Three more words: I hate Microsoft.

IMO they make terribly insecure products, and XP is no exception.

Man, you have't even read my new "M$ Math" equation:

Microsoft+ Bill Gates== The New Axis of PC Evil ;)

I hate M$, and the worst thing was going on AOL esterday and seeing "MR. $5 dollar Hair Cut" on the main screen, I had to quickly cover it with a GT page to prevent puking on my Keyboard.

WinXp is the best, it has never crashed yet. I used to have Win98 SE and it crashed like 2 times a day.

if you wanna change things go to http://www.belchfire.net/ dowload StyleXP & get some of there themes.

I couldn't agree more. That's the reason that if I ever was given an XBox, it would be returned to the store, and exchanged for ANYTHING that wasd NOT made by M$. Don't get me wrong, AOHell is pretty bad as well, you've said it if you've used it, and you can admit it, but AOL isn't nearly as crappy as Microsoft Stuff, which might as well have a warning on every box that reads "No support availible, this program will crash your PC, and you will be forced to pay $200 for every upgrade, and $500 every year when we spit out another pile of dung.", Microsoft has more problems, and security holes than my math book that looks like it's been through a paper shredder.

Well Cyrax, you may be plaesed to hear that in between trying to get a degree and helping my mate out at getting www.demolicious.org up and running, I have finally got Linux installed on my machine dual booting with Win2K.

And in answer to my earlier query asking whether or not Linux would ever be up to replacing windows: it already is. The only thing I can't run on Linux is games made for windows (although some of the big games like quake 3 and unreal tornament have Linux versions available) - everything else can run on one of the programs I've got bundled with this distro (the Mandrake 8.2 beta 4 edition which cost me a paltry £9 and arrived on three CD'R's) or I can emulate with WINE or something (albeit unreliably with some programs).

You think XP is stable? You ain't seen nothing chaps. I spent two hours deliberately trying to crash it, and nothing. Anything you throw at it, and it just seems to bounce right back. The blue screen of death or "explorer.exe has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" are things of the past, to which I will bid a hearty farewell.

Linux isn't as easy to use as windows if you're not used to it, but after 10 minutes of fiddling I was able to customise my toolbar to a degree I could only dream about in windows. I am by no means finished, but I'm damned impressed with the whole thing. Linux is great.

One more thing: Linux and the internet ROCK.

Once again Congratulations to Pika for helping to stop "Mr. $5 haircut" from taking over the world. BTW Pika, you said Linux Dosen't run most Windows Games, what about DOS? Yeah I know, it's old as hell, but if Linux has stuff like DOS Emulators, I'll be saving for a new PC that's Windows-free. It's time for Microsoft to Die the death it deserves, after years of crappy products being shipped out, we may finally have a choice on how we play games, and use our PC's. he Sooner Linux levele's the playing feild with Microsoft, I'l be happy as a clam. Microsoft ha cause me more heartache than any other computer company, and their downfall will be the rest of the worlds success. It's time for Linux Systems, and Macs. I'd still leave a floppy drive around as an "optional" accessory for "small files", since a Word Porccessing Document doesn't take up too much space, but we now know what we need.

True yeah, there are soem DOS emulators for running under Linux, but I've not got that far as yet...! Come to think of it, I haven't got any DOS games, or indeed DOS apps any more anyway. Ah, I should try and find my old copy of Space Hulk to see if I can get that running...

If it's games you're worried about though, many of the bigger games are (eventually) getting ported to Linux (where they often tend to run faster than the windows versions - the windows programs I've emulate under Linux tend to run faster too). The whole thing gives you not only more control over utterly everything, but it does it more reliably (I repeat: Windows XP has NOTHING on the stability of Linux) but using far, far less system resources as well.

So thankfully it looks like I won't be one of the people in the queue for Longhorn, or whatever they end up calling the next draconian incarnation of XP. Goodbye windows, it was nice knowing you. Actually, no it wasn't. "F**k off and die"

: sdtPikachu is as happy as Larry and hos whole darn family :

P.S. anyone who wants to read my as-yet-unfinished Linux bits can do so here and here.

Obviously the new windows is going to be bugged, it's because the previous windows had dos running UNDER windows, and since many of the hardwares used that to their advantage, when xp came out, a bunch of hardware stops working unless u format u'r hard drive and install windows xcp with a clean hard drive, as happydude did, as for the interface, it can easily be changed back to classic mode, and like someone else said, it handles ram amazingly, not only that but it makes things like setting up the dsl connection to the internet and hooking up a LAN a lot easier, as for the password, that can easily be taken off from the password menu, not that u neccesarily want to, it's a lot more secure than the security systems in te other windows. And unstable? Hell no!!! it's never crashed ONCE in my entire history of using it for different purposes, school, gaming, 8 non-stop leaving the computer on to download a extremely high resoulution version of Final Fantasy:The Spirits within.
And i doubt it will crash anytime soon

"Obviously the new windows is going to be bugged"

Well, why the hell should it be? Why can't they release an OS once the major bugs and security issues have been found out? I'll tell you why: because that kind of testing they consider too expensive to do properly, so they let muggins on the street find their faults for them.

"previous windows had dos running UNDER windows"

Win2K/NT 5 doesn't. XP to me is just NT 5 with a new GUI on top and privacy killing features as well as a load of other useless folderol I'm never going to want to use, but hey I have to install it anyway. Great.

"as for the interface, it can easily be changed back to classic mode"

Still doesn't alter the fact that I hate the windows GUI as a whole, and it has absolutely zero configurability. GNOME is a wonderful thing.

"it handles ram amazingly"

So does Win2K and Linux. One isn't free but doesn't have product activation, one is totally free. I can't really see the point of chaning to XP really.

"it's a lot more secure than the security systems in te other windows"

Which isn't saying much. Windows is probably the most notoriously insecure OS in existence.

"And unstable? Hell no!!! it's never crashed ONCE in my entire history of using it for different purposes, school, gaming, 8 non-stop leaving the computer on to download a extremely high resoulution version of Final Fantasy:The Spirits within.
And i doubt it will crash anytime soon"

Wow, anyone would think it was SPECIAL that you can have an OS that crashes only once a week. Sheesh.

I've kept Win2K running on this PC for over a week non-stop and it didn't crash. So far, Linux has only been on for 24 hours at a time (not tried any mammoth sessions yet), but even after TRYING to crash it, I failed.

Thing is, you've probably not actually done anything to make Windows break a sweat anyway. Leaving a computer on running a single program (i.e. downloading) isn't exactly very taxing, is it?

XP is just the latest incarnation in a whole series of buggy, incomplete, insecure operating systems. True, XP is better than the rest, but should it really have taken so long to get this far when other OS's have been managing it for years?

i don't like XP that much either. we have it on our computer and it has crashed every month for the past 3 months its annoying. it just crashes all the time. and it take a long time to start up. everything else is fine, its just those two things that bug me.

I have it.. doesn't bug up on me like it does to marionettes.. it's odd.. it's nothing special except I can have cool silver color windows

....

well this sucks. our computer crashed again. and they sent a 3 1/2 floppy disk to fix it, and that didnt work. so we called again, and they sent 7 cd's to fix it. and that didn't work either! so now HP is sending us a box to ship them the computer to fix it. and we'll get it back in about 2-3 weeks. i hate XP! *keeps mubling and walks away*

..lol

I love XP.. I love the ability to switch between users without logging off, which is why I am on AIM almost all the time. I also like the ability to send messages to other users.. I send my mom my shopping list under her username every day :D

Wait....you said you have an HP? I think I found your problem.