Regretting the move to Windows XP
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Last week I backed up my entire system and did a fresh install of Windows XP, why oh why did I switch. Now that I've moved, I've had a few problems, for some reason my 80Gb external hard drive can no longer be seen when plugged into the USB port, although my USB thumb drive can be seen. Fortunately the device also has a Firewire option, so I use it with a PCMCIA firewire card, that performed great under Windows 2000, but now performs really badly under Windows XP.
The next thing I did was install Microsoft Virtual PC, if you'd read previously you'll know I'm a big fan of VMWare, but as Microsoft gave me a free copy of Virtual PC for attending their very boring session a couple of weeks back I thought I'd give it a shot. There is one feature I like in Virtual PC that VMWare doesn't have and that's the differencing disk. This allows you to start with a setup in the format you want, then use that as the core basis for a drive for other Virtual Machines, so you get the core OS setup, then you can set up a new VM and use that as a differencing disk and install apps etc. But what's cool is, you can use that core drive for another VM and it's still only the core os so you can install other apps etc. So although it has this drive which VMWare doesn't the VM sessions don't seem to perform as quickly as the VM sessions in VMware. Now I haven't done a scientific test, but it definitely doesn't feel as quick as the VMware sessions on Windows 2000, in generally I would actually say that Windows XP doesn't feel anywhere near as snappy as Windows 2000.
Add to this the crazy, very irritating start menu in Windows XP and I'm really wishing I had just zapped the drive with Windows 2000.
Last week I backed up my entire system and did a fresh install of Windows XP, why oh why did I switch. Now that I've moved, I've had a few problems, for some reason my 80Gb external hard drive can no longer be seen when plugged into the USB port, although my USB thumb drive can be seen. Fortunately the device also has a Firewire option, so I use it with a PCMCIA firewire card, that performed great under Windows 2000, but now performs really badly under Windows XP.
The next thing I did was install Microsoft Virtual PC, if you'd read previously you'll know I'm a big fan of VMWare, but as Microsoft gave me a free copy of Virtual PC for attending their very boring session a couple of weeks back I thought I'd give it a shot. There is one feature I like in Virtual PC that VMWare doesn't have and that's the differencing disk. This allows you to start with a setup in the format you want, then use that as the core basis for a drive for other Virtual Machines, so you get the core OS setup, then you can set up a new VM and use that as a differencing disk and install apps etc. But what's cool is, you can use that core drive for another VM and it's still only the core os so you can install other apps etc. So although it has this drive which VMWare doesn't the VM sessions don't seem to perform as quickly as the VM sessions in VMware. Now I haven't done a scientific test, but it definitely doesn't feel as quick as the VMware sessions on Windows 2000, in generally I would actually say that Windows XP doesn't feel anywhere near as snappy as Windows 2000.
Add to this the crazy, very irritating start menu in Windows XP and I'm really wishing I had just zapped the drive with Windows 2000.
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Posted by Hermann Klinke At 10:12:00 AM On 09/12/2004 | - Website - |