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Around 84 per cent of Microsoft PCs still run Windows XP. Windows Vista has more to fear from Windows XP than rival operating systems, according to an industry analyst.
A survey of 600 companies with more than 1,000 employees in the US and Europe by Forrester Research found that Microsoft's six year-old XP has become standard in enterprises.
Around 84 per cent of Microsoft PCs run Windows XP, up from 67 per cent a year ago.
Only a third of survey respondents intend to start Vista deployments by the end of 2008, and a further 17 per cent will start the process in 2009 or 2010.
"Vista's biggest competition is not Apple or Novell or Red Hat, it is Microsoft itself with XP," the report said.
Forrester Research also found a significant number of companies looking forward to Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, which is due early next year and is supposed to be the last major upgrade.
Microsoft has already extended its deadline to end support for Windows XP, offering an additional five years past the original 2009 cut off date.
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You've undoubtedly been hearing that Vista's memory requirements will be greater than those of XP, but how much greater are they in practice and why?
First and foremost, Vista's memory requirements are higher than XP's simply because there is much more to Vista than XP. There are far more background tasks to take care of, a much more complex UI, and a code base that's significantly larger than that of Windows XP. All of these items require memory, and thus when you boot up a Vista machine with 512MB of memory, almost all of it is already being used.
Microsoft and software makers in general are notoriously bad about understating minimum system requirements, so when you see that the bare minimum requirements for Windows Vista list a system with 512MB of memory, you should know right off the bat that this isn't going to be a pleasant experience. Although Vista will do its best to disable background tasks and neat effects to make using your computer less painful with 512MB, we simply wouldn't recommend it. You can get by running a single application, such as IE7 or Outlook, but multitasking is out of the question.
Although Windows XP is more tolerable with 512MB, 1GB should really be the minimum for any Vista machine and not just those that are Premium certified. Vista uses more memory and in turn, you'll need a bit more memory to get a similar experience to what you had under XP.
As applications and usage models get more demanding, and as memory prices drop, the move to 2GB of memory makes more sense for windows vista.
Q:
How do i clean up the XP Start Menu?
A:
How to clean up the XP Start menu
Is the XP Start menu more cluttered than you'd like? Do you want to get rid of some of the choices there that you rarely use, or for which you might have desktop icons? Here's how:
- Right click Start and select Properties.
- Click the Customize button.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- In the Start Menu Items list, scroll down to the options that you don't want to display (such as the My Pictures folder) and click "Don't display this item."
You can do this for all the standard choices, such as My Documents, My Computer, My Music, Control Panel, Network Connections and so forth.
How do I make a folder private?
A:
If you have an XP computer that you share with other people at home or at work, you can make some of your folders private so your computer-mates can't access the files there. You can only do this for folders that are part of your user profile hierarchy, such as My Documents and its subdirectories, Desktop, Start Menu, Cookies and Favorites. Here's what you do:
- Open My Computer
- Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive (C:), unless you have more than one drive on your computer). If the contents of the drive are hidden, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive.
- Double-click the Documents and Settings folder.
- Double-click your user folder.
- Right-click any folder in your user profile, and then click Properties.
- On the Sharing tab, select the Make this folder private so that only I have access to it check box.
Use NTFS for better security
If you're still using the FAT32 file system on your XP computer, you can get better security by formatting your drives in NTFS. This lets you use file level permissions (which you can set in XP Pro by right clicking the file, choosing Properties and selecting the Security tab; in XP Home you'll need to boot into Safe Mode and log on as administrator to do this). File level permissions give you a way to control who can access your files even if they're logged onto the local machine. With XP Pro, you can also encrypt files on NTFS drives and with XP Home, you need your files to be on NTFS drives in order to use the "make private" feature that protects it from access by other non-administrator accounts.
Stop Windows Messenger from Auto-Starting
If you're not a big fan of Windows Messenger, you can use the tip "Add/Remove optional features of Windows XP" above to remove it, or simply delete the following Registry Key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\MSMSGS
Automatically Log On a User Account
If you are the only user on Windows XP, you could save some time by having Windows XP log you into your user account automatically.
There are a few requirements for this to work:
- The Welcome screen must be available
- Select Start > Control Panel and click User Accounts
- Click Change the way users log on or off
- Check to make sure that Use the Welcome screen is selected
- Guest account access must be turned off
- Select Start > Control Panel and click User Accounts
- Click the Guest account
- Click Turn off the Guest account
- There must be only one user account on the computer
- The user account must not have a password
- Select Start > Control Panel and click User Accounts
- Click the user account
- Click Remove the password
Note: This will only work when the computer is NOT on a domain.
If you've used another Microsoft OS before, and had a version of Internet Explorer > 3.x installed, chances are that you are familiar with the Quick Launch Bar. The Quick Launch Bar is an extra menu-bar on the Windows taskbar.
The Quick Launch bar makes it easy to access frequently used programs like Windows Media Player and your e-mail, and to open an Internet Explorer window. Windows XP loads several programs in the Quick Launch, including Show Desktop. One click on Show Desktop minimizes all the programs on your desktop. Another click restores them just as you'd left them.
By default, in Windows XP the Quick Launch Bar is switched off however. To display Quick Launch on the taskbar:
- Right-click the Start button and click Properties
- Select the Taskbar tab
- On the Taskbar tab, under Taskbar appearance, select the Show Quick Launch check box and click OK
If you get an email message that purports to be from a friend or family member in your address book and contains a YouTube link, beware. That's the tactic being used to spread a worm that can turn off your antivirus, firewall and anti- hijacking software. This is the same worm that has also been spread by email purporting to be from an electronic greeting card company, notifying you that you have an ecard from a friend. ...Beware
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