<font color=Forestgreen>Does anyone think it's worth upgrading to XP? I've heard a lot of bad things about it, so i'd like to know from someone who has it or uses it often.

Also, if I do upgrade, can I keep all my stuff? Like games, programs. etc.?
Thanks for any info!</font>

I switched from ME to XP (home 'cause of cost) and it went reasonably well. The one big thing that had to be done was up a host of drivers. Mouse, scanner and printer neede to be updated to work. There are some services that have the updated drivers, but I had better luck with the equipments source. You won't be able to play any of the old DOS based games or any game prior to Win98. That is unless you want to get into a dual boot.
The screwup recovery and memory management is better with XP. If you just turn off the machine the system will go into hibernation. When you reboot you are given a choice of how you wnat to boot, clean, or use the hibernation.

<font color=Forestgreen>Thanks, so it looks good so far. But can I keep all the old files and programs like games and stuff? And has anyone encountered any major problems or has any reasons NOT to upgrade to XP? I have the disc from a friend, so cost isn't an issue.</font>

I'm not sure how MS is doing it in the UK but I understand the registration is automatic and the disk serial number and cpu is recorded by MS. Now this just MAY be a rumor to scare people.

Make sure you back up your entire HD first!!!!!!!just in case

[ 01-05-2003, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: Arvon ]

XP is leagues ahead of ME. It's based on the 2000 kernel, so it's ultra stable (I haven't had a crash in about a year). I see no reason why anybody shouldn't go with XP as long as your hardware can handle it, ie at least 800MHZ. If your into serious networking, VPN's, domains's and the like you'll want XP Pro, but just a regular home networking XP Home will be fine.
One piece of advice. Do a clean install, format your drive (after backing up important files, of course) and install XP and a nice fresh partition. You'll save yourself a tonne of headaches and XP will be much faster.

I agree with Animal on the full instal part. The upgrade isn't too bad but not near as efficient as a full instal.
Also although this may not be an option for most people, but if you haven't tried XP yet then you are really missing out and should check it out. Personally speaking, it's not a better operating system but the best operating system (from MS anyway). As pointed out above, crashes are a thing of the past and networking is so simple that I would personally have to say that it would be harder to set up a dial up connection than to set up a small home network.
To sum it up. If you want efficiency, few hassles and reliability, go XP. There are quite a few people who may have found otherwise but I am sure that in most cases, people who run XP would most likely never go back to 98/ME/2000 if their life depended on it.

Lastly, I run XP Pro. Once again as pointed out by animal, XP Home is what you may wish to try unless you want to go crazy networking in which case Pro is your best bet.

STOP!
If you already have 2000, there is no real reason to upgrade to XP at all.
They are based on the same kernel as has been said and XP is basically just an over-bloated 2000 with bells and whistles on.

I had 2000. Then I reformatted and installed XP Pro. I used it for a few days. The compatibility mode for old games is crap. None of my old DOS games worked just like they don't on 2000.

Also XP makes you activate your product. Although this is painless and takes about 5 seconds over the web, why should you give MS any info at all?

Of course everyone who had ME is singing its praises because it's such an improvement over ME. However it is not really an improvement at all on 2000.
Come to think of it I've been over this on another board... I posted my findings there, I'll just paste it for you....

these are based on my experience:

Advantages of XP Pro pver W2K on my comp:
- Faster booting
- Buit-in support for things like zip files, so no having to use winzip etc. unless you want its extra features
- Nice start menu
- Better support for all devices i.e. more drivers come with the OS saving you downloading them
- No ACPI so you can customise your IRQ settings etc. better.
- Easier to learn parts of the OS you are unfamiliar with, although this is more annoying than helpful sometimes for people like me who are used to rumaging around for instructions and figuring out how to run things back in the DOS days.
- I like the grouping of tasks by application on the taskbar, to save space.

Disadvantages of XP when compared to 2000:
- Menus hidden under more "user friendly" levels of nice graphics and sub menus e.g. control panel etc. this is just annoying for me
- My old DOS programs work even worse than under Win2K - I got the impression this would be the other way around...read this as "most of them don't work as with W2K and the ones that do have really bad sound" ...hmmm maybe I need new sound drivers for XP- I am using the ones it installed with a clean install though so it should be ok.
- The stability, resource management etc. are no better than W2K.
- XP takes up a gigabyte more than W2K which matters when you only have a 20GB HD like me! (all I know is that after installing XP, 2.5GB were gone and after installing W2K only 1.5 were, these are including the windows page file)
- XP has the activation feature
- Annoying crappy programs like MSN messenger are built in to XP and it didn't get removed even when I used Add/Remove Windows Components.
- Many of my older utils are not compatible with XP and I have to download updates or get new versions. Also some of my Win98/2K games have compatibility issues with XP.
- I distrust the new anti-privacy clauses I've heard about in the version of Media Player etc. that comes with XP

Needless to say I'm back to 2000 now. And no, I haven't wasted any money as I can get XP Pro free from university whenever I want.

I like XP and use it regularly...

Though it does have some quirks mostly its a good OS [img]tongue.gif[/img] though for a weaker machine I wouldn't dare recomend it...

<font color=Forestgreen>My machine is 1.5 GHz. I have 40GB of memory and 256MB RAM. And windows 2000.
DOS programs aren't an issue for me and I heard that XP substitutes for 95/98/2000/ME. Is this true? 'cos y friend played Might and Magic 7 on his and that is a Win95 game.
Anyone else? I'll be gone at school and won't be online until about 6pm English time.</font>