Home
Page
r
u Xperienced?
Article Categories
|
Miscellaneous
WINDOWS XP
COMPARED TO 9x AND ME
When you compare the appearance of the Desktop and Start
Menu of Windows XP to those of Windows 95, 98, and ME,
you can right away tell that there are some big
differences between this version and previous ones. I
will be going into further details on this in future
articles. But there are a lot of other differences not so
readily apparent in some cases, which I can hope to only
briefly cover in this introduction.
Some of these differences are in the area of security.
Windows 9x and ME were not secure operating systems. You
could set each of them up for multiple users who logged
in with a password, but one could always bypass the
password request by using the Esc key. Windows XP is
built upon the 32-bit kernel developed for Windows NT and
Windows 2000, with secure logons; encrypted files; access
levels for folders, programs and files; and even a
built-in Personal firewall to help protect you from the
dangers of connecting to the internet.
Many of the windows you open in XP are organized in a
different way than what was used previously: there are
two panes, the one on the right usually containing
components of some sort, while the one on the left
contains links for performing various common actions
based upon the components shown. This is true, for
example, in the Start Menu and the Control Panel windows
and even Windows Explorer.
There are new and improved capabilities for handling
media: Windows Explorer supports a new "filmstrip
view" as well as a Slide Show option; there is a
built-in Windows Movie Maker, a Photo Printing wizard, a
Web Publishing Wizard, Windows Media Player 8 (version 9
is now available for download from the Microsoft site),
built-in speech recognition, and built-in CD burning.
Like Windows Millenium edition, there is built-in
handling of Zip files and the System Restore utility to
restore a malfunctioning Windows system to a previous
working configuration. Unlike Windows Millenium Edition,
the old System File Checker tool of Win9x has been
brought back.
The Help and Support window provides a much greater and
more organized pathway to all kinds of assistance and
help documentation, including help files,
troubleshooters, updates and online support. There is
also the capability called Remote Assistance, where you
connect over a network to a friend or technician who can
operate your computer remotely while communicating with
you by Chat.
|