Articles about Windows XP

Ninth in a series. Few products have impacted more people than Windows XP. Microsoft officially launched the operating system -- the first for consumers based on the NT kernel -- on Oct. 25, 2001. That's right, 10 years ago today. But PC manufacturers started offering XP systems in early September 2001, a week before terrorist attacks against New York City and Northern Virginia. XP is the most popular Windows version ever released. Even today, depending on the analyst crunching numbers, more people use Windows XP than any other PC operating system (although Windows 7 is nearly tied).

Windows XP is a workhorse. Microsoft kept it in market longer than any other Windows version, allowing a very stable ecosystem of third-party applications and products to evolve around it. The operating system fulfilled the vision set for Windows 95 six years earlier -- release of stable, 32-bit code suitable for businesses and consumers. Microsoft's biggest development challenge: Providing compatibility with games and supporting hardware drivers that wanted access to the kernel, which NT blocked for security reasons.

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In late August, Betanews published a series of seven stories, sharing memories using Windows XP. The majority came from readers like you. The first set of recollections commemorated the tenth anniversary of XP's release to manufacturing. Another date remains. Microsoft launched Windows XP on Oct. 25, 2001, and we'd like to celebrate the decade since with even more Windows XP memories.

Ideally, we want to publish your recollection as its own story with your name, photo and bio. You write it -- we edit and publish during the launch week anniversary. Please email your stories to joe at betanews dot com -- or, if you must, comment below. The first round, we only posted stories received for publication with author identified. During the second round, we will also post from the many memories shared in comments. The majority of these will be collections rather than stories written by you.

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Seventh in a series. Two short years ago -- not even that yet -- soon after testing Windows 7 for several months, I came home to find a UPS post-it stuck to my front door with "delivery attempt" on it. I live in a small town, so I drove around looking at the major places I might find the UPS guy. SCORE!!! He was at the bank. There I was standing by the brown truck waiting for him to come back. I must have looked a little creepy -- crazy guy physically shaking in anticipation. I’m not sure what the UPS guy thought as he handed the Windows 7 package to the creepy guy with shaking hands.

Many people do not realize how many geeks actually get overwhelming joy when a piece of software or technology gets released -- something that can or will change the world of computing. Now that is said, let’s go back 10 years.

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Sixth in a series. My Windows XP experiece started in 2003 when I bought my first Laptop. I had delayed jumping on the personal computer bandwagon for years. It was a Dell Inspiron 2500 -- the first and only time I would own a Dell system.

I experienced Windows XP by learning how to install drivers and adding new hardware and dealing with the problems associated with each task. Trust me, there were problems -- like trying to install a new Ethernet adapter driver, having the New Hardware Wizard ask if I was connected to the Internet and for it to fail once I clicked "No". The laptop had no Internet connection. Each time I attempted the driver installation, it would fail at the same place and not just on my system but others.

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Fifth in a series. We continue our series about Windows XP's release to manufacturing 10th anniversary with a quick look at codenames for this product and others around it.

This picture is me, sitting in the terrace of the Long-Horn Saloon in Whistler, British Columbia. The photo is also the Windows roadmap. On the right side of the terrace, the slopes are coming down from Whistler Mountain (Whistler = codename for Windows XP).

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Fourth in a series. I remember something from the Windows XP rollout in New York City. At the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, Gateway gave out these. Mo-o-o-o-o.

I recall that it was common to criticize XP early on as being a minor update to Windows 2000, as in Windows 2000.1. There may have been something to that, but the operating system developed into much more.

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Let's compare the major computer operating systems at the moment. We have Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. We have various Linux distributions, and we have Mac OS X.

Of these, obviously Windows XP has the weakest security, by far, and Windows XP has the biggest marketshare, too. Globally close to half of all computers still run XP.

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Third in a series. As a long-time programmer, I was still using Windows 95 when I finally purchased my mainstay computer that came with Windows XP. I am not the type to use the leading edge computers or software. The software I write (programming tools for programmers) was designed to run on minimal hardware, so I preferred to stay with an operating system much longer than most programmers would. Programmers are notorious for wanting the leading-edge computers, but not me.

My Windows 95 PC was starting to get a bit obsolete and it was time to switch to the latest operating system, so I purchased a new computer with Windows XP Home on it. The computer was an eMachine T2542, with a 2.5GHz Celeron CPU, 256 meg RAM and a 40 gig hard drive.

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Second in a series. I remember my Windows XP experiences like it was just yesterday. I became aware of Windows XP when it was called Whistler back in 2000. There was a technology television show on ZD-TV called "The Screen Savers" with host Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton. During many call-ins, persons would ask, should I upgrade from Windows 98 to ME or 2000. Leo would often suggest that users shouldn't bother since Whistler would be coming out next year.

I wondered what this Whistler was about, so I decided to do some web searching about it and came across Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows. I started following his chronicles with the early betas from early development phases into what became Windows XP with the well-known Luna theme around beta 2.

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First in a series. It was an innocent time. There was fun, fanfare and pride. Thousands of people worked together to complete something that would affect billions of lives -- that would be the most successful product of its kind. Ever. Eighteen days later the world they knew changed.

Ten years ago today, Aug. 24, 2001, in Redmond Washington, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, then vice president of the platforms group, officially released to manufacturing Windows XP. The RTM marked a huge achievement for Microsoft, which finally had a consumer operating system based on the NT kernel. Windows XP marked the end of the DOS/Windows 9x legacy and the beginning of a new lineage of Microsoft operating systems, continuing the path paved by Windows 2000 some 18 months earlier.

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August 24th marks the tenth anniversary of Windows XP's release to manufacturing -- ahead of its late-October 2001 launch. That's right, next week. Betanews asks readers to share their recollections about Windows XP, whether beta testing, RTM, launch or anything else. We want to share your stories.

Ideally, we want to publish your recollection as its own story with your name, photo and bio. You write it -- we edit and publish during the RTM week anniversary. If there are enough really good stories, we'll do a second round of recollections during the October launch anniversary week. Please email your stories to joe at betanews dot com -- or, if you must, comment below.

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On Monday, a US District Court in Seattle dismissed with prejudice a class action case originally brought by Los Angeles native Brian Johnson in the summer of 2006. Johnson's claim at the time was that, when Windows XP used Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) feature to validate his rights to use a newly purchased XP, Microsoft not only employed software not covered by the end-user license agreement, but used it to transmit his personal information to Microsoft against his wishes.

His allegation was that XP violated California's and Washington state's statutes regarding spyware -- separate software that transmits personally identifiable data back to a source.

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In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 -- our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday -- the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.

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Microsoft has a problem on its hands. Or more precisely one problem with three seemingly contradictory components:

Windows XP is too good for its own good. It needs to die for the company's sake. It won't die because nothing else -- not even Windows 7 -- currently approaches it.

We're closing in on eight years since XP first hit the market and began the long process of making us finally forget we ever used Windows 95, 98, and Windows Me. By anyone's standards, it's been one of Microsoft's most visibly successful products. It still runs on some 60% of all PCs years after it was supposed to have been retired as a front-line offering. It's sold around 800 million copies since its initial release. And if piracy is the sincerest form of flattery, hundreds of millions more illegal copies are in use across the globe. In an age where icons are in desperately short supply, this is as iconic a product as it gets.

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Download Google Chrome 3.0.193.1 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Over the last few weeks, Google has been releasing development builds of its Chrome 3 Web browser in a fast and furious pace. And with each release, the browser has been leaping forward in performance, particularly in Windows XP. With yesterday's release of beta build 3.0.193.1, Chrome 3 has given Betanews reason to suspect that these performance gains are no accident.

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