WinXP is what MS has been trying to do ever since Windows 95 came out.
 They knew that win9x/me were flaky, badly engineered products.  Windows
3.51 (NT), and WINNT 4.0 were designed from scratch for 32bit processors
and are fairly robust, but they lacked much of the ease of use and
compatability with programs that ran on win9x/me.

Win2000 is the next in line after winnt, and still only runs about
60-70% of the apps that work on 9x/me, but had most of the ease of use
and interface design that was available in windows 9x/me.  WinXP is
about 90% or better for compatability with old programs, but is based on
win2k/winnt/etc.  They've also added a lot more restrictions and safety
features as well so users don't have nearly as many problems when the
install bad software as they used to.

So, WinXP is finally the (relatively) stable base we've always wanted
with the interface of win9x/me.

Going forward MS will soon release Windows .NET Server (which is
essentially the server version of winXP), and future versions of windows
XP (and .net server) will be based on the same codebase, but, like
Office, will have different features.  Right now we have WinXP Home and
WinXP Professional.  Soon there will be WinXP embedded.  The only OS MS
produces not off this code base right now is PocketPC - and that's a
good thing.

So, WinXP is a good step from win9x/me.  If you've got win2k and you're
happy with it then stick with it.  I suspect that the next 2-3 OS
releases won't have great improvements over XP in terms of stability,
speed, or interface.  They'll be adding small features and touting them
as important must haves.  Chances are the next big change from MS is an
OS specific to 64 bit processors (which they are still beta testing,
since the hardware isn't really out on the market yet).

The important (in my mind) differences between the home and professional
versions of XP are (I'll list things Pro has that home doesn't)
- Attaching to a domain server (keep your profile, mydocs, etc on the
server so every xp computer looks the same when you log on, and
different for your coworker)
- Giving remote assistance (you can take control of someone else's xp
machine upon their invitation - ostensibly to help them with a problem.
 Home version allows you to receive (ask for) assitance, but can't give it)
- Accessing your machine remotely (it has a simple remote access feature
that allows you to securely log into your machine with the full windows
interface from another XP machine, much like what pcanywhere does)

The difference in price is not too big.  You can get the upgrade to home
version for $99 (the usual), and MS recently relaxed the conditions
under which an OEM version can be sold with hardware.  ie, buy an MS
mouse and you can get the full OEM professional version from many
computer places for $169.  Otherwise the prices are as follows:
Home Upgrade $99
Home Full $199
Pro Upgrade $199
Pro Full $299

Which, in my humble (but correct from all points of view) opinion is
grossly overpriced.  Meaning that if I didn't get complimentary licenses
for being on the beta program I wouldn't be running it now, and I'm not
planning on upgrading the office from win98 any time soon.

For what it's worth, my computer has crashed fewer than ten times in the
last 9 months, and it's only shut down when installing hardware or the
rare piece of software that requires a reboot.  I absolutely /love/ that
I can finally change my network settings without a reboot!

-Adam

Randy Poon wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I'm still using Windows 98, although it is serving well all my purposes, I'm
>under pressure of upgrading it as Windows 2000 came out. But before I fully
>understood what Windows 2000 was, Windows XP was introduced all of a sudden.
>What is Windows XP? Is it an upgrade of Windows 2000? As Microsoft keeps having
>new versions coming out, I really don't know when the right time is to do an
>upgrade, any suggestions?
>
>Randy
>
>
>
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