[mso] Re: Is it worth changing over to?XP ?
- From: "Greg Chapman" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 14:29:09 -0600
Hi Jamshed!
My own opinion is yes, you should go through the pain (very little other
than that pain applied to your wallet)for both the OS and the
Application Suite. I've been running both, full time and exclusively,
since their release. Here are the creteria I use for that opinion:
1. Compressed Time - In the computer industry, a lifetime of more than
24 months is a long time. It seems only yesterday that you installed
Windows 98 and Office 2000. Sorry chum, that's been at least 3 years for
the operating system and at least 1 for the application suite. If you
wait much longer, you'll be at least 2 versions behind what's going on
with your applications and you're already 2 versions behind on the OS.
2. Old software problems continue to this day, unpatched - NT4 for will
never approach the security of W2K and W2K will never approach that of
XP. Why? MS will stop patching them and will issue a new patch for
products that have aged out of support only for the ugliest of breaches.
Since installing Office XP, I have at last achieved a level of code
security I couldn't even pretend to manage with Office 2000, let alone
earlier versions. For instance, managing attachments in email is
something I *do* want active protection against. The only way for me to
set attachment security levels with Lookout 2000 was to apply the
security patch...which then kept me from getting any attachments at all
unless I was also on an Exchange Server. Pfui! At the OS level, the
security issue is easing quite a bit. Yep, there are just as many
exposures being found as ever and MS' legacy continues to haunt them as
these old pieces are brought under the MicroScope. But, timely
application of the patches is now much easier thanks to the Automatic
Update Service MS released. And that tool is more well tuned to XP than
any other version of the OS. Watch for this to change even more away
from older OSes as time goes on.
3. Data Structures live forever - Every time any software manufacturer
kills off a piece of its past, it stubs its toes. It's a given. The
change from WordBasic to VBA within Word was both wise and painful. To
make less pain, some of that old WordBasic structure is still available
to you. The same with those godawful formfields. Those things work like
they were designed by a Lotus Notes developer. Yep, they work, but
they're a pain since they don't work like the rest of the system that
hosts them. Word XP goes a step farther in making it easier to move away
from these artifacts by making the use of ActiveX controls in a document
even easier than it once was.
4. Is the interface the "only thing"? - Nope. I'm delighted with some of
the things available now in XP for the developer that have never been
there before. For instance, there is better access to OS dialogs than
ever before. That doesn't mean, of course, that they didn't also
compound the problem by breaking some more built-in dialogs and getting
even more inconsistent in the names and values of some intrinsic
constants. But that's all geekspeak, right?
5. Why did they have to go change the interface? - This always raises
folks' ire. So the good news is that Word XP looks an awful lot like
Word 2000 in most ways. If you're going to get tripped up, this is
probably the biggest reason why. It's because despite the face, some
things work differently underneath. Try building a userform and locking
the template for Forms. It used to be that any data you might have typed
in a field would be deleted. Well, that's a special setting in XP now.
The default is to now leave that stuff untouched. It's also interesting
to note that this change came because people asked for it.(I'm one of
them!)
On the OS side of this equation, XP looks more like a Mac than ever and
has finally, I think, matched the Macintosh for flexibility and ease of
use. If you don't like chamfered corners, though, the old look is still
there, waiting for you to turn it on.
6. Uniformity - Personally, as much as I loved Windows 9X and the
half-breed application suites that were made because of it (read that as
Office 95 and 97), it's time to move on and finally get a unified
Windows platform. Windows 9x was never going to be that platform and
neither was Windows NT. Windows 2000 came RDC to it but XP finally sank
the nail and these things finally have a chance of being stable, I
finally have a chance to write one body of code that will run everywhere
that has Windows under it and we can narrow down our troubleshooting
trees in recognition that we finally have one platform in the Windows
world.
Conclusion: If any of those things are important to you and your
opinions happen to align with mine, you want to get started migrating
really soon. If you're a touch more the Luddite than I am or worse,
there's no compelling need to move forward. Bear in mind this difference
in opinion won't be enough to keep me from jabbering to you that you
ought to upgrade, though.<g>
Greg Chapman
http://www.mousetrax.com
"Counting in binary is as easy as 01, 10, 11!
With thinking this clear, is coding really a good idea?"
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamshed Mehta
> Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:01 AM
> To: mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [mso] Re: Is it worth changing over to?XP ?
>
>
>
> I have been using WIN98 S.E. & OFFICE2000 and am happy
> with the
> situation. Now that the XP products are well
> entrenched, I am
> wondering whether I should migrate to them. What is
> the experience
> and advice of you fellow list members on XP? Is it
> really beneficial
> to spend money and go thru the hassles of a new
> installation?
> Cheers,
> Jamshed F. Mehta
>
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