[Reinhold]

What a nightmare! One has to be a certified computer geek to even attempt this upgrade.

Half of my peripherals don't work anymore, and that number would be higher if I wasn't as computer literate as I am.

I don't know how Microsoft thinks that the average user can successfully do this upgrade.

[Aragorn]

I upgraded my son's machine last week. It was very smooth(I'm still not impressed with it though). I should preface this statement w/ the fact that my son's machine is less than 6 months old and has all "leading edge" components. I recollect that there is the possibility of problems with older components. I'll stick w/ Win2K.

[Firefish]

We just received XP at work and all next week I'll be installing it, think I'd rather go through boot camp again! I have copies of ME and 2000 pro., but on my personal PC, which is using the newest of all hardware, I still run win 98 2nd ed. I just can't seem to get hooked on the newer OS's. Though 98 has many bugs, I know how to work most of them.

[icemark]

XP (much like 95 over 3.1 before it and Dos 6.X over any version before it), does not like to go over an existing OS.

You are much better off adding a brand new HD and loading XP onto it. Then, connecting up the old drive, and bring over what you want to save. Plus you can often get an OEM copy of the OS when you buy the drive, for the same amount as an upgrade program.

Personally at this time I prefer WinME. They finally got the majority of the bugs out of it and 98SE. I am holding off upgrading to XP on my home 'puters until the second version of XP comes out. Plus then for the time being I don’t have to play tech support to my wife trying to use another OS. She already has problems just printing to the home network printer sometimes.

[schrocat]

No problems so far.
Running on an IBM Netvista (6579-L1u).

I agree with Icemark.
Do not upgrade...slick the box.
Hold off entirely until you've confirmed all driver compatabilities and have the drivers in hand...best case scenario would have the drivers burned onto one cd.

Beware of integrated video and audio on motherboards!! (unless 16 colors is your thing)
some support is still lagging.
I got burned hard on that one last month.

[R1]

My wife and I just bought a new Notebook with Xp. I 'm not a big fan of the Xp.

[Firefish]

Schrocat, that's exactly what I had problems with when I installed 2000, tried it on a nuked (clean) hard drive and still had problems with the video and nic drivers. I figured that was the tip of the iceberg and tossed it aside...

[RWD]

I installed xp on a 1 year old machine last week. So far I'd say it's ok but defenitly a big headache to configure with all the old software. For example my old Adaptec ripping software won't work and neither will Norton Antivirus 2001. There goes another $100+ . I had to get new drivers for the printer, scanner, and moniter so far. So for me going from 98 se to xp it wasn't really worth it. I allready had IE6 installed. Maybe it'll grow on me?

[drlowz]

I dont have it, but a buddy at work installed it and it has been nothing but troubles for him. Many components not compatible with his system. I'll stay away from it.

[Bamm Bamm]

I've been runninf XP for 3 months or so now I love it..plus its good to have connections..

[eses]

I would advise anyone thinking of doing it to make sure all of their hardware is compatable. I just upgraded this weekend, and discovered that my graphics card (voodoo3) is no longer fully supported. Microsoft stepped in and wrote some tolerable drivers for it, but they don't support opengl or direct draw. Fortunatly someone has written a hacked version of the win2k drivers for it, so now I can play games again (horrah.)

Overall, I like it once you change the obnoxious color scheme. It looks way too Fisher Price to start with. My first reaction was to make it look as Windows98 as possible, but the more I worked with it, I let it go back to it's "XP self" and restored the XP start menu and taskbar.

It is almost exactly like Win2k except its actually friendly to my A/V programs.

The installation is a bear, and I agree with doing a clean install. Make a new parition, or just format and install. It makes it happier than doing an upgrade.

Ran into a few minor software problems that were all solved by downloading patches. Roxio's CD-Creator required an upgrade and patch to v5.02b...but I am finding myself not using it at all now since XP has integrated CD writing. You just drag-and-drop the files to your CDR and hit "write these files." The "Plus!" addition comes with some decent label making software, though I've yet to find any that I would call adequate.

On my 2 year old box, a p3 500, it is much quicker. Loads faster, is more stable, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs quicker. Nothing has crashed (yet) and I'm freaking myself out as I am actually happy so far with this OS.

My biggest complaint is they are making it so user-friendly that it is hard to use. All I wanted to do was setup my home network, a 10 minute job, but no, they made me jump through 50 hoops and tried to insist I run a "XP Network Wizard" on each box in my house. And I'm sick of it telling me one of my HD's is almost full. I know it is, I'm the one who filled it...shut up already.

It is as close as you are going to get to using Mac OS X without having to purchase a Mac.