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Posted
on July 18, 2001 by Paul
"Crazyace" Bouthiller
 Everyone
is talking about Windows XP right now, and now that the
release date is getting closer, and the candidate versions
are out, you would think the talk would be focusing on the
usability, stability, and compatibility of Microsoft’s
latest operating system. Unfortunately, XP talk is focused
on product activation, and most of it is pretty damn
negative at that. Well, now I bring you this quick look,
which was basically written while I installed Windows XP RC1
on a couple of my systems. What I will be discussing is
installation, usage, compatibility, and stability; Also,
I’ll toss up a couple of screenshots to get you into the
groovy mood.
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Test System 1
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Test System 2
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Now, I know what your thinking. The test
system is a darn fossil eh? Well, I think it’ll be a good
way to see how Windows XP operates on an older system, as
far as speed and compatibility go. The 2nd system
will look like this:
There are a few other items installed on
the 2nd system, which I will be discussing a little later in
the article.
Installation
Let me start off by saying the
installation of Windows XP is long. When I say long, I mean
REAL long. It took me over an hour to install on either test
system! The hard drives on both systems are partitioned, so
I opted to go with a dual boot configuration, which was
relatively painless. Also, I reformatted to get a nice clean
install. Here are a few notes:
System 1: The processor has been running
at 550Mhz for a couple of years now, but for some reason
Windows XP didn’t really like that idea. During install, I
had to clock the processor down because the system kept
freezing up. I guess we’ll see what happens after the
installation process. Also, for some reason with 5 minutes
left, the time was not going down any further. After 30mins,
I shut the system down and rebooted. Windows XP resumed
installation, but now with the clock set at 39mins left, so
actual install time took over 2hrs. Now, I have installed
95/98/98SE/ME on this system previous with no problems
whatsoever. After finishing the installation, I was able to
clock the chip back up to 550Mhz without any problems so
far.
System 2: I had a little trouble with
the install in the beginning, due to the fact that Windows
XP needed the ultra DMA drivers for my hard drive. I finally
found the driver disk, and things went pretty smooth after
that. Installation time was about an hour, which isn't too
bad. I do have some items on system 2 that Windows XP found
without a glitch. The list includes an Intel video camera, a
Visioneer scanner, and a Hewlett-Packard 882 printer.
After
the initial installation, the setup takes you through a
little tour, real little if you don’t ask any questions.
Then, you are prompted to add user names, which allow for
different settings per user. I added my entire crew (family
of 5) hoping to finally being able to check out this thing
they call XP.
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