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Happy Birthday
Microsoft Windows XP®. You're a year old. You're the
best Microsoft Windows® yet, and the most stable. We continue
to receive a large number of inquiries from users who want
to know if they should upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP®.
Therefore, we decided to give you a quick upgrade guide below.
- To start
with, if you're computer is using any version of Microsoft
Windows 95 or 98® your computer is most likely far too
"undersized" to handle Microsoft Windows XP®.
As far as we're concerned, here at NSL, minimally you should
have a computer with a 1.0 GHz processor, 128MB (You really
should have 256MB or RAM, but you can get away with 128MB.)
or RAM, and a 10GB hard drive.
- If you're
still using Microsoft Windows 95® and have a computer
with a processor running around 300MHz with 64MB of memory
and a 3GB hard drive you've waited
too long already to upgrade to any newer Microsoft
Windows® product as it's almost impossible to find even
an Microsoft Windows 98SE® cd. We don't think it's advisable
to put in a new hard drive and more memory into a computer
that old. There's no reason why you shouldn't use it as
long as it works for you, but recognize that much of today's
software will not work with in your computer, if at all.
- If you haven't
updated your original version of Microsoft Windows 98®
with the files necessary to make it equivalent to Microsoft
Windows 98® Second Edition, then go to the start menu
and hit that "Windows Update" icon and install
them now. You will be glad you did. Better yet, get an upgrade
disk, if you can find one, and Upgrade NOW! Microsoft isn't
going to continue support of this product forever and this
will extend the life of your computer.
- If you're
using Microsoft Windows ME® your computer is most likely
a good Microsoft Windows XP® upgrade candidate. We suggest
you perform this upgrade, but there is one major caveat,
however. Check to see if any software which is important
to you will run under Microsoft Windows XP®. For example,
at NSL we use PGP for data encryption. They're just about
to come out with a version compatible with Microsoft Windows
XP®. Therefore we have not upgraded any of our computers
using PGP to Microsoft Windows XP® yet. Once all our
software has been upgraded to Microsoft Windows XP®
compatibility we're upgrading all of our workstations to
Microsoft Windows XP Professional®
- Finally
if you're running your computer as a stand alone, and have
no desire to ever network your computer beyond a simple
network of three or fewer computers the the Home Edition
of Microsoft Windows XP® will be OK for you. We do highly
recommend to everyone, however, that they get the Professional
Edition of Microsoft Windows XP® as the Home Edition
is really a Lite Edition as far as we're concerned. It may
cost more, but it's a better product, and far more flexible
with regard to networking.
- Now you
might ask what about Microsoft Windows 2000®. Frankly,
there's almost no reason for this product any longer. Early
on there were a number of programs, especially DOS based
programs which still have a great deal of productivity today
which supposedly could not run on Microsoft Windows XP®.
We have spent a great deal of time getting programs to work
on Microsoft Windows XP® which we were told couldn't,
but the do. Therefore, with very few exceptions go with
Microsoft Windows XP®
With
the first service pack for Microsoft Windows XP® and various
other updates Microsoft Windows XP® is working in prime
time now.
Like
any Microsoft Windows® product, go to the Microsoft Windows®
Update page on the Microsoft www site frequently and install
the updates. We continue to recommend turning "auto updating"
to "manual" to avoid serious problems with updating
including frequent system crashes. Frankly, we'd rather have
the control available with manual updating anyway.
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