In a time when many are being very vocal about the shortcomings of Windows Vista, it seems strange to many to admit that Windows XP is not yet perfect.

It isn’t.

As this is being written, the computer where the composition is taking place is running strong after nine days of up time. During the nine day span 77 GB of data has been downloaded, articles for three different blogs have been written, over 3000 e-mails have been received and either read or rejected, and 12 DVDs have been burned.

During much of the day, processes are taking place that require no user intervention, so there are small gaps in the work for playing games. This machine is really not suited for first person shooters of today, as the video card is an FX5500 with only 256 MB of memory. The games played are card games, puzzles, and the like.

I became aware of a problem I had not seen, in years, yesterday. I tried to bring up a Checkers game, which I have had since the days of Windows 98. It was one of the freebies from PC Magazine [remember those?] and it plays fine, so I’ve kept it. When I tried to use the game, I got a message about the Win 16 subsystem not having enough resources! Talk about ‘deja vu all over again’! At the time I tried this, there was over a GB of the 2GB memory available on the machine.

Of course, I know the problem.

The memory does not get released completely by the Checkers application, so after a while, the stack space is not available to start a program. Thank goodness for the better programming practices of Windows XP, as now I’m only mildly annoyed. Instead of being frustrated, and losing data when forced to reboot by errors, or saving work and rebooting - that way only losing time, I can continue unimpeded, until the time I feel I really have to play that game.

In a time of so much carping about Windows Vista, it is nice to know that for most things Windows XP gets it right, and that perhaps the frustration noted above is only one of a few problems with this operating system.

I can only imagine what might take place if we were making a transition from Windows 98, or Me, directly to Vista. How much hair would be getting pulled out of the average user’s head?

On the other hand, perhaps the opposite would be true for many. Vista might be less exasperating [for those who could fully exploit their peripherals] than having to know you’re going to be rebooting a few times per day with 98 or Me.

With all that we tend to revile Microsoft for, it is worth noting that Windows XP is the best we have gotten from them since the days of DOS 5.0.

[tags] Microsoft, Windows, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Win 16 subsystem, MS DOS 5, operating system [/tags]