Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Smooth, Steady and Solid -- Well Worth the Price!
I recently upgraded to Windows XP from Windows 98 Second Edition, and I have been THOROUGHLY impressed! With Windows 98 I experienced frequent blue screens and crashes. With Windows XP all of those problems are now history. Also, many of the drivers I needed to load AFTER loading Windows 98 are now already included. My video card drivers were loaded, my CD burner functions were all present, and my scanner worked flawlessly without installing any additional software.The biggest hurdle with this product is successful installation. If you have older components you may have significant problems getting them to function with the new OS. Some older apps are also likely to have difficulty. My hardware and my software are all fairly current, so I had no trouble. I have upgraded my newer computer at home with Windows XP, but the older computer at my church study has Windows 98, and will have it for some time. I am reluctant to upgrade because of the installation problems inevitable with the older components. This product is definitely worth the price, but some persons may need to upgrade components BEFORE upgrading their OS. If you have a newer or brand new computer and are seeking the smoothest, steadiest and most solid OS, I HIGHLY recommend Windows XP.
Rating: - So good I'm buying it twice!!
I only have experience with the full version of XP Home, but it's so good that I'm buying the upgrade for my PC running Me.I built my first PC about 2 months ago. I was actually disappointed when I built it, because I thought it'd be harder and take longer. But the reason it went so much faster was because of XP. XP has so many device drivers already baked into it, that I didn't need to install a single driver! The 2 CDRW's, floppy drive, internal zip drive, internal flash card reader, and network card for my 4 port router were recognized, and drivers installed, without me hitting a single key. And that's just the install... This OS has been as rock-solid as they come. I run this PC 8-10 hours per day, and have run it everyday (except for a few days around Thanksgiving and Christmas) for 2 months. I have not had a single crash or lockup since I turned the PC on the first time. I still can't believe it. You see, I also have a Windows Me PC that crashes constantly. I either get the blue screen of death, or it locks up so bad even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work, and I have to just kill the power. So XP is certainly a breath of fresh air. I have had a couple programs that I used to run on a Windows 95 machine that didn't seem to like XP, but compatibility mode helps (that's a brand new feature). And that's only a couple of those old programs. The rest of the oldies worked just fine! As for the ability to customize, this one is tops by far. It's a little daunting getting used to taking different paths to get to where you're going when you want to alter the OS, but I think it's more customizable than any previous OS. FAST! My Me machine boots up in about 2 minutes. My XP machine boots up in about 32 seconds. And it shuts down in about 13 seconds. And if you really want to run this OS lean and mean, you can opt to do away with the cutesy new look that adds all kinds of graphics (and time to process), in favor of a graphically stripped-down version that will run even faster. The only thing I'm concerned with regarding an upgrade is the method each OS files data. Windows 95 uses FAT16, and 98 and above use FAT32. XP uses NTFS. I don't know anything about what any of that means, except that I can see they're different. I plan to backup everything before I try to upgrade, but the upshot of all of this is: I bought it once, and it was good enough that I'm going to buy it again.
Rating:  - Windows 98 Users Beware
The CompUSA sales representative who sold me the upgrade told me that upgrading from Windows 98 to XP was a simple upgrade. That statement was not true. Before the computer would even installed it, I recieved three pages of warnings about both hardware and software incompatibilities. Of course the store manager would not give me a refund. He stated that they had sold hundreds of XP upgrades without a single complaint. Since I purchased the upgrade, everyone that I have spoken to about the upgrade from 98 to XP told me not to do it due to the problems that users encounter.
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