'Windows XP' excellent but way too expensive

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

I have probably written so many articles on Windows XP that people may be thinking that I am a member of Microsoft's marketing team. However, my previous articles were based mainly on my two-week experience with the Release Candidate 2 on a loaned Dell computer.

You may recall that I installed the full version of Windows XP Professional Edition just before Christmas last year. Two months later, I still subscribe to the opinion that this is the best operating system that Microsoft has offered so far. However, like most other users, I would love to see a lower price tag for this product, especially because I still have another PC at home that is still running Windows Me.

The overall performance of my 733 MHZ work PC was boosted when I added another 256 MB of RAM to the already installed 128 MB. Now it seems that I can open as many homepages as I want without hitting a speed bump. The lesson here is that you should forget the 64 MB minimum requirement stated by Microsoft in the product's box, even 128 MB is not enough.

There was a time when my PC had recurring problems when rebooting. My PC would simply stop working when the screen said "Storing your settings". I had to press the power button to get out of the frozen page.

I almost e-mailed Microsoft to tell them that I had succeeded in crashing what was touted as the most stable Windows operating system ever. But, after I uninstalled the Talking E-mail software, which I had downloaded from the Internet, the problem disappeared. It seemed that XP had the ability to heal its own wounds after a skirmish with an unfriendly piece of software.

My primary hard disk, which was actually a 10 GB partition on my 30 GB IBM hard disk, was formatted using the more efficient NT File System (NTFS) during XP's installation. In the first month after I installed XP, I regularly checked its fragmentation level. XP always told me there was no need to defragment the hard disk. However, as I started to write this article, I checked it again to see whether I could tell you something about it.

Surprisingly, there was. I was told to defragment, which I did. Unlike Windows 98, it took XP only 20 minutes to complete the process. Subjectively speaking, this PC has also worked faster since then.

Setting up home networking was also easier with XP. Without too much guesswork, I was able to connect the 1.3 GHz Pentium 4- based HP Pavilion, which has now become my wife's work PC, to my PC so that I am now able to access the files on her My Document folder. Now my work PC also serves as the Internet gateway to my home network. Both computers can now access the Internet, and the speed is not really affected by the shared access. I still have some problems with the printer setting, though, although at first it worked fine. As of now, my wife still cannot print anything using the Laser 6L Gold attached to my PC.

One of the basic requirements for using XP is perhaps that your PC is still relatively new. If you try to use a machine that you bought more than three years ago, you may have problems with hardware compatibility. Running a compatibility check before installing XP will help you. I was quite lucky, as my two-year- old work PC had no significant compatibility problem.

In fact, using the Windows Update facility in its Control Panel, I was able to update the driver for my SoundBlaster Live!, which now works flawlessly. Most of the programs that I need for my work can still run without a glitch in this new operating system.

If you are already using Windows XP, do not forget to use Windows Update regularly. This is important, as a lot of problems are still to be found out in the security aspects of this operating system. Another utility that you should be using before installing a new piece of software or driver is the System Restore facility in the Control Panel. This will enable you to quickly turn back the hands of time and recover the system's perfect running condition if you encounter any installation or compatibility problem.

XP's TWAIN driver also enabled me to connect both my Canon Powershot A50 and HP ScanJet 4100 to acquire digital images. I was not able to get these two products -- which came from two competing companies -- to work side by side in Windows 98, which was the previous operating system on this PC.

I have also scoured the Internet to see what other people's experience with XP has been. I wanted to see whether there were some general problems that but I had not found out about. So far, both end users and editors seem to share a liking for XP. A lot of people have encountered hardware compatibility problems, but this is quite common in a major OS upgrade.

In general, the price is still a problem. Choosing the upgrade version can save a lot of money, but in general it is better to install the operating system from a totally clean hard disk, which is called "clean install". In the U.S., this will require an investment of US$190 for a full version of the Home Edition -- as opposed to $100 for its Upgrade version. The Professional Version, which you will have to choose if you need more versatile e-mail capabilities, for example, will cost you almost twice as much.

However, people in the U.S. are reportedly able to buy the four-month old operating system at a special price in some hypermarkets. Now, regardless of Microsoft's recent victory in a civil case against five local PC resellers in Jakarta, the price would still be an issue for most of us. The question remains: If lower prices were available in the U.S., why are they not available here in Jakarta? Nothing could contribute more to boosting the image of a giant company like Microsoft than an excellent product at an affordable price.