Just installed XP RC1

[Tripleshot]

One of my office computers died this weekend,and I have posted in the GH and Mobo forums my troubles and trials with installing a new mobo and CPU. Well,after the usual problems with building with a new system,I finally moved through all the hardware issues and installed XP on an old spare Hdd. I plugged in to the mobo my netgear nic,SBlive and a diamond Z200 32 meg video AGP. I put in the eval copy of xp, ran the setup,and I'll be darned if I didn't need to pull one single driver disc for any of it to work. Sound,Video and Nic all worked from the get go,and the desktop is sweet. This may be a nice deal for the end user,if it were not for this registration thing. That was no problem though,it connected to the net from the nic on my network,and in seconds,it was done.

This could be a boon for IT departments that need to upgrade clients pc's. If it is this painless to install commonly used and maybe not so common PCI cards,configure automatically with little user input,all I can say is, WOW! I needed to use a printer,and the configuration wizard asked if I wanted a network printer. I did,and it searched my networkand found all printers set on share and installed the drivers. All I need do when I print is pick which one I want to use. My setup time was cut by 3/4. that can translate to mucho denero in savings for an IT dept upgrading to the latest.

Just thought I would share my glee. It's been a frustrating weekend,and worth this surprise after all I had to go through.

 

[brxndxn]

That registration thing still really turns me off..

 

[Tripleshot]

3.14 is pie. Maybe thats it,I never looked. It doesn't bother me because this is RC1 they sent to me for evaluation. I can see their point,but Msoft needs to see the consumers point too. I hope the registration is not done in this fashion,but if you buy your software to run on your system,that is what you pay for.If you put it on more than one system,that is piracy,and you are liable. I do feel a better pricing scheme for home users should be implemneted and allow xp for the home to be installed on a home bsis,not pc basis. if its $300 to buy and hook up to 2 or3 orn 4 home pc's,than I do belive more homes would buy. Because of the phoone home registration scenerio,many will not move to this platform. It does require more resources,but todays hardawre prices are rock bottom,so power PC's are still a bargain and they can run this OS fine. I want to be sure it can play games like I want,and time will tell. It is the NT5 kernal,so its one heck of a lot better than 98,or me,or NT4 and that suits me fine. I played Serious Sam on W2K server,so if godgames writes to this kernal,we are in for some fun times.