though I should have longer than 4 week uptimes, but I something always seems to happen around then that I need a reboot )

 

[JasonD]

I have XP currently installed on a 1GHZ Pentium III processor system w/384MB ram. No problems so far. The "worst" thing at the moment is that Lexmark doesn't have an XP updated driver yet for my printer

But it doesn't drain away my RAM like Millenium used to. The layout is nice and customizable. Give it a chance.
[Edited last by JasonD on October 07, 2001 at 01:30 PM]

 

[Clinton McClure]

Steve, do you have any trouble with your Athlon processor? My mom was running a K6 and it was a piece of crap. Are the Athlons better and more stable than the K6s? (Hers couldn't handle Winamp or Quicktime without crashing. She had a Pentuim processor put in and hasn't had any trouble since.)
I am asking this mostly because I want to get a new pc soon. I love everything about mine except it is a Celeron 366MHz dinosaur. When I go looking for pc games anymore, a lot of them require a min. 400 - 500MHz to operate. I saw an e-machines at Best Buy yesterday that was $399. It was a 900MHz Athlon. On the other hand I also played around with another HP (mine's a Pavilion 4450). It was a 1.4GHz P4, I think, and was soooooooooo sweet. The price was $700 though.
Both are preloaded with XP.
Or would it be cheaper to just put in a new microprocessor? Or is this even possible with HP (aka: We put EVERYTHING on the motherboard, bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!!!)?
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http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollection.asp?alias=mport_drivrCasa del Clint

 

[CRyan]

I am currently using a K-6 system that I built myself - never had a problem. I would tend to bet the crashing was due to other hardware conflicts - notably the motherboard. In the beginning, sound cards and other hardware did not support K-6 all that well.
I do not currently have an Athlon, but have read quite a bit. Any store-bought PC will give you as stable performance as its Pentium counterpart. Most of the problems people encounter with the Athlon are actually with the motherboard selection.
Anyway, e-machines has a horrible reputation. I would not suggest buying one for myself, especially not for someone else.
C. Ryan
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[Steve Kramzer]

I've had my athlon system since june and I haven't had any problems with it. I built the system myself and haven't had any compatibility problems. I have 1.2 ghz athlon with 266 fsb, the mb is an Asus A7A266, I have 512megs ddr ram from micron, tdk 12x cdr, toshiba 12x dvdrom, ati aiw radeon, soundblaster live value soundcard and 2 40 gig 7200 rpm drives from IBM. I bought the parts from newegg.com and it cost me about $1000 in the end for everything you see here plus the case, powersupply, etc...I'm betting you could probably build it for around $900 or less now. I would second the previous posters recommendation not to buy an e-machine as they are pieces of shit.

 

[CRyan]

So Steve, what would you call an emachine running XP?
C. Ryan
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http://www.elitestoragedesigns.com/RyanOAR.bmp
[Edited last by CRyan on October 08, 2001 at 12:24 AM]

 

[brentl]

GUYS; get rid of the K6 crap!! I used a K6-2 350 for a year, then a 500. In february I moved to a Duron 750 NO comparison!!!
Take the Floppy, Harddrive, Vid card(AGP I hope, and Cdrom, but a new case,CPU, and memory for UNDER $250 and have a nice little system that will run circles around a K6 based system.
I bet you can do it for under $150 i you look hard enough!.
I'm looking at moving to XP in about 3-4 months, but I hate the registration thing....what a load of shit!!
I'm sure there must be a crack out there already??
Brent L
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OK guys ..... The tour of the Paradigm
plant is now being planned. GO TO THE HOME THEaTER
MEETS PAGE and register.

 

[CRyan]

If you look at several of my other threads in this forum, you can see that I am about to build a new system. $150 is not possible when going to a Duron or Athlon however - at least if you have an older 400-500mhz system. Usually a case and power supply has to be purchased along with the MB, processor, and memory.
Cheapest case I could find with AMD power supply is $64 shipped. Cheapest Motherboard is $74 shipped, 800mhz Duron processor $45, around $36 for memory, $12 for new fan heatsink, and another $12 for a case fan. So you are looking at around $240 at a minimum. And I am still worried about that "cheap" motherboard.
Oh well, my k6-3 450 does most of what I want, but I will be very excited to get my Athlon system running in the next few weeks. It all depends on what you do with your system of course.
Yeah, I am not happy about the XP authorization mess myself. Going to hold off at least till a service pack release.
C. Ryan
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http://www.elitestoragedesigns.com/RyanOAR.bmp

 

[Steve Kramzer]

an e-machine running xp ? god, I don't think I would even take it if it was free....wait nevermind, I would probably take it, just the first thing I would do is format the hdd. Then I would probably use it as an mp3 server or something so that I could get it out of way. I'm actually wondering what the windows xp discs that my school is gonna get are going to have the authorization codes or not. The reason I wonder is because the copies of win2k that we get don't have serial codes, which makes it nice when you need to re-install windoze and don't know where you place your serial. That is one nice thing about being at a larger, tech oriented university, free microsoft software.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I'm running XP now (had 95,98,98SE,2000) and I LOVE it. I installed it over my 98SE partition and it installed flawlessly. I was very easily able to have it migrate over all my email, files and user setttings from the 2000 partition so it was a very easy migration for me. I've had it for a few weeks now and I've yet to have any problems at all.
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[Jeff R.]

Considering I got stuck with Windows Me on my laptop, I am definately going to be upgrading to XP. Windows Me crashes about 3-4 times a day and even though I have 256 MB of RAM, I still run out of memory when I have certain programs open. I ran the XP compatibility checker and it reported only minimal compatibility problems which I would probably be able to resolve. I never thought I'd be saying this but I can't wait to upgrade to XP.

 

[Jacob_St]

So THAT'S why my new computer is always crashing and running slow! This past month I was convinced I needed more memory or the processor was faulty. This Windows Me OS is worse than Windows 95.

 

[Corey Hancock]

Installed XP Professional the other day and it works great. I was having major problems with my Efficient USB DSL modem in Win98SE and WinME. Installed XP and did some fooling around with the drivers and everything is great. OS is super stable, haven't been able to crash it yet.
Oh and Brent, there is a one out.
corey