Goodbye Millenium, Hello XP
Today I moved up in the world of computers. Gone now are the days of running an obsolete operating system, now I'm running a merely soon-to-be-obsolete OS.
I bought Windows Millenium (ME) not long after its release, and have been running it on my computer continuously until just earlier today, when I finally upgraded to XP Home Edition. Despite the shocked looks of horror whenever I tell someone I was running ME on my computer, it's served me well these past 6 years or so. True, it can be unstable at times, but on my computer at least it was unstable in a fairly predictable way. I leave my computer on 24/7, and I averaged maybe a bit over one reboot a week. It helped that I have a gig of RAM in my computer, seldom install new programs (and I uninstall them if they seem to make the system unstable), and also make liberal use of the "winmgmt.exe /kill" command. Winmgmt seems to be a primary cause of memory leaks, and when the system starts acting funny and I do a cntl-alt-del it's often found there. Winmgmt /kill will often restore stability to my system.
I stuck with ME because it worked for me. It was stable enough, ran the programs I used, and didn't consume gobs of RAM or hard drive space. Also, I run a lot of older programs on my computer (mostly games from the early 90's), and I was concerned about compatibility should I upgrade to XP.
As far as network security is concerned, ME is not as advanced as XP, but I keep Windows updated, my computer clean of malware, and I'm behind a NAT firewall. When XP first came out, it was touted as more secure but soon was revealed to be a security swiss-cheese. The Blaster worm and others caused much grief for the ISP I work for, not to mention all the poor souls whose computers got infected sometimes just seconds after going online. So that was another reason to stick with ME.
XP has definitely improved over the years in security, but still I found no real reason to upgrade. But over time, the obsoleteness of ME started to sink in. More and more programs nowadays are XP-only. I also wondered if having an OS built on the more stable 2000 platform might improve my computer's stability even more. So early in 2006 I figured OK, maybe it's time to upgrade to XP, but not if I have to pay full price for it. So I watched for it to go on sale.
A couple times this year it did, but as luck would have it, both those times coincided with some financial stress, so I missed out. Finally though, this week Best Buy put it on sale for $60, with--get this--no mail-in rebates. That's the price you pay at the register! So I finally sprang for XP and got it.
After being sure to back up my important files, I installed it on my computer this morning. The upgrade took a bit over an hour, with about another hour of tweaking it to my preferences, and downloading & installing all the current updates. (Over 50! And 50+ MB, excluding .NET which is another 22MB or so. The install CD was SP2.) I really haven't had a chance to twiddle with it and really check it out, as I had to go to work. When I finish up my third job today at 10pm (yes, I work 3 jobs!), I'm looking forward to converting one or both of my drives from FAT32 to NTFS, and also doing test-runs on my most commonly-run programs to see how they run under XP. A few programs I'll probably uninstall if there's a newer, XP-specific version I can replace them with. (E.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
From the (very) short amount of time I used the new OS this morning, it seems stable, and I'm actually somewhat surprised that the upgrade process went error-free. Still, there are a few, albeit minor disappointments already. First, the Home edition I got does not support NTFS file encryption. That's partly my fault, as I didn't want to splurge to get XP Professional. Second, despite the repeated claim during the setup process, XP doesn't seem to load any faster than ME on my computer, though it doesn't seem much slower either.
My biggest disappointment so far though is its stupendous hard drive requirements. My C: drive used 4.35GB under ME; it now uses nearly 9GB. Where did those 4+ GB go? The package says XP only needs 1.5GB of hard drive space, and the updates, even uncompressed, couldn't be more than 100-200MB more. My C: drive is only 10GB big, so that's a major chunk of it that's gone. Similarly, my D: drive, which used 49 of 60GB under ME, now uses 57GB, an 8GB increase. And Windows is on my C: drive! WTF did it do to take up 8GB extra on my D: drive? I turned off the paging/swap file, so it can't be that. Maybe when I convert to NTFS I'll regain some or all of that, but still, that's a big annoyance.
Well I guess I'll see how XP works out. Hopefully for the better. Windows Vista will be released sometime early next year it looks like. Vista is something that actually looks pretty darned good for a Microsoft product; it may just be their first true "OS done right." Still, I think I may wait at least until they release SP1 for it before upgrading from XP, or better yet, wait a few more years until I can get it on sale for $60. :-)
I bought Windows Millenium (ME) not long after its release, and have been running it on my computer continuously until just earlier today, when I finally upgraded to XP Home Edition. Despite the shocked looks of horror whenever I tell someone I was running ME on my computer, it's served me well these past 6 years or so. True, it can be unstable at times, but on my computer at least it was unstable in a fairly predictable way. I leave my computer on 24/7, and I averaged maybe a bit over one reboot a week. It helped that I have a gig of RAM in my computer, seldom install new programs (and I uninstall them if they seem to make the system unstable), and also make liberal use of the "winmgmt.exe /kill" command. Winmgmt seems to be a primary cause of memory leaks, and when the system starts acting funny and I do a cntl-alt-del it's often found there. Winmgmt /kill will often restore stability to my system.
I stuck with ME because it worked for me. It was stable enough, ran the programs I used, and didn't consume gobs of RAM or hard drive space. Also, I run a lot of older programs on my computer (mostly games from the early 90's), and I was concerned about compatibility should I upgrade to XP.
As far as network security is concerned, ME is not as advanced as XP, but I keep Windows updated, my computer clean of malware, and I'm behind a NAT firewall. When XP first came out, it was touted as more secure but soon was revealed to be a security swiss-cheese. The Blaster worm and others caused much grief for the ISP I work for, not to mention all the poor souls whose computers got infected sometimes just seconds after going online. So that was another reason to stick with ME.
XP has definitely improved over the years in security, but still I found no real reason to upgrade. But over time, the obsoleteness of ME started to sink in. More and more programs nowadays are XP-only. I also wondered if having an OS built on the more stable 2000 platform might improve my computer's stability even more. So early in 2006 I figured OK, maybe it's time to upgrade to XP, but not if I have to pay full price for it. So I watched for it to go on sale.
A couple times this year it did, but as luck would have it, both those times coincided with some financial stress, so I missed out. Finally though, this week Best Buy put it on sale for $60, with--get this--no mail-in rebates. That's the price you pay at the register! So I finally sprang for XP and got it.
After being sure to back up my important files, I installed it on my computer this morning. The upgrade took a bit over an hour, with about another hour of tweaking it to my preferences, and downloading & installing all the current updates. (Over 50! And 50+ MB, excluding .NET which is another 22MB or so. The install CD was SP2.) I really haven't had a chance to twiddle with it and really check it out, as I had to go to work. When I finish up my third job today at 10pm (yes, I work 3 jobs!), I'm looking forward to converting one or both of my drives from FAT32 to NTFS, and also doing test-runs on my most commonly-run programs to see how they run under XP. A few programs I'll probably uninstall if there's a newer, XP-specific version I can replace them with. (E.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
From the (very) short amount of time I used the new OS this morning, it seems stable, and I'm actually somewhat surprised that the upgrade process went error-free. Still, there are a few, albeit minor disappointments already. First, the Home edition I got does not support NTFS file encryption. That's partly my fault, as I didn't want to splurge to get XP Professional. Second, despite the repeated claim during the setup process, XP doesn't seem to load any faster than ME on my computer, though it doesn't seem much slower either.
My biggest disappointment so far though is its stupendous hard drive requirements. My C: drive used 4.35GB under ME; it now uses nearly 9GB. Where did those 4+ GB go? The package says XP only needs 1.5GB of hard drive space, and the updates, even uncompressed, couldn't be more than 100-200MB more. My C: drive is only 10GB big, so that's a major chunk of it that's gone. Similarly, my D: drive, which used 49 of 60GB under ME, now uses 57GB, an 8GB increase. And Windows is on my C: drive! WTF did it do to take up 8GB extra on my D: drive? I turned off the paging/swap file, so it can't be that. Maybe when I convert to NTFS I'll regain some or all of that, but still, that's a big annoyance.
Well I guess I'll see how XP works out. Hopefully for the better. Windows Vista will be released sometime early next year it looks like. Vista is something that actually looks pretty darned good for a Microsoft product; it may just be their first true "OS done right." Still, I think I may wait at least until they release SP1 for it before upgrading from XP, or better yet, wait a few more years until I can get it on sale for $60. :-)
posted by Unknown at
4/26/2006 03:58:00 PM
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