Meeting the eXPectations?

With a multimillion dollar marketing campaign rivaling Hollywood's newest movies, Microsoft's new operating system, Windows XP, has finally arrived. The successor to Microsoft's ubiquitous 98/ME/2000 family of Windows software, the much-hyped XP has been at the center of many positive reviews as well as controversy.

The biggest question many of you will be asking is "Should I upgrade?" The answer is a cautious yes.

Overall, XP is a very solid and versatile operating system that corrects many of the flaws of previous iterations of Windows. The most noticeable difference is that performance-wise the operating system is much faster and more reliable, since it's built on the same 32-bit kernel featured in Microsoft's Windows NT and 2000 operating systems. What this means is that you can practically say goodbye to the blue screen of death.

XP also looks completely different than all previous versions of Windows. While this may take some getting used to, you'll soon find it difficult to dislike the new design. The entire Windows interface has been entirely revamped and is now very streamlined, organized and colorful. Pop-up icons, sidebar menus and automated assistance are offered for a variety of tasks and on practically every explorer screen, making XP extremely user friendly.

There are tons of new built-in features designed to take advantage of emerging popular technologies like digital video and audio. You can instantly view and create slideshows of images for example, and little touches abound, like the ability to hide the startup icons in the bottom of your screen to create more taskbar room. The new Internet Explorer also has built in media playback, and XP has built in CD burning capabilities.

Despite these improvements, Windows XP has also been the subject of some controversy. To combat software piracy, Microsoft has mandated that all users "activate" their copies, which means that you'll have to go online and have your system's hardware info entered into Microsoft's database. Obviously, you therefore won't be able to install XP on more than one computer since their hardware configuration won't match. While it's a clever anti-piracy concept, it gets really annoying when you make big changes in your hardware configuration and need to reactivate. People who own more than one computer are out of luck and will have to buy another copy.

Furthermore, to enjoy XP benefits, your computer will need to satisfy the hefty system requirements: a Pentium II-300 or faster, 128MB of RAM, and 1.5GB of free disk space. In the end, if you can get past the annoyances, then Windows XP remains a very worthwhile upgrade.