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Sep 7, 2001 | 10:46 AM

whodkne

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Windows XP

Got the full corp edition of XP pro. Installed it (reformatting the drive that had 2000 on it, not wanting to do a upgrade) and it went fabulously. No error, no problems at all.
Once I fixed the "fisherprice / hasbro" theme to a normal look and feel (and also fixed the start menu and taskbar) I felt a lot better about the new OS.

I tinkered with the settings, played with some of the new options and I must say I like it. I didn't do any sort of compatability check with the Dell Latitude I installed it on and I figured my only problem would be my new 3Com Wireless 11Mb network card, and it was. Seems that WinXP installed drivers for the card and recognized the card but it said it was disconnected. I tried to install the untility to setup the wireless communication for the 3com card and XP wouldn't have any of that. The utility, obviously not XP compatable, died. So, I removed it. XP never crashed, very stable for having an old program install and crash.

So, no network card for now. Have to wait for 3com to produce some drivers for it. Otherwise, XP is worth the upgrade.

Sep 7, 2001 | 10:55 AM

o2bnme

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I did a Thinkpad 600x last week using the preview1. No problems

The installation finished in 45 minutes. I wiped out the hard drive using the fast format option (included in the 45 minutes). I was very impressed.

I agree about the toyishness of the new look & feel. I'm not sure which I'll stick with yet. I am hoping that we can tweak it enough to make it halfway decent.

I saw a text-to-speech engine in XP, but could not find a way to turn it on. I think you need some other software ($) to make it useful unfortunately. If someone knows otherwise, please speak up! (pun?)

I'm planning on upgrading my wife's machine to XP Home or Pro (not sure which yet). Home seems like it will do the trick for her.

Sep 7, 2001 | 11:42 AM

whodkne

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Right..

I totally modified the "Hasbro" look. You can make it similar to 2000 and remove all the "kiddy" looking stuff. I finally got it looking pretty clean and nice, as what I have to do with any OS install due to my analness.

The text-to-speech dealie is in Accessability and it does an ok job. I guess it would be usefull for the blind, but otherwise I see no use for it.

Sep 7, 2001 | 01:11 PM

SecuriTT

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Office XP actually has the text to speech built in. It works pretty well.

Sep 7, 2001 | 03:44 PM

o2bnme

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Ok... time for an upgrade it looks like! Thanks!!

Alex will love this feature I think.

Sep 7, 2001 | 10:32 PM

Red Mercury

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Even if you're not...

Actually, I like text-to-speech even though my eyesight is good. It's very handy when you have a second machine that occasionally puts up dialogs.

I can't speak for the quality of Windows XP's text-to-speech, but the stuff has been on Macintosh since 1991. I rather like it when it speaks dialog boxes. I've also used it to "read" news story headlines--it worked very well except for news stories from Eastern Europe (It's tough for the computer to figure out how to pronounce names that are mostly consonants).