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Remote Assistance

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One of the most useful features in XP is Remote Assistance. Through this feature, any user can ask for assistance to a more knowledgeable user that also has XP installed. The procedure is very easy. If you have a problem either you can launch the Remote Assistance program or click on a link in a chat box in Windows Messenger, if the person that you want  help from is on your buddy list or at least has a .Net passport to be added. If not, you can still ask for assistance, only you have to do it through the Remote Assistance program and follow the steps to prepare an e-mail for the "helper" that he or she will receive and use as a passport to your computer. However, don’t let this scare you, because the helper won’t be able to control your computer unless you authorize him to do it. When the helper gets into your system he or she can see your screen inside a window, so whatever you’re typing or doing there can be seen, but he or she can’t do anything so far. To take control the helper has to click on the "Take Control" button in the RA program, and you get a box asking you to authorize him or her.

(names blurred for privacy reasons)

If you click yes, the helper can do anything in your computer, although of course you’re seeing what he or she is doing at all times, and if he or she begins to mess up or about to get into a secret folder you only have to press Esc and the helper loses control immediately, or just press the Disconnect button and kick him or her out of the computer.

(names blurred for privacy reasons)

Of course this is something you only can do with people you trust, not with strangers, because you’re letting someone see your screen and work in your computer. But used in the right way, it’s a very useful feature. Before this, when I friend of mine in another city or country had a problem I had to waste a lot of time explaining by text how to fix or perform a certain task. Using this feature, I just get into his or her computer and show him or her how it’s done, or get into the registry and fix something, adjust settings and whatever I want to do, with the only drawback that the speed depends on the connection and it can be pretty slow, on a cable modem connection it feels worse than working in a 486 computer. But I should say that my cable modem connection is 512 kbps, cable modem users in the US usually have 2 megabit connections that should speed up this feature considerably, and of course LAN connections should handle this one easily at nearly full speed.

But speed considerations aside, I’m really thrilled about this feature, and it’s clearly to me one of the best in Windows XP.

Stability

There’s no doubt for me that XP is the most stable Windows yet, even more than Windows 2000. It only crashed a few times on me, mostly under video editing programs or Windows Media Player, but I blame for that the buggy drivers of my graphics card, a Matrox Marvel G400, since Matrox is so arrogant that it announced it wouldn’t support this card on XP, a card many people bought this year from them, myself included. This left a lot of angry customers (again, myself included) that have it have to trick the installers of both the graphics and capture drivers to make them think you have the Millenium G400 to install under XP, and since they both have the G400 chip, the latest drivers (ver. 5.72, not certified by Microsoft labs, despite what Matrox claims) work decently. Of course XP comes with specific drivers for this card but they’re only display drivers that don’t let users access the special features of this card, so those embedded drivers are almost useless. Even with these "tricked" drivers, XP seems rock stable, it only crashed twice on me and I’m sure with a decent graphics card and proper drivers there wouldn’t be crashes at all. The most important part of having a rock stable system is that you can work confident that you won’t lose work if one application crashes, provided that you have autosave enabled or save manually often. This is specially gratifying when you have a program doing a long task such as converting a video to Divx and working on another app at the same time. If the app crashes, the video will keep converting. Even more, you don’t have to reboot the system to use the app that crashed again, you just launch it again and that’s it. The system doesn’t get unstable when an application crashes, at least that’s the case with the majority of apps. I read reports of some games crashing the system or leaving it unstable, but I didn’t experienced that.

Application support

I still have to see one Windows program that doesn’t work just fine under XP, even some old ones. XP provides an application compatibility feature for programs that only will install under Windows 95 or 98, or even NT4 or 2000. However, the most popular apps install and behave just fine under XP, without the need to use this feature. I only have one game that was a lost case, “The Need For Speed Special Edition”, the first version of this driving game, which was for DOS but also provided compatibility under Windows though DirectX. It has separate installer files, one for DOS and another for Windows, but none of them will install on XP. It will blank the screen completely and the only way to get out is press Alt+Tab which will get the system back with an error message. But once again, this may be some incompatibility with my graphics card and other users could have success with it. Luckily, versions 2 and 3 of this game install and play perfectly. I’m afraid I’m not much of a gamer and those are the only ones I play every once in a while, so I don’t have much to report on that first hand, but for the reports I read, most Windows based games will work under XP, while most DOS based won’t.

1. "Intro"
2. "Cons"
3. "Pros"
4. "More Pros"
5. "More Pros and Conclusion"