Windows XP

Making an entrance

Windows XP is the newest edition to the Windows family and Microsoft is investing a lot of money into launching it and making sure that it'll be successful. They have extensively tested the OS before it went gold and speculation was that Windows 2000 was actually the test bed for Windows XP. If you remember, Windows 2000 is fairly new, while Windows 9x has been around for almost seven years. While some may argue that Windows 2000 is based on NT and therefore has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, the leap from NT4 to Windows 2000 was very significant. For many users, Windows 2000 is as good at gaming as Windows 98 was.

Let's take a look at some of Windows XP's features to see how it attempts at blending all the best of Windows.

Important Windows XP features and briefs
Features/Improvements	Intentions
NT/2000 core	Because of its proven stability and HAL features, building Windows XP from the NT/2000 core ensure a strong foundation on which to build other features.
WDM driver model	From XP on, all device drivers will be based on the same Windows drive model to ensure standards across the board. Companies and developers are also required to go through WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) for driver validation. This increases the chances of having a solid, stable system.
Code protection	This feature protects the structure of the kernel, or the core from being modified. All drivers are also set to read only so that a program doesn’t inadvertently change the driver structure.
Side-by-Side DLL support	SBS DLL is a new feature that enables different versions of the same DLL file to coexist with each other. This feature is intended to fix compatibility problems with different program versions. For example, an earlier version of MS Paint may not work with a newer paint.dll (example) but the new Paint will. With SBS DLL, both DLLs can execute at the same time and both versions of Paint can be used.
Loose HAL/DirectX	Microsoft has coded DirectX and the HAL to cooperate with each other smoothly. Before, DirectX went in the opposite direction of the HAL and operation wasn’t very pretty. Because of DX’s nature to provide fast, direct hardware access, it’s only appropriate to make sure the HAL can support DX calls. While the HAL is still very protective of the system hardware, it lets DX8 make way without too much fuss. This is why we see Windows 98SE level game performance on Windows XP.
Multi-processor support	Windows XP natively supports systems with multiple processors. Those that are blessed with SMP (symmetrical processing) systems will really appreciate the speed and efficiency of Windows XP. Sure, Windows XP is more bloated than any other Windows OS, but it takes advantage of everything your system has in it. Too bad Windows XP Home Edition won’t support SMP. Our guess is that rather than retooling Windows XP HE from the beginning to use only one processor, it’s a Windows XP Professional with SMP hacked off. Maybe someone out there will find a way to unlock the feature.

One of the most interesting features above that we haven't seen before is Side-by-Side DLL. During testing, we found that running different versions of the Microsoft Office at the same time occurred without fault. Both Office 97 and XP behaved well together and both versions functioned like expected.