Product Reviews

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.

The AIM service is aped by Microsoft's Windows Messenger. That said, although there are some interesting features added with Windows Messenger - such as voice and video communication in addition to text, and the sharing of applications and whiteboard drawings on top of simple file transfers - the additions aren't features used that prevalently. Simply installing AIM straight after the XP installation doesn't solve the problem of the default installation of Windows Messenger. Although, thankfully, Windows Messenger is no longer integrated into the OS as originally planned, it still pops up annoyingly in the systray should you open IE 6 (also installed by default) or Outlook.

There's no obvious way to prevent Windows Messenger installing or even to switch it off once it's installed, and putting this question to the Help files provides no answers. For those interested in ridding their machine of Windows Messenger, I detail one method in my column this month (see p146 of the December 2001 issue), although it's not for the light-hearted. As for simply disabling the service, it's a little easier in that you open the program from the Systray icon or Programs menu and go to Tools | Options | Preferences to deselect the 'Run this program when Windows starts' checkbox. This seems to abate both the IE 6 and Outlook pop-ups too.

Other features integrated into the XP's core include a text-to-speech translator and Windows Movie Maker, which is looked at in greater depth in Multimedia matters

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(see p214 of the December 2001 issue).

Windows' handling of digital cameras also deserves a special mention. Now you just need to plug in your USB-connected camera and once the driver has been installed a removable storage device folder appears that automatically loads the pictures taken. This worked for all the suitably equipped digital cameras in this month's digital cameras Labs.

The new Explorer viewing functions are further enhanced with a Printing Wizard that optimises your quality settings for the paper of your choice (although tweaking is available) and even offers various layout options to fit as many pictures to those expensive sheets of photo paper as possible. By and large, the quality of photos printed on default settings is hardly distinguishable from using the printer's own options tabs. You could certainly improve upon the quality through proper photo app tweaking, although the standard results are satisfactory. The only complaint is that the cropping of pictures seems to be a bit haphazard, and in most instances where the picture size isn't standard, it produces unsatisfactory results.

New explorations

Apart from extra viewing functions, Explorer now makes it possible to group files and folders into personally meaningful structures. You can, for instance, choose data embedded in the file (meta data such as ID3 tags is a good example) as your chosen sorting details to create folders such as MP3 libraries. These will sort artists into groups, albums into subgroups and display song titles, bit-rate details, track numbers or more, just as it should be displayed. This approach can obviously be applied in other ways such as sorting by document author, date of file creation and so on. One complaint, however, is that you can only apply these sorting/grouping options onto whole open folders with no access to subfolders' contents in the process. This is a shame, as it means you'll eventually have huge folders of files that will depend on this new feature, although they won't be easy to navigate by any other application that doesn't sort/group in this way.

The ease-of-use factor brought with Windows XP Home Edition to its targeted user is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you do away with what initially seems like a lot of unnecessary third-party applications, simplifying the usually expansive program groups menu that a lot of power users are accustomed to. On the other hand, if you don't like the Microsoft way of doing things or you crave for more functionality and control, the raft of Wizards could prove intrusive or annoying.

On the whole, Microsoft's approach to providing a richer PC 'XP'erience to the majority of home users is a step in the right direction. Another plus is Windows XP Home Edition's approach to help and support, which is the best replacement for a dedicated IT support team yet realised in an OS. It does depend to some extent upon an Internet connection, although without this you still get richly detailed help files on almost any OS-related subject, including general hardware and software application queries. As mentioned with regards to disabling Windows Messenger, it's still not flawless. Connected to the Internet, you also have access to multiple information sources such as your PC manufacturer's home page, Microsoft Knowledge Base and others that will be added, probably via Windows Update, as they come online. The concept of 'Favourites' is also integrated into the Help subsystem, so you can easily find those passages most important to you. Most impressive is the ability to invite a trusted friend or support professional, also running XP, to be your remote assistant. Through an Internet connection, your assistant can chat with you, observe your working screen and, with your permission, remotely control your computer. This facility no longer leaves the professional working alone at home or otherwise at the mercy of frustratingly trying to follow somebody's phone-relayed instructions to fix hiccups - just sit back and let your trusted remote assistant fix your problems. In practice, this facility is exceptionally clever and the only problems we encountered were with bypassing certain firewall restrictions, which is to be expected.

For the professional or power user considering which version of Windows XP to opt for, it's best to peruse the list of available features in the Professional Edition and then decide whether the extra £68 asking price is worth it. I suspect for the majority of standalone desktop users, even those requiring simple home networking, which is supported on the TCP/IP protocol only, it won't be. In answer to the hardcore gamers out there, our experiences prove that the fast-moving area of graphics card driver revisions and game development will always result in a few problems, although we quickly solved the ones we encountered, so we expect you to do so as well.

Forget the snobbish route of choosing the Professional over the Home Edition just because you consider yourself a professional user or enthusiast. All the integrated apps are provided in both versions anyway. It's simply a question of whether you have to have any of the extra features provided with XP Professional. For an unmanaged desktop, I'd suggest that the majority of users, professionals and enthusiasts, will be perfectly happy with the Home Edition. The simplicity isn't as clear cut as a dumbing-down of functionality - far from it. So should you, as a standalone user, upgrade to XP? The answer is a resolute yes. This is £77 well spent, as you're buying the NT code base together with some superb features. And with exceptional stability, the extra features and time-saving, intuitive interface, XP Home Edition certainly provides for more than your average home user.