... so has anyone taken the deep plunge yet? ... just curious if anyone has yet and if they had any oddball program/game misfits ... remote connection problems? ... vpn issues?

I d/l it the day it came out but havent installed it yet

and this is why

"New things also comes to the os itself in the form of shut down for invalid xp cd key."

I hate to put the damn CD in for every game I play

One of my buddies just spent a lot of time trying to salvage a WinXP SP2 install that wouldn't do http or ftp. It could ping just fine, updated Ad-aware just fine, but no browsing, and no ftp. After hours of trying, he gave up fixing that install and formatted the disk.

Also, by default it enables all the MS 'security' features such as the Internet Connection Firewall and the rudimentary, badly coded pop-up blocking that causes Microsoft Update to become inaccessible.

From what I've heard, SP2 for XP is the biggest piece of crap since WinME

yeah, just did it...
XP Pro machine is my gateway computer...
also just installed a linksys wireless router after my switch would not jive w/my new broadband connection...
have not ran any games since install...
everything seemed to come up ok,didn't loose my home network or anything...
I like the firewall...

Yeah, you'll like that firewall right up until the day a virus or trojan makes it through (I suspect it won't be long) and you realize that like all Microsoft products, it is so rife with security holes that it ends up introducing more hazards than it prevents.

Black Ice, Zonealarm, and Trend Micro's Personal Firewall are all quality Windows firewalls that can be acquired cheaply.

I'm with you on the MicroCrap software...
going to install a new Linux on my internet cruiser...
Mandrake,Gentoo,fedora,slackware....
old version of Mandrake currently installed, going to try another current version of something...
I fear all Windows prodducts when it comes to security...
Thanks for the firewall info, I'll look into that...

... I wonder whats up with the update where they give you the big warning about removing spyware before loading SP2 with the warning that not doing so can render your system unuseable ...


... and I think the XP CD key thing is just for the op-sys not other games.

I highly reccomend gentoo, if you have a couple days to spare to get it fully up and running (or longer if you don't have a really fast machine)

It compiles pretty much everything from source code specifically for your machine and according to the options you set. It's a very fast and powerful OS, but you do have to have the desire to tinker with it a lot. The 'emerge' feature is great, it makes application management a snap.

Just downloaded and installed all 260M of it yesterday. Surprisingly, not only does everything still work, but several shell glitches that were annoying me were miraculously repaired. Not only that, but the system ran faster. Go figure. I turned off the default firewall immediately to avoid any network issues.

... are you sure you didnt upgrade from 98?

Umm, yes, I'm sure. Upgraded from XP Service Pack 1a. It's 260M because I downloaded the full redist/developer package. I don't trust long web-based installations.

Woah.. I still have ME on an old machine. Three different error messages pop up when I turn it on. The folder view pane in windows explorer doesn't work. It shuts off the internet for no reason at all. Programs can't be installed nor uninstalled without hours of annoying troubleshooting. And I can't reinstall ME because I had to replace the motherboard (Micron computers suck too), and the disk won't work with it anymore. I can't install XP because the disk partitions are all fucked up.

So it sucks. And to say something sucks worse than it..

Perhaps this might resuscitate your ancient machine.

I keep meaning to go that route. But I understand you have to have considerable knowledge to be able to adapt Windows programs for Linux? I have a bunch of multimedia stuff that I want to continue to use - I don't use my comp for much else, so I don't know if it's worth setting up a dual operating system.

But I love the concept. Windows has far too many bells and whistles that end up annoying me. On my newer machine, this one, I've tried to pare it down to the minimums, and I'm running the Litestep shell.

Only some Windows programs work under Linux, however there are linux alternatives to every windows program (I have a multitrack audio prog, mastering, video editing, photo/image maniipulation, etc. all set up on my machine)

There are several emulators (Wine and Win4Lin being the most popular) that emulate the quasi-32bit environment of Win98SE, and with some prodding many programs can be made to work. Most of the programs that have documented emulation capability are games.

Cool, thanks for the info. Can you give me a name or link of the multitrack program? It's the one I would most like to have, especially in an operating environment that runs better than windows.

Ardour

dude, SP2 is shite.....for real. I did a CLEAN install with it on a really nice system, and my really nice system crashed within 24 hours of installation. Fugg bill gates mang! It's a good thing I learned a long time ago to back stuff up.
Peace.

.... Um ... what needs to be backed up on a clean install?

My rather massive digital music and movie collection, for one....and of course....do you have ANY idea how long it took me to SURF for all that porn ? I'm not going to lose my gals just because Bill's boys can't seem to keep a stable OS.
Peace.

I installed it once it came out and was I ever disappointed. The Security Center was one of the most annoying things ever. After I installed, my boot time increased by 15 seconds and my downloads from Bit Torrent were slower than ever. A day later, I formatted and reinstalled, not even bothering to see if I could uninstall it. I'll just stick to SP1 from now on.