This review is on Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows XP. XP comes in 4 flavors; Home, Professional, Server and a future 64 bit version. Currently, I use Win XP Pro and this review is based on that. For ages, I waited for a stable PC. I was with them from the age of DOS. Surprisingly, till not a long time ago, that was my personal favorite in OS’s for the PC. Win 3.1, 95 and 98 came and went by. And finally, came Win 2000. That IMO, was Microsoft’s best effort ever till then. Though based on Win NT architecture, it wasn’t just for business users and also didn’t crash like NT. The Catch? it doesn’t support many of your peripherals. The PC which I have came bundled with an ugly duckling version of Win 2000 called Windows ME (Millenium Edition). From start, it was buggy and crashed a lot.Finally, I was exasperated and shifted to Win 2000 only to find that my dvd player, speakers and memory stick drives don’t work. I tried Linux, Solaris et al. and had to go back to Windows ME.
I started praying for an OS with stability and support for my devices. Finally Windows XP got released. XP is based on the Win2000 architecture and was written from scratch. No buggy code from NT and surprise, all my peripherals work. I was amazed. Heck, its got support for DVD-RAM Drives, and DirectX 8.1, the great app for those great games and in-built CD Writing Software. The graphics in XP kill the competition. The catch? It’s a resource hog (Which windows isn’t?) You need atleast 128 MB ram to get it going and to keep it pushing, a minimum of 256 meg. Plus, there is this not so pleasant Activation thing. This means that, you can’t just use your friend’s CD as in previous cases. After installing, in a month’s time you have to send the activation code via the Internet or Telephone. This sure will restrict its growth in India. But if you got the resources, Definitely go for it. If ain’t, get Win 2000. These are sure worth for buying a PC.