A simplified description of Windows XP is that it is essentially
Windows 2000 with the multimedia features of Windows Me
tacked on.
While it is true that there are some incompatibilities with older
hardware and software, these can generally be resolved without
much fuss. Fortunately, XP comes with a system compatibility
analyzer that will point out any possible problems with specific
hardware and software before you install the new OS.
With hardware, it's usually a device driver problem which can
frequently be resolved with a driver update. If an XP-specific
driver isn't yet available for a particular device, the Win 2000
driver will frequently (but not always) work. However, now
that XP has been released, many hardware manufacturers are
posting XP drivers on their Web sites. If a piece of hardware is
so old that there isn't even a Win 2000 driver for it, then it will
never work on anything but Windows 9x and will have to be
replaced.
As for incompatible software, the main culprits are system level
utilities, including antivirus software. That, of course, makes
perfect sense. Running Windows 9x utilities on what is essentially
Windows 2000 can't reasonably be expected to function as it was
intended. That means your antiv*rus software, and some system
utilities (Norton, etc.) will have to be upgraded.
Some folks are wary of the so-called "new" user interface. It's
really nothing more than a theme that is installed by default during
setup. It can easily be turned off which will get you back to the
traditional Windows interface.
As I see it, there are two reasons for upgrading to Windows XP:
1. It is vastly more stable than Windows 9x. I've been running it
since it was released on October 25th, and have never had it
crash, nor have I had to reboot to reclaim system resources.
2. Eventually, software publishers will stop producing Win 9x
versions of their programs. It's just too expensive to produce
software for two different versions of Windows.
I hope that this has expelled some of the myths and reduced any
apprehension as it pertains to Windows XP.
Best regards,
Richard
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