How smooth is an OS upgrade?
I currently use Windows ME which is progressively becoming a nightmare. It's repulsive reputation is well deserved considering the consistency of its crashes. The worst part is that I've endured such mistreatment for 4 years! Anyway, I want XP but I'm kind of shivering at the level of difficulty it might present. Is my installation-phobia valid and also, is life better on the XP side?
Answers:
life is much better on the xp side. i would though get the full retail copy and not go with the upgrade route. My experiences with that nightmare are...well a nightmare! I have used xp pro ever since 2000 and swear by it. When I had ME, I swore by that too and quite often, swore at it. The installation is simple and quite painless. You will have to back up all the data you don't want to loose, but I know you backup all that stuff regularly anyway....right? After that, do an "fdisk" and remove your primary dos partition. then pop the xp cd in and follow the prompts.....have fun!
Other answers:
The upgrade is very smooth. Just insert the XP CD and follow the on screen instructions, you will not loose any of ur data files.
XP is much heavieer than ME , meaning u will need a bigger RAM on ur machine for it to run smoothly. The only advatage with Xp that I found is , its easier with plug-n-play devices , also most new application are likely to be XP compatible. iTunes is a good example, it doesnt not work on Me.
The first you should do before upgrading the OS is backing up the data on your har drive - important files just in case anything goes wrong (I aint saying it will - but better to be safe than sorry). Best to purchase Windows XP Upgrade Version - as you have Windows ME installed. But the problem with the upgrade version is, if you need to format your hard drive in future, you will probably need to install Windows ME first then XP - as it is an upgrade to older versions.
Its smooth, thinking about the XP OS and PC performance, XP will run with 512MB ram OKish but it will run smoother with 1GB = 1024MB ram, better still if you have a Graphics Card as well, because you are not using part of your on board ram to your Monitor, a Graphics Card has its own ram to run the display, so a nice con-fig for general use of Windows XP (home or pro) is 1GB ram, 128MB Graphics Card, but that is just my opinion, Cybercat.