Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

When Microsoft was deciding on a name for its new consumer-orientated operating system, it toyed with Windows 2002 and ME again before deciding upon Home Edition. It may seem that the final choice defines a specific market segment not normally associated with the average PC Pro reader, but the wealth of features supplied via the new intuitive interface may be just what you've been looking for.

To clarify, Windows XP Professional contains everything found in the Home Edition but adds features focused on the business, or more specifically, the managed desktop user (for consistency differences see our Windows XP uncovered feature, Home vs Professional Edition, on p212 of the December 2001 issue). If you won't miss any of the stripped-out features, opting for the Home Edition will save you a tidy sum.

For the standalone desktop user running Windows 98, ME or 2000 (the latter and existing Windows 95 users will require fresh installs, as upgrades are restricted), there are definite benefits in moving to XP Home Edition. A standalone desktop user is less likely to have access to personnel dedicated to providing support for problems with their hardware and/or software applications. They're also less likely to be constrained in software applications they choose to run and hardware changes they want to make. This is mostly regarded as an advantage, offering freedom of choice and personalisation. But it also results in a plethora of overlapping installations sharing DLLs, the re-association of file types as well as some counter-productivity, with some applications performing duplicate functions.

Apart from addressing specific issues, such as side-by-side DLL implementation to avoid sharing issues, XP's integration of basic apps solves a raft of potential problems, and it could be argued that it saves you time (from installing and learning more complex apps) and money.

After installing any new OS, I generally have a standard set of apps that I have to install to get my system in a basic productive state. These include a firewall, a virus scanner, CD-burning software, a full version of WinZip, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and a picture viewer. Some of them come as standard with XP. By default, XP Home Edition switches on a basic port-blocking firewall facility, which after several weeks of usage hadn't let me down, although no virus scanner is provided.

More impressive is the integrated Roxio CD-burning software. Insert a writeable CD into a CD-R or CD-RW drive, and an Autoplay dialog will pop up asking, among other things, if you wish to open an Explorer folder that you can simply drag and drop files into for burning onto the disc. Maximum speed of writing, for whichever format is inserted, is configurable, as is audio CD burning from any audio format supported by Windows Media Player 8 (see 'Windows Media Player 8' below), which will be converted on the fly to CDA format. Image browsing is also catered for admirably, with the Thumbnail view feature of all picture formats in a folder that arrived with ME and 2000 upgraded to a film strip and Slide Show view available straight from Explorer, including a rotate function. The CD-burning software manages to provide for the majority of needs, and the picture browsing is convenient for quickly locating and managing files. The same can be said of the basic Zip archiving functionality, originally introduced with the Plus Pack for Windows 98 and then integrated into 2000 and ME. It's seen no enhancements with its XP integration, however, and simply archives and expands for single locations - the lack of support for lesser-known archive formats such as ARJ and ACE is another concern.