Is Windows XP good enough?

Paul Thurrott, who clearly thinks Windows Vista is better than XP, has taken the release of Service Pack 3 as an opportunity to review Windows XP, taking a step back from the bits and bytes to ask if XP is good enough. The article, written last month, is called A Look at Windows XP Service Pack 3 Part 1: Good Enough? I recommend reading it.

One point he makes is that because of the delays in releasing Vista, Windows XP got more mature, "in ways that were never possible with previous versions of Windows." Lots of jobs require maturity, I like it in my operating system too. From my Defensive Computing perspective, I view Windows XP as mostly debugged. It's had hundreds of bug fixes issued for it, which suits me fine.

On a psychological level, Paul writes:

"We're creatures of habit, you and I. And even the most forward-looking of us, those who enjoy living on the edge, technology-wise, have a very natural need to be in the comfort zone sometimes. And XP is just that, comfortable, like that ratty old sweatshirt that we should have thrown out years ago but just can't bear to replace ... the longer Vista was delayed, the more comfortable XP became to users."

Again I agree. Some people don't have the time or the interest to learn a new user interface. Vista should have had an option to make it look just like XP.

Paul also writes that the delays in releasing Vista forced Microsoft to add stuff to XP that was originally targeted exclusively for Vista. Thus, the difference between the two is smaller than Microsoft had originally intended. Paul writes:

"As Vista was delayed again and again, Microsoft realized that it would be a mistake to tie the success of key new technologies that were to have originally been Vista-only. So it back-ported a number of technologies to XP, things that previously were designed to be Vista-specific. These include, among others, Windows Defender, Internet Explorer 7, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communications Foundation, .NET 3.x, the Windows Security Center, Windows Media Player 11, and even Office 2007."

Finally, an analogy:

"If customers are standing put on the previous version, that means they're not sold on the company's technological vision, and they're no longer lining up as Microsoft tries to lead them to the future. I mean, imagine a case in which customers were allowed to choose between a previous generation Toyota Camry and the all-new, designed-from-the-ground-up 2008 model, and the customers actually chose the old version by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, despite the fact that the price hadn't changed at all? This would be devastating to any car maker. I believe it's devastating to Microsoft for the same basic reasons."

I can't wait for Part 2 of his review.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

NT 5.0 (Windows 2000 Professional) is actually fine for what anyone could need who is not doing computationally demanding scientific applications.

The team from Digital Equipment Corporation that David Cutler led wrote a stable OS that even the drooling incompetents at MSFT couldn't destroy for 7 years. You can walk through manufacturing plants and hospital emergency rooms - demanding environments by any measure - and see it at work every day.

XP and Vista are just NT. 5.0 in drag, adding nothing of any real new value to most users.

[mhinnewyork]

I agree with your enthusiasm for Windows 2000. I personally used Win2000 until service pack 2 was released for Windows XP. To me, its biggest current drawback is the lack of System Restore.
Michael Horowitz

[georgefl38]

"If customers are standing put on the previous version, that means they're not sold on the company's technological vision, and they're no longer lining up as Microsoft tries to lead them to the future."

Two comments on this. One, I totally believe that customers are (finally) getting around to not being sold on MS's technological vision, what ever that may be. Two, I don't believe for one split second that MS is trying to lead us into the future; it's more like they're trying to lead us into buying a new product because they will no longer support the previous "latest and greatest."

Every time I see a new OS coming out of MS, all I can think of is the story of the Pied Piper. Are we really so gullible that we can't tell the difference between real progress and a company that just wants to keep selling products that they will claim are obsolete in just a few years?

[mhinnewyork]

Well said. There is an interesting power struggle going on between Microsoft and their customers. Many customers prefer XP but the company, for whatever reason, feels the need to force the world to Vista. Why the feel they must do this, I don't know.
Michael Horowitz

[anonymous x]

I prefer windows Vista to XP. Before people start complaining about this "propaganda," I would advise them to try windows vista first. You'll see its not slow, has new features I miss when I use a XP computer (like the search on the start menu and DX-10), and is more stable (seriously, it crashes much less, but you'll know that already if you have a copy of vista).

[mhinnewyork]

Reasonable people can disagree, that doesn't make either side right or wrong. Paul Thurrott prefers Vista and I'm sure he has very good reasons. Many of the initial Vista blue screens were due to bad drivers, not written by Microsoft. That situation can only improve over time.
Michael Horowitz

[dslyohio44439]

Are you insane??? Vista is an awful operating system. It is a very slow operating system and a massive resource hog when compared to XP. Add in that its interface is very user unfriendly. XP does have search in the start menu, as did 98 and previous windows versions, and my windows XP system is a very stable OS (I can leave it running for days at a time and not have issues) whereas when I was using vista, I was lucky if it ran for an hour without issues. Vista has come cosmetic features that I liked, but overall XP is and was a much better operating system.

[zclayton2]

Hmm - I have not noticed that it crashes less frequently - I have noticed that Vista crashes more often than what I am used to on XP. and XP doesn't annoy me with the nanny messages.

[Waveblade]

An interesting note is that those reformats that many tech savvy people do on XP...still required in Vista? I don't know about you but my XP computer at home is getting pretty bogged down after 1 year of no formats. Perhaps I should give it a whirl.

I'll need to give my laptop with Vista 2-3 more months to see if it bogs down as well.

Hm.

[mhinnewyork]

There is very little need to reformat and start all over with XP. Very often people who advocate this are not techie enough to speed-up XP, which does get slower over time. Much of this slowness is easily explained and fixed.
Michael Horowitz

[Mam00th]

Simple : don't buy a new OS for your computer. Just buy the new one along with a new computer.

... do you think spending even MORE MONEY is the way to solve this issue ?

[dougbell]

This is after a lot of typing...and hitting "enter" ...and losing all the thoughts... When will such sites save what you are entering...or just have a redo...to recover what you have entered.
My suggestion is to do you post with Word or Outlook...then copy and paste to the comment box.
You can, also, use the spellchecker... I had lots of good thoughts....and I shall not take the time to enter all that was lost....

[mhinnewyork]

As Paul Thurrott said in his article, all techies agree that the best way to get Vista is to get it pre-installed on a new computer.
Michael Horowitz

[RicABlair]

To Waveblade and MHINNEWYORK: one guy cites "tech savvy people" and the other says they're "not techie enough." Not being techie, geeky or nerdy in any way (just tall, blonde and handsome) what does it mean to be "techie enough?" Sounds to me like a self-serving tautology; i.e. you're not "techie enough" if you have to do reformatting.

[mhinnewyork]

Will you please shut up.

[RicABlair]

to MH: if you don't appreciate valid, honest and constructive criticism (and occasional) praise and you want to censor me...don't bother, I'll go elsewhere.

[mhinnewyork]

That would be appreciated.

[Kongar]

I've heard nothing but bad things about vista from two friends - I have about five friends and myself that are about a 6 out of 10 on the "techie" scale (build our own machines etc). Vista is a brutal resource hog. my closest friend that is suffering from vista : ) has frequent crashes. my windows xp machine crashes very very rarely. I thought windows 98 was a nice step up from 95 and XP several notches up from 98 but from everything I can gather, Vista blows chunks. That is not to say it doesnt have some features that would be nice to have but I'd rather have a reliable toyota that gets me where I want to go then a jaguar or hummer thats breaking down half the time (or even 20% of the time). He bought vista with a new machine (as recommended above) and FIANLLY came to the conclusiqon that he made a mistake. he is also annoyingly proud and hearing him say that he made a mistake is like hearing me say "wanna stand in line with me to get tickets to see Celine Dione?" well......okay, its not that outrageous ; ) but at this point, I would never get vista from his experience and my other friend's experience alone. (and the missing drivers and hardware incompatibilities you hear about. )

MS greatly improved their image in my mind after XP. now I'm rolling my eyes again after vista.

[bruceslog]

Weird.. I'm replying to you on my Acer laptop with Vista that I use almost daily, has never crashed on me, and is faster than my 2 desktops. I like the way Vista handles programs that lock up, they grey out, then Vista pops up a box saying the program isn't responding, do I want to close it. I click yes, the program closes, and I am still seeing my Vista desktop. No crash, no blue screen.
I hear that the hardware one has is a key to a fast, stable Vista experience. Kinda like Linux. And the way XP used to be when it first came out. I expect the hardware and driver compatibilities will improve in the future with Vista SP2, like it did with XP.
I like both XP and Vista. My experience has been that Vista handles application crashes with more elegance than XP. And it has more features that I miss when I'm back on my XP desktop machine.
Just my experience fyi.

[Dango517]

I have both, Vista on one PC, XP on another. Simply because Vista requires more advanced hardware it is better. This advanced hardware will move the net forward. This maybe the vision. I believe the adventurist among us bought Vista when it first came out those less so, have waited for the release of SP1 for Vista. If the business community sees it's value, sales will increase rapidly. From my observation of how Vista Business contrasted against XP Professional I'd say Vista is far more stable and secure then it's predecessor, with many new features. There is, WOW in Vista with more WOW to come.

[mhinnewyork]

Even people who like Vista will admit that buying it when it was new was a mistake. It was not ready for prime time when it was released. Hard to believe, but after all those delays in releasing Vista, Microsoft seemed to have rushed it out the door.

[jlawrence50]

There's not a thing wrong with Windows XP, and personally, I don't care one bit about learing a new interface (Vista). In fact, my XP box uses the classic Windows interface for just that reason. Why does Microsoft feel they need to re-invent the wheel every time they want to improve their OS? If the underlying infrastructure of the OS needs to be fixed, fix it and leave the GUI alone. A fancy GUI is great as a sales tool or for a new computer user, but for those of us who have been around a while, it's a pain to be forced to learn new navigation, terminology, structure, etc., just to get a "better" OS. If Vista doesn't have a classic Windows look, I'll keep using XP until I'm old and grey.... or move to a Mac when I need to upgrade.....

[mhinnewyork]

I agree completely.
Michael Horowitz

[3rdalbum]

"""If Vista doesn't have a classic Windows look, I'll keep using XP until I'm old and grey.... or move to a Mac when I need to upgrade....."""

If Vista doesn't have a classic Windows look, I'll move to something that looks completely different to Windows altogether? +1 to being a Linux user who has migrated a couple of Windows refugees over after Vista.

[MKorkowski]

I cannot believe what I am reading. As an IT related professional I will tell you straight up Vista is not good. Yes, it has some new descent features but they run poorly. This OS release is the prima donna of the software business model. They want us to buy it and then buy everything else with it including many software suites and programs that do not have upgrades that will run on XP. These folks, some of them, are also using this business model- less work more easy profit. It becomes simply too much of a pain to spend development time on older products to make any descent profits. This hurts us because all the money we spent on many previous programs is now lost because they won't run on Vista. My kids hate Vista and they are in their early twenties. I agree with them. There is no reason whatsoever to change the locations of a function of the OSUI just to be "new". As an engineer with many years of experience I will say that it is most important to get things done fast. This is what a P.C. is for. Fast, fast, and faster. Vista is not that. With Vista its all about the trip, the drive if you will ,not the destination! What? Who cares? Vista is not appreciated by techies such as myself. I consider it the most "stupid" OS I have ever seen. In fact it is insulting to a normal person's intelligence. I have always been a Microsoft proponent and still am, but this OS is more like the "Edsel" of the fifties. WindowsME was bad and Vista amplifies tenfold on that. Dell is selling plenty of P.C.'s with XP on them and guess what? Customers DEMAND IT. So Dell PROVIDES IT. I had high hopes for Vista but I am sadly disappointed. I remember when XP came out and it really was hot. Not big time at first but we all knew that Microsoft had made great strides. Now you are lucky if you can find a descent "chipset" driver for Vista. To you newbies a chipset driver is just about the most important driver, less display, on the P.C., and the generic provided by Microsoft is like using kerosene in a car that is supposed to run on racing gas.

[fvolpe]

The only thing that stop Vista to replace window XP is a negative consecuence of it's anti-piracy methods.

Allow home users to "use" illegal copies and make money with the Companies was always a good marketing resource. As many users know and use a product better are the chances to force the Companies to follow the "natural" know How.

[mo.davies]

I shall probably continue to use Linux. It can do all that XP or Vista can do, costs me nothing, and runs on a PC that struggled to run Win98 when it had Microsoft Bloatware installed upon it. Of course, I am not a game player, which makes a huge difference to my requirements.
Mo (Luddite) Davies

[fiveliters]

I bought a new laptop 1 month ago that had Vista installed on it. My last desktop had Windows ME,so obviously I was a bit behind on things. While I had to learn where a few things were located compared to where they were on ME,it wasn't a big deal-besides,if everything were exactly the same,people would then complain "nothing's changed-why should I get Vista?". In the beginning,I downloaded all kinds of programs,with the knowledge that if something went horribly awry, it wouldn't be a big deal to reload the OS,as I didn't have any personal files/pics/music/etc on it. But nothing crashed, and everything worked as it should. I don't know if it is the PC or Vista or some combo,but after booting up,as soon as I hit the desktop,I can go online-no hourglass or delay. So I'm not sure what everyone else is running on their PCs that the say VIsta is so bad. It works fine for me in real world experience,so to people who say "I've heard this and that",try it for yourself on a machine,and if you don't like it or it doesn't do what you need it to do,that's fine too-at least it isn't hearsay!

[samlopez]

Putting XP Pro with SP 3 on a Intel Quad make it a lot faster than Vista
and you can make it as secure as Vista.
Many Corporations are sticking to Xp Pro and Office 2003
The new products slow down production and the new bells and whistles are no help.

[psdayama]

I purchased Acer laptop with Vista Home premium OS.While first time
it took more than a minute to load desktop after 2-3 months there are
lot of problems with many functions namely Updating & Event viewer.
Both have stopped and I dont know how to make them working evenafter
searching on Google and trying those methods. I cant run old programs
which use serial and parallel ports and when I try those USB to xxxx converters they fail as Vista has no support for them programs get error.
I dont know how laptop manufacturer will provide XP free of charge for dumping this bad OS till then I am stuck with bad thing and have to use my
PC with XP.

[jimmypang]

I've got vista on my new laptop and xp on my other 3 laptop and PCs running at home. To be fair to Vista, I have to say, I've not had many issues with it and it runs great. But then, thats where the arguement really breaks down. To compare apples to apples, if I had to run XP on the new laptop, it would practically blaze, being at least 4 times as powerful as my old desktop, in all respects. I can do the same things on XP as I do on vista, and I can use all my old software on it, whereas i cant say the same for vista. Yes, I understand that the more secure way of doing things makes things run differently, but saying that I have to go out and buy new software to do my old tasks on vista is fairly bad. Frankly, if I wanted something to run like vista, I'd probably go buy an apple, since I know it runs better, is more stable, looks nicer, and is probably more secure, than vista. That way, I wouldnt be so bothered to be getting new programs and hardware, as I know they would run seamlessly on apple, vs probably some installation quirks and operating problems on vista. There's something to be said for the way apple controls what happens to their hardware and OS. I makes for supremely stable stuff. If microsoft wants to emulate that model, let them go the whole hog. Otherwise, they will fail and get the half baked thing that is vista. If not, then make it stable and run fast and build on what they do well. Would have been nice to see XP improve instead of getting the resource hog that is vista.

[xkalibur_gt]

I've been using Vista Ultimate with SP1 that came with my dell xps laptop over a year now and so far I haven't suffer any major problem to curse VISTA!!!. I've used it for my gaming habits and major software development environment with multiple virtual (wmware) machine running 24/7. --- For me its a user preference, I dont have any problem using XP, impact I have 3 XP VM's for my test environment and I personal use.

[gfoley1]

My biggest gripe regarding Vista, vs. XP OS, is the way things are "re-worded"? As a novice, I was in the start up mode in Vista looking for "RUN" -- it was gone. How about "add and remove programs", I think the icon in now down in the forth or fifth row called "program and features"??? Why, why mess with things that all ready work just fine, I know, $$$$$$$$.

Oh well, outside of all the soft looking colors and fluff, I still like my good old reliable XP ... but for how long will new updates be produced for it? Will MS just let it become outdated forcing folks into the world of fluff and silky colors, and a world where icons are now re-named?