From the Dark Side--Windows XP Official Release is Today

. Big whoopee. We have used Windows XP RC1 and RC2 for the past couple of months on our 633 MHz Celeron Compaq. It is quite stable, not one crash, not sluggish, and a bit more user friendly than previous Windows 95-Me but not a lot. Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X are still much easier to use. Several applications that worked on Windows Me did not work on XP and neither did our ATI Radeon graphics accelerator. The one thing that we really hate about XP is the activation requirement. Windows XP locks into one's system by registering 10 components of the system. Activation not only prevents one from installing one's copy of XP on another computer but prevents one from changing the locked in configuration much on the same computer. If either is violated, XP stops working until one calls Microsoft and gets a key to reactivate XP. XP activation will be acceptable in large enterprise installations but many users who frequently upgrade their systems will find activation to be a real pain--we do. Here's an AP article. [Dana Baggett]