Microsoft Windows XP RC1 Review - from a gamers viewpoint
By: Arie Slob
Company: Microsoft
Version: Windows XP RC1 Build 2505
Review By: Paul Hayes - TFH Gaming.com (republished with permission)
Another OS from Microsoft, and this time they got it right. Windows XP stands for "Windows Experience" and what a experience it is. It's been running happily on my machine for just over two days now and it's smooth as silk, no crashes, no hiccups, nothing. After the usual fifty minute install process you are greeted with a desktop that looks truly next-gen. The first thing you will notice is the new taskbar. The start button is a cool green rounded affair and is colored as though its been skinned. Same goes for all the windows you open. The start menu has also been revamped and now looks better than ever {see picture}. It adds items to itself based on how often you use them so you always see the programs you use while the ones you don't use as often are hidden away.
Getting away from the cosmetics, there are a lot of improvements under the hood of this beast. Windows Media Player 8 is built in as standard and is the best media player to date. If you hate Media Player 7, think of 8 as the best bits of 6.4 speed-wise with the funky cosmetics of media player 7. The best of both worlds. There's also a built in firewall. This is good news because you basically switch it on and forget it. A quick shields up test proved that it works great.
WinXP is based on the windows 2000 kernel and is a total move away from the now dead Win9x kernel. All new pc's will now ship with Winxp. So, in 5 years we will basically see the death of Win9x. This is a good thing. WinXP is rock solid. I have tried very hard to crash it but nothing will do it. The os will last for weeks without even a reboot because the memory management is second to none.
And now, on to the gaming. WinXP ships with Direct X 8.1 built in. What does that mean to gamers? Well, it means your games will work with no incompatibilities like windows NT or Windows 2000. You can switch WinXP into compatibility mode on a shortcut by shortcut basis for troublesome appz or games. It works like this: You have a game or app that won't run under WinXP, you right click the shortcut and choose compatibility mode. A drop down menu shows you the different modes you can switch to (Win95, Win98, Win200, WinNT). Pick the one you want and then your program will run. Superb feature. One we gamers will appreciate immensely.
WinXP also features DVD playback through Media Player (software DVD decoder required). Support for digital cameras, Fire wire, and all the latest bits and bobs. I loaded XP up onto my freshly formatted c drive and by the time I got to my desktop I didn't actually have to install one driver. The driver support is that good. It's the most plug and play os I've ever encountered.
Another neat feature comes when you open more than one instance of a program. Instead of filling up the taskbar with different instances of the program, it will just do one and number it {see screenshot}. So, if you have six IE windows open, it will say IE{6}. You click the 6 and a menu opens with the 6 windows listed you can either close one or close the whole group. Internet explorer 6 also makes its debut. Not much new to report here, apart from a couple of new imaging features and a new cookie control feature which I found was best turned off. It's only for the most paranoid of you.
All in all, the OS rocks! It is fast, stable and has the best tools for gaming and multimedia. It also looks great and is very customizable. You can even turn off the XP interface and make it look like boring old Windows, but who would want to do that? :) It's a keeper, that's for sure as I will never look back!
WinXP Rating
| User Interface | 5 / 5 |
| Gaming Performance | NA / 5 |
| Productivity | 5 / 5 |
| Fun | 5 / 5 |
| Overall | 5 / 5 |