Why I Love Windows XP

Why I Love Windows XP

Before we move on to the rest of the book, I thought I'd share with you why I love Windows XP so much. Windows XP makes all my tasks much easier; it even made it easier to write this book than it was to write any other book I've ever written.

For example, one of my favorite features in Windows XP is Remote Desktop. Before I got Windows XP, I either had to have several computers sitting on my desk for testing instructions, digging around in the registry, taking screen shots, and so on, or I had to walk back and forth between my lab and my office, which was a major productivity drain. For this book, I configured Remote Desktop on each Windows XP—based computer in my lab so that I could connect to them from my production computer. That way, I could have two or three Remote Desktop connections open, each with a different test scenario running. Remote Desktop reduced by a huge amount the time it took to write this book. It also reduced the number of times that I was tempted to experiment on my production computer (which could result in a day of lost work if I corrupted the computer's configuration). Remote Desktop alone was worth the cost of Windows XP.

And did I mention wireless networking? Windows XP enables me to get out of my office—in which I have 10 or so computers running, with the fan and hard drive noise that that entails. Thanks to wireless networking, which Windows XP makes very easy to configure, I could find a quiet place in my house to work while I was writing this book. No fans. No noise. And even when I was working in the bedroom, I could still connect to the computers in my lab.

Regarding the registry itself, there are a few changes that struck me right away. First, Microsoft got rid of the dueling registry editors. Windows 2000 had two editors: Regedit and Regedt32. Both had strengths and weakness, and you had no choice but to flip back and forth between the two. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 combine both editors into a single registry editor. Another new feature is Console Registry Tool for Windows (Reg). Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 include this tool by default, whereas in Windows 2000, you had to install it from the support tools. This makes it a more viable tool for scripting registry edits using batch files. And it's free!