Thread: XP pro as an OS

I've been using XP Pro on my desktop since it came out, without problem (by that I mean, less problems than all previous Windows -- obviously Windows always has problems).

I've been using XP Pro on my car computer for about 3 months. I experience less crashes. About the same bootup time. Journaled filesystem (no need for scandisk, no worries on corruption). It does the trick. I wouldn't go back to ME, though there was nothing really wrong with ME.

Nothing wrong with Me? Where do I begin?

Every single WinME machine that has come through our shop has been nothing but a hassle. It's at the point where I refuse to service a machine running WinMe unless the owner agrees to a reformat and install of Win98SE.

heh.... we all know your feelings on ME, and I do agree Aaron....

I have a copy of XP sitting in my cd-rom rack next to me, when I get the time im gonna chuck it on my home machine, but I dont think it will hit the car for a long time... 98lite is just fine for me.


hey jshrieve, you say Journaled filesystem? does that come standard? sounds really good, I have mates who run linux that rave about such file systems....

yeah on the whole, if your hardware is rather recent and u have a fairly grunty PC (with the cost of PCs dropping faster than ever, its not that hard to have a near bleeding edge PC nowadays) XP gives a really stable OS IMHO......

its just gonna bite having to re-install all those apps when I go from 2000 --> XP on my home machine....

Have you thought of an upgrade?? I haven't upgraded a 2k machine to xp, but I have upgraded many windows me machines to xp - all of which have performed flawlessly. My family's pc was upgraded and it has been running without a restart for about 3 months, and hasn't crashed since I upgraded it back in november ish. Stability is one thing that you can't nock XP on - it really is solid as a rock.

what is this journalised file system? is it like mounting read-only in like in linux?

With windows xp pro u get less crashes faster, boot time, faster load time(if you tweak it correctly), and you dont need a turn off device. All you need to do is hit the power button and instead of turning strigh off it shuts down. Connected to your recievers off on for the amp is really good.

NTFS is a Journalised File System - its all to do with data recovery and stuff - check out http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index2.html for more info. Just out of interest, anyone running their mp3car using raid??

Not that I thought about seriously.. but the thoguht crossed my mind.

Seems rather pointless.

What I plan on doing is putting a 7.8 gig in the car (because i have one on hand) and using a laptop drive in a usb/firewire case so i have a portable mp3 drive.. i can take it with me to work, bring it in my house to load it up and bring it in my car. I'll have a usb port in my console that i can just plug it in to when i get in.

WinXP or Win2k'll be good also if you have an Intel CPU, NT OSes will call HLT when the CPU's idle, which'll make it produce less heat.. really useful in your car!

If you're going to use 2k or XP, partition at least 3 drives. One for core OS and software, one for swap, one for mp3s and other data, and use NTFS for all of them.

That way you'll minimise your chance of loosing data because if anything swaps it'll be writing to a different partition, and it won't touch the OS or your mp3s...

Also 2k and XP can hibernate.