Everyone’s favorite man to throw stuff at, William Gates, and the company which has risen to unseen software strength under his leadership, Microsoft, has reached an all time low in terms of Operating Systems.

I’m fully aware that I have been one to defend Microsoft because they are the only ones that have been able to program such a widely used and easily copied Operating System. I recently took it upon myself to personally view the latest version in the NT line of Windows. It’s now called Windows XP, and will come in more flavors than any other Windows. It will be the version that brings Home, Business, and Server together in a similar kernel.

It’s crap. Pure and utter crap. I could tolerate Windows 98 when it came out as the superior to Windows 95 when in fact it was Windows 95 with a shell update, tight IE integration, and a few utilities for the idiots that didn’t know how to back-up their system and run it at a level on par with a decent computer user. Windows XP IS Windows 2000. There were many parts during the install, and a few places in the actual Operating System that “Windows 2000” appear. Even Microsoft admits that Windows XP is built off of the Windows 2000 base.

Aesthetically, it’s crap. In comparison to Windows 2000, business users will want to stay away. It’s functionally the same as Windows 2000, and when turning off all of the eye candy, it looks VERY SIMILAR to Windows 2000 Pro. I am certain I will never “upgrade” to this operating system. In fact, Windows 2000 will probably be the last Microsoft Operating System I run on my systems.

For home users that don’t depend on 24/7 functionality, and crave the eye candy and the latest support for digital devices, Windows XP will be the way to go. It actually features many features that will appeal to home users, such as built in home video editing.

Upon thinking more and more, I’m seriously thinking of just buying an Compaq Alpha workstation, running some 64bit flavor of Unix, buying a shack in Montana and planning to take out Microsoft at all costs…