It can't really be that good, can it?

So I asked for feedback, in both Windows & .NET Magazine UPDATE and WinInfo Daily UPDATE, two email newsletters with a combined readership of almost 250,000 people. As is always the case when I make this kind of request, the sheer number of responses was amazing: I received over 2000 email messages within the first few days of asking, and several hundred more in the weeks that followed. Thank you to everyone that wrote in!

Please note that these results are not scientific: There were many emails to pore over, and many people didn't give a simple thumbs up/thumbs down vote, which required some investigation. Also, I spent a lot of time categorizing the feedback into specific likes and dislikes, whether the install was an upgrade or not, and the like. Needless to say, it took me a long time to get through all the responses, but I finally did it. And here are the results: Windows XP, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Statistically Speaking: They Love XP
I asked readers to rate XP using a rough thumbs up/thumbs down method, and based on what I saw in the feedback, there were three general possibilities: Thumbs Up (positive), Thumbs Down (negative), and mixed. The reaction to Windows XP is overwhelmingly positive, with over 89 percent of respondents who did provide such an answer giving the OS a "thumbs up." About 6 percent gave it a "thumbs down" and about 5 percent provided a mixed response, where some features got a thumbs up and some got a thumbs down.

I also asked readers whether they had upgraded from a previous version of Windows or had clean installed XP. The vast majority--about 86 percent--of the people who did provide this information said that they had upgraded from Windows 98, Windows Me, or Windows 2000. About 20 percent who discussed this at all had performed clean installations of Windows, some after a failed upgrade. In fact, upgrade problems were an interesting trend in the feedback I got. "Why do Microsoft OS upgrades always have FDISK as the first step?" asked C. Daniel Sheets, who had attempted to upgrade his system before giving up and clean installing XP. "The famous Microsoft support [recommendation] is to format the drive and start all over again," agreed Theodore Fattaleh.

But that's not to say that most people had problems upgrading to XP. Indeed, most of the people who did upgrade experienced only a handful of issues, which I'll discuss below. But I was surprised by the number of people who first tried an upgrade but had to eventually clean install XP.

"[XP has a] vastly superior install procedure relative to any other Windows install," noted author Davis Straub, who performed the XP upgrade repeatedly. "Uninstall went well numerous times." Some readers expressed surprise that you could boot the XP CD-ROM. "I wish it was better known that people can boot from the XP upgrade CD, then 'prove it's an upgrade' by swapping CDs with a [previous Windows] CD, then continue the XP upgrade," Wesley Davis said. "I think it was low-brow of Microsoft not to make this clear. Except when doing a 9x upgrade to 2000 or XP, I think it's safer to start clean (i.e., NT 4 to either 2000 or XP or 2000 to XP)."

"Installation is not for the faint of heart or for those without technical savvy. Only one of three installs on our three machines went without a hitch," said Rick Kulp.

Once XP is on your system, it's time to figure out whether your applications and hardware are going to work and get down to business. Here's where we hit the meat of the feedback, which I've divided into Good, Bad, and Ugly segments.

The Good
Since the overall feedback was so positive, people had a lot of nice things to say about XP. A number of features were repeatedly praised by readers, including the digital photography features, wireless networking and automatic network detection, the built-in CD writing tools, the Welcome Screen and Fast User Switching, ClearType, and System Restore.

But readers were generally not that specific. Instead, most lauded the system's stability and reliability. ""Overall the best thing about Windows XP that I can say is that it just works the way it should," wrote Jeff Bruneau. "When I click on a file, my options are on the left. That is great. I am a moderate/pro on the computer and even for me this was a nice feature."

"XP is simply outstanding" a reader named David confided.

"All of my applications just work," another reader noted.

"It's very stable," says Frank Erdman. "No compatibility problems at all. I’m very satisfied."

"I went from Windows Me to Windows XP, and it's like going from hell to heaven," wrote Nico de Vries.

Tony Colgrove offered a good example of how XP changes things for many people. "I have grown to like the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching very much," he wrote. "Multiple profiles are great and I'm glad to have one that works in the home. My situation is my 2.5 year old. He knows he can click on the Dog picture to get to his Preschool Game. His desktop has a large icon for his game and a completely stripped down Start bar. He really can't mess anything up. Plus with Fast User Switching and the 'Return to welcome screen' when the screen saver kicks in, if my wife or I walk away while logged in, and the screen saver kicks in, my son walks up and is greeted by the Welcome screen and he can click on the Dog picture ... You know the rest. My apps are still safely running in my session."

"I have been running Windows XP for a couple of months now, starting with RC2, and I can honestly say it's the best OS Microsoft has ever released," John Bullock says. "I upgraded from Windows 98 and it was a very simple upgrade that worked extremely well right from the time the install was completed. Windows XP is extremely reliable. In fact, prior to the upgrade I had to reboot Windows 98 at least once a day because it would hang or crash and that problem has gone away since I upgraded to Windows XP. Security, routine maintenance etc. are also MUCH improved and the Remote Support feature is absolutely INVALUABLE because we're set-up in a virtual team and this feature lets you call for help and allows you to give someone else Remote Control of your system, which is a really nice touch."

The Bad
Some features were a mixed bag for users. The new "Luna" user interface is the most obvious example, with readers sharply divided over the limited new look and feel configuration provided by Windows XP.

"When you actually get past the 'fuzzy' interface, you soon realize that Windows XP is merely a small update to Windows 2000," wrote Daniel Balshaw. Another reader was more succinct: "The new interface is idiotic." The words "Fisher Price" were used to describe the new interface several times and many readers complained that only three color schemes were provided.

"The new interface is a little Nintendo-like and only comes in three bland flavors," wrote Stuart B. Renes.

"We hate the fluffy 3D icons and the new Start menu," wrote Michael Schell. "We’ve reverted to the classic Start Menu, which is more familiar to our users. Unfortunately we can’t revert to the old desktop and Start menu icons. The new 3D icons for Show Desktop, Windows Explorer, etc. that appear on the Quick Launch bar are particularly fuzzy and hard to make out when you’re running in high screen resolutions."

Of course, not everyone is unhappy with the new interface. "I love the new look and feel," said Peter Leslie, and many readers lauded the numerous small touches in the OS that help new users. "I'm working on XP in a Home Office environment and find it to be excellent, especially in the Help and error pop-up windows," wrote Doug Lippi. "Errors are written in simple English and have proven helpful in problem-solving without requiring a visit to TechNet ... I also like the little pop-ups that give you information about new features.

Some people noted that XP was slower than previous Windows versions, while others thought it was on par with, or faster than, Windows 2000. The new interface got blamed repeatedly for slowing down XP, though at least one person tied the problems to networking. "Since upgrading from Windows 2000 Professional to XP Professional, I've found program launching and Right Mouse popup menus to be much slower," one reader noted. "Programs launched from the desktop seem to take about 2-3 times as long to launch. The popup menus take 10-15 seconds--they used to be sub-second. If I disconnect from the network everything speeds back up to (close-to) pre-XP performance."

Walter Wood, an MSAE, also had some XP networking issues. "The biggest problem I saw was with trying to get local networking setup and working," he said. "I had some problems with this although I was always able to solve them. Sometimes however this involved changing out hardware. Things just would not work as advertised. The terminology in the Networking Wizard left a lot to be desired also. It was very confusing unless you read it very carefully and even then a beginner could easily get confused. The positive side of networking is that you do not have to reboot each time you make a minor change."

Indeed, sharing resources like folders and printers between XP boxes and early Windows 9x versions is causing many people fits. The problem, of course, is that Windows 9x had no security at all, and XP is based on the more secure NT model. This is uninteresting to those who are still struggling with these problems, however.

And what about Windows Product Activation (WPA), that big bugaboo that was going to bring XP to its knees? Most of the people that mentioned WPA were quite specific in stating that it was no big deal.

"Activation was no problem," an anonymous reader noted. "Everything works as expected, absolutely no issues with WPA," said Marcel Wiedemeier.

"After hearing all the fuss about Activation, I was dreading it, but it turned out to be no more than clicking a button when it said 'Do you want to activate'." noted Ed Burnette.

That's not to say that WPA was a big hit. A number of readers said that they didn't like WPA, though none were specific. A couple even noted that they wouldn't ultimately upgrade to XP because of this feature. "Activation was a nightmare," said David de Lisle. "I will never again allow IT to install any operating system on my computer that has this feature. I think that WPA is a show stopper and MS will regret this move." de Lisle later contacted me to further explain what happened: "The problem was caused by the printed key numbers required to activate my MSDN copy," he said. "The eights and the B's looked exactly the same and my IT dept was typing in 8's when they should have been typing B's or the other way round, I don't remember exactly. I saw the offending printed document and the fonts chosen accounted for the error. Six days to sort out and much gnashing of teeth."

The WPA complaints, however, are notable because they are so vague. I didn't receive any feedback about WPA locking someone out of their system, for example.

The Ugly
Speaking of problems, where does XP really let down users? Most often, it's software and hardware compatibility, though many readers actually blamed companies other than Microsoft for this problem. "Lots of [hardware] drivers were not ready at launch from third parties?" one reader asked. "What's the deal with that?" Interestingly, scanner maker UMAX received the most complaints.

Software compatibility was open to similar complaints. "I am a little disappointed with third party software," wrote Becky Albert. "Some of my games won't run on Windows XP, and [titles] from Sierra and Novalogic are the worst. You know, they all had time to be more prepared. I have tried to run these games with the compatibility mode and that doesn't work either. Hopefully these problems will be worked out soon."

Roxio EZ CD Creator was singled out by readers as being the biggest disappointment. Many readers were actually aware that Roxio had written the CD burning software in XP, and were astonished that the company didn't have XP compatibility updates available sooner. "This happened with [Windows Me] as well," one reader noted. "They need to get their act together." Zone Alarm has the dubious distinction of coming in second place on the compatibility nightmare chart, with several readers noting that even the most recent "XP compatible" version has problems. David Abbott described a situation in which Zone Alarm sends network alerts to the user that installed the software, even when that user wasn't logged on. "I have to do a lot of rebooting," he said, because of this.

Generally, people are having lots of problems with utility software, mostly because they've upgraded from Windows 9x and were surprised to see that such things as Norton SystemWorks, Norton Anti-Virus, various disk utilities, and even DVD players no longer work under XP. "The cost of upgrading these [utilities] should be included in the cost of upgrading to XP," one reader noted.

Conclusions
Given my experiences with XP, I'm not surprised to see that it's a huge hit in the real world. But I am confused about some of the things that weren't mentioned very often in the feedback. XP's digital music features were infrequently cited as being either good or bad, for example, and the digital video features were often thrown out as something to "try eventually." Microsoft's support for digital media in XP is both high-profile and controversial, and it's interesting that these topics weren't huge issues for readers.

Well, there you have it: Windows XP, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. For most people, XP has been exactly what I expected, a huge improvement over previous Windows versions. Many of those who have experienced hardware and software incompatibilities will likely be mollified eventually by one of Microsoft's frequent Compatibility Update releases; a recent update included fixes for EZ CD Creator, for example. Those that don't like the limitations of the new interface might have to wait for Longhorn, however, or look into third party solutions, such as Stardock's WindowBlinds 3 or Style XP.

But in the meantime, it's heartening to see that most people are happy with XP. Happy Holidays,

--Paul Thurrott
December 21, 2001
Updated December 27, 2001