No, you didn’t read the title of the article wrong. With all of the Vista bashing going on we thought it would be fun to take a step back and see what the initial consensus was of XP when it launched back in October 2001. Since so much time has passed it is easy to forget the messages that were filling the forums and reviews.
I’ve never recommended that anyone go out and drop a few hundred dollars to upgrade their computer to Vista, but at the same time I’ve never told anyone to downgrade a newly purchased machine to XP. When Windows 7 is released in 2009/2010 the same thing is going to happen, and a new wave of “Windows 7 sucks, I’ll stick with Vista” messages will undoubtedly be sprawled across the Internet. Isn’t it obvious that with time comes maturity?
Here’s our recap on Windows XP’s first year of existence:
- [09/08/2001] This forum post happened one month before the release of XP, and it was in response to someone wondering whether an XP upgrade is worthwhile. Guess XP wasn’t really considered a major upgrade…
I don’t see as a really big upgrade personally. It does contain some more integrated features, like CD Burning and a firewall along with some more networking options, but I don’t see it as much of an upgrade over 2k. Win9x, however, is a different story.
- [05/16/2002] We’ve quoted this CNet article before, but it is a really good representation of the issues people faced 6-months after the release of XP. Sound familiar?
Microsoft’s latest operating system just turned six months old, and most would say that it’s neither a failure nor a raging success. While XP promised the latest and greatest multimedia, security, and ease-of-use features available, many users have not yet upgraded, fearing the hefty system requirements and potential compatibility disasters inherent in a major OS upgrade.
- [09/09/2002] Almost a year after the release of Vista this UK site primarily covered the performance of the operating system, but also had this to say about software compatibility:
Having a PC that is up to the task of running Windows XP isn’t the only issue that has rankled with PC users. Perhaps even more of a bugbear has been compatibility. The truth is that XP just doesn’t work well with a lot of older software and hardware.
- [09/12/2002] It’s been about a year since the release of Vista, and I still think it’s astonishing the people who criticize Vista without having tried it. This forum is a shining example of the same thing happening to XP:
dont goto XP … ive heard bad stuff about it 2 … more than the others
- [Sometime in 2002] I’m not sure exactly when this was written, but it was sometime in 2002. It’s essentially a guide of what to expect when upgrading to XP, and they mention the same thing about the minimum requirements that I tell people who want to upgrade to Vista:
Face the facts. If you’re running the minimum 233-MHz Intel or AMD compatible processor, 64-MB RAM, 1.5 GB of free disk space, Super VGA (800×600) video adapter and monitor, and Microsoft-compatible keyboard and pointing device, you aren’t going to be happy with Windows XP. Nor will you be able to enjoy all the features that XP offers. It would be like driving a Ferrari with a Ford Pinto motor.
You might be saying to yourself that there wasn’t as much XP bashing as there is with Vista, but you also have to consider how many more opportunities people have to be vocal about their experiences. There weren’t many blogs back in 2001, forum activity was generally light, and sites like MySpace and Facebook didn’t exist. You didn’t have the opportunity to create a “XP sucks” Facebook group to see how many thousands of people you could get to join.
Another thing you need to realize is that some of the Vista opinions are based on experiences people had with pre-release versions. Microsoft decided this time around to open up Vista Beta testing to the public early on so that they could get feedback, and users didn’t have to pay a dime to test it out. I remember when I wanted to test XP I had to fork out $10 just to download the Release Candidate, and boy was that a driver nightmare at the time. Millions of people tested out Vista, and I know several people who haven’t tried it since then… therefore skewing their perception of the final operating system.
The reason I defend Vista is because it’s been a great operating system for me as a consumer. I think it looks better than XP, performs better in most areas, and hardly ever nags me (ex. Vista installs necessary device drivers in the background automatically instead of popping up with a window). So don’t rush out to buy the operating system, but if you get a new computer I don’t see any reason as to why you shouldn’t get the latest version of Windows.
This is just one of the many MyFive articles that we have done. You can find more of them by visiting our MyFive category, or by subscribing to our MyFive feed. We also have a full feed available if you want to receive all of our articles in your reader!
Tags: MyFive, Software, Windows, Reviews, Windows XP
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XP is fine but I still don’t think it’s that great either. It does excel at being stable though.
Vista looks ok, but if you have XP no need to upgrade:)
It’s amazing that people preferred Windows 2k…I’ve heard horror stories about it and my Grandpa wouldn’t let us upgrade from 98:|
XP is extremely stable, but that is largely in part because it has been around so long and has received stable drivers from device manufacturers.
I had thought the same thing, but when I was looking around at all of the XP stories the general consensus was to stick with Windows 2000. It kinda shocked me as well.
My company is upgrading people to XP from Vista (yes you read that right) BECAUSE of the many driver & software issues.
I think there are a lot of companies going that route, and from a business standpoint that is completely understandable. There is a lot of software and hardware that is important to the daily operation of businesses.
Yes, Ryan, you are a huge defender of Vista, I know
But I hope you see both sides of the “debate”. The development, and what MS promised of Vista, was a complete debacle. Now it’s out, it is, and will, settle into a nice, stable OS. I have no argument there. In fact, I am sick of XP and its ‘feature’ of slow degradation to a point where it constantly needs reinstalling every 3-6 months. But anyways, yes, you’re right…history is repeating itself with Vista, same as XP. Still, you’d think MS would wake up and learn how better to implement an OS, huh? I guess that’s another topic, entirely 
Windows 98 was the best version MS released. All software I owned already still worked. When XP came out at least 50% of my software was useless! That sucked.
I installed Vista Business 32-bit in a virtual machine the other day with 1GB allocated to it and it seems to run fine from what little testing I have done so far. Previously I had tested Home Premium and had not liked it as much. Many drivers for XP work with Vista 32-bit, I have installed many different printer drivers with no issues. The biggest issue is the upgrade to 64-bit, that’s the one that will take forever. I keep hearing many of the issues I had with Home Premium are fixed in SP1, so it’s a good time to let the testing begin.
Shouldn’t it be “XP” ?
Very nice article by the way…
You are definitivly right, defending Vista. Got same p.o.v
Same thing will happen with windows 7.
Futhermore, what is pointing out is that old story of conservative behaviours many people have, fearing what’s new for their habits .
And I guess in those elections epoch, you’re facing similar things in United States, much further beyond computers world…
Think you’ve pointed out a very significative tendancy, that directly affects the way firms adapt themselves to it.
Windows 98 sucked till microsoft released SEcond edition. I stickied with win95 till this happened.
When winXP was released, I waited till SP2 to use it cause I knew winXP sucked a lot.
The problem is, windows ME is not even recommended by microsoft, so, theres a chance that windows vista be never used again like winME.
Or, people could make like win98+ME, make winXP+vista good features.
Oh well, Im gonna use vista when they release SP2 or SP3 like I did with win2000 or never use it like winME.
I’ve been using XP Home Edition for about three years and haven’t had any problems with it, yet. Not once have I reinstall it. Am I one of the lucky ones?, or is XP a very stable OS?
IMHO, I think the latter is true.
Regards,
Omar.-
Yes, Vista should be given a chance.
No, Vista is not free from nagging popups - on the contrary I’ve never seen so many of those, even a month after getting a new computer with Vista pre-installed I got at least daily (close to hourly) popups nagging about me allowing an action after upgrading some software or similar. I’m guessing you’re talking about what happens after tweaking to shut off those nagging screens…
Yes, Vista is prettier
Yes, Vista has a few new nice functions and still starts up a bit quicker, much thanks to the “wait with automatic startup” option.
No, Win2k was not worse than any other MS OS (most stable I had, and same goes for most people I know who used it), I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re thinking mostly about the evil cousin ME..
No, Vista is still not completely ready and stable.
The problem is that people want to see “revolutionary” changes without breaking any of the existing apps and drivers. I just don’t think it’s possible to come out with a major new operating system without breaking things. Even Apple couldn’t do it with Leopard despite having a much smaller hardware base that they had to make sure worked.
I want to switch to 64-bit really bad, but I haven’t had the time to prepare myself for all of the problems I’ll probably have.
Nope, that’s worded correctly. I was trying to say that here we are a year after Vista’s release, and the same thing was happening to XP a year after it was released.
Wow! Now that is impressive. I’ve reinstalled Vista twice in the last year that I’ve been using it, and that is really good for me. I don’t even know why I reinstalled it because it was running great, but I think it is out of habit from when I was running XP. With XP I reinstalled about every 2 or 3 months because things would really start to slow down.
Huh, I get about one or two UAC prompts a day, and that’s mostly because I run Firefox nightly builds that need to be installed each day. But I do indeed have UAC enabled.