A computer question

[Morticia]

This is a question for all those people who are "in the know" about computers - what is your honest opinion of Windows XP??

We are now running it at work and I am having shitloads of problems with it.

 

[phlogiston]

I'm running it at home. After battles with Win95, 98, 98se and ME due to general suckiness and a habit of crashing even if the computer was just sitting there being unused I had given up and was moving wholesale to Mandrake Linux.

I was reinstalling and a mate had an cough*evaluation*cough version of XP so I thought I'd give it one last go. Aside from a few early driver issues that are now sorted out, I've had no problems with it at all. Apps still crash, but they don't bring down everything with them. It's a bit simple for my tastes, in that there is very little configuration, and things like the the search function are close to useless, but there's also some good features that I'm really impressed with.

What sort of problems are you having?

 

[Sydo]

I've had XP for a few months now and not had one problem.

Which is wierd for me because usually everything fucks up my clunker.

 

[Sydo]

Originally posted by phlogiston
Apps still crash, but they don't bring down everything with them. It's a bit simple for my tastes, in that there is very little configuration, and things like the the search function are close to useless, but there's also some good features that I'm really impressed with.

I agree with that.

And yes, the new searcyh function is pitiful.

 

[Icarus]

My computer can only just run win95 as it is

 

[Morticia]

The problems are things like Word freezing all the time - like more than twice a day, applications not responding and a lot of other people can't seem to open word document attachments that we send to them - reckon it just comes out garbled crap. Or maybe they just don't like my style of composing documents!! But maybe cos its a new system it will take a wee bit of time to sort it all out - we are running a fairly sophisticated server and database on the system so could be related to that?

I totally agree with the search engine thing - doesn't do it for me.

I am running Windows ME at home and I reckon its much better - although I am sure that our desktop theme is interfering with a few things but thats the price you have to pay to hear and see Alice while on the PC I guess!!

 

[Pentelesh]

I was just working within Osborne label, and everybody just keep saying that XP is a crap version and they recommend 2000 or 98 second edition.

Something to do with safety and other things.

I have 98 Second and its good.

 

[phlogiston]

Originally posted by Morticia
The problems are things like Word freezing all the time - like more than twice a day, applications not responding and a lot of other people can't seem to open word document attachments that we send to them - reckon it just comes out garbled crap. Or maybe they just don't like my style of composing documents!! But maybe cos its a new system it will take a wee bit of time to sort it all out - we are running a fairly sophisticated server and database on the system so could be related to that?

I totally agree with the search engine thing - doesn't do it for me.

I am running Windows ME at home and I reckon its much better - although I am sure that our desktop theme is interfering with a few things but thats the price you have to pay to hear and see Alice while on the PC I guess!!

Are you running Office XP as well? I think the file formats used by the later versions (ie 97+) of Office are the same, but I haven't use Office XP so I could be wrong.

Also there is sometimes an issue with email programs using funny encoding/decoding techniques. Ask your mail admin to make sure you're using "mime-type encoding". And sometimes email attachments just don't work between programs.

And there is a recenty announce bug with outlook, but not everyone can replicate it. Make sure you don't have any lines starting with the word "Begin" in the body of your email. It's a keyword used by Outlook to tell where attachments start.

 

[Morticia]

Cheers for that - will pass this info on to the Powers that be and they can sort it out.

I only have another 3 or so months to put up with it and then I am out of here anyway!!