I haven't seen much of XP yet, but so far Windows 2000 is a disappointment. Windows NT 4 was ... well, I won't say it was more stable, but it was more predictable. It got confused over time, so I just rebooted it on the way out the door every Friday and it was happy. Win 2K seems to be a lot more temperamental. I've had random hard crashes accessing SMB network drives, and even with my CD-R despite having burned a grand total of zero CDs with it. (Optical drives seem to be a sore point. I know a Compaq XP laptop that just sort of forgot that it had a DVD drive...).
Early reviews of XP seem to be generally favorable, but then early reviews of Windows OS' always are: they haven't had time to start falling apart yet. They can try all they want to shore up that OS, but it has too many Achilles' heels (e.g., Windows Messaging, the Registry, far too many things hooked into the kernel) to ever acheive better than fair-weather reliability.
edit: On topic, *cough*, OS X is currently more stable for me than Windows, but there are too many exceptions for me to consider it fully stable. It has a particularly bad habit when it comes out of sleep to discover that its internet connection has vanished (I have cable, so that's not an altogether infrequent occurrence). Otherwise, it's been a rock. Haven't had a KP since 10.0.x.
Early reviews of XP seem to be generally favorable, but then early reviews of Windows OS' always are: they haven't had time to start falling apart yet.
Early reviews!? XP has been out for more than a year and a half, I think there are in-depth reviews of it available now. If a good idea of its reliability isn't available now it never will be.
To the point, XP has never crashed or locked up on me in the year and half I have used it.
I've noticed OS X is pretty much rock solid, but if you do an upgrade things can go haywire. Someone mentioned 10 kernel panics and that's probably not indicative of the OS so much as a bad install (which is somewhat indicative of the OS.)
No, my install was absolutely clean on a formatted partition, on Apple's newest hardware. And non-upgradable hardware, at that. I don't think you can blame anything but the OS on this one.
actually, i would point to bad RAM in this case. usually (read: every single time i've ever seen) that many crashes on a clean install is hardware related.
XP is solid for me when I have all my drivers installed in the right order and when I don't use RealOne, heh. RealOne causes an instant lock-up on my machine.
OS X doesn't have easily reproduced lock-ups here, but I often find the Finder goes wonky after some marathon uptime runs.
Strange, RealOne works fine with my XP professional, but then again RealNetworks players have always been a bit quirky to start out with, seem to be hit and miss most of the time.
actually, i would point to bad RAM in this case. usually (read: every single time i've ever seen) that many crashes on a clean install is hardware related.
A lot of them were related to my ~/Library/Cache. This was causing a crash on every other logout. Once deleted, the problem went away (which doesn't sound like a RAM problem).
If the system were generally unstable, I'd agree RAM would be a good candidate. However, my problems tend to occur on very specific actions, such as inserting/removing PCMCIA cards and (for my wife, not me) accessing an SMB share on a Windows XP machine (in this case, the system crashed every time she attempted it on one day, then I tried and succeeded on my account, after which she had no more problems).
There might be some problems in the PCMCIA hardware on my computer, although unless I am hot-plugging the card it works perfectly (I download digital pictures from a CompactFlash card). The SMB mounting issue is almost assuredly software, since the only hardware being used is the AirPort card, which works stably for every other task. At this point I still lean towards coding issues for both (and I'm usually a good judge of this).
I'll stop here and reiterate that I vastly prefer OS X to Windows XP, even with the crashes. It runs "stable enough" for me to be happy, and to not see crashes in my day-to-day use.
Early reviews!? XP has been out for more than a year and a half, I think there are in-depth reviews of it available now. If a good idea of its reliability isn't available now it never will be.
Heh. You have to realize that I'm in a very cautious work environment. We don't upgrade immediately (we moved to 2000 last summer) and we don't get our opinions from the trade press. The reviews from the IT guys at work are trickling in, and they're "early" because we're in no hurry to jump on anyone's upgrade treadmill. XP sounds like the usual: It's reliable until you do something it doesn't expect, or until you need it to be. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
At this point, I'm totally jaded. "Dude, you're using 95? Upgrade to NT!" So I do, and I still have to reboot once a week. "Dude, you're using NT? Upgrade to 2000!" So I do, and I've had to do a hard reboot the last three days in a row — the last one after losing a solid hour's work. "Dude, you're using 2000? Upgrade to XP!" Well, pardon my skepticism, but the main IT guy already has, and it sounds like more of the same. The differences between 2000 and XP are incremental at best, and few of them are relevant to my needs, so I'm expecting nothing but the option to choose between traditional Windows drear and the new, cheesy plastic look.
Well, that's not true. I've seen benchmarks showing that the tasking and threading is even less efficient than 2000's already dismal performance, so I'm expecting everything to be just a little more sluggish. Yay.
Comments
Early reviews of XP seem to be generally favorable, but then early reviews of Windows OS' always are: they haven't had time to start falling apart yet. They can try all they want to shore up that OS, but it has too many Achilles' heels (e.g., Windows Messaging, the Registry, far too many things hooked into the kernel) to ever acheive better than fair-weather reliability.
edit: On topic, *cough*, OS X is currently more stable for me than Windows, but there are too many exceptions for me to consider it fully stable. It has a particularly bad habit when it comes out of sleep to discover that its internet connection has vanished (I have cable, so that's not an altogether infrequent occurrence). Otherwise, it's been a rock. Haven't had a KP since 10.0.x.
Originally posted by Amorph
Early reviews of XP seem to be generally favorable, but then early reviews of Windows OS' always are: they haven't had time to start falling apart yet.
Early reviews!? XP has been out for more than a year and a half, I think there are in-depth reviews of it available now. If a good idea of its reliability isn't available now it never will be.
To the point, XP has never crashed or locked up on me in the year and half I have used it.
Originally posted by bunge
I've noticed OS X is pretty much rock solid, but if you do an upgrade things can go haywire. Someone mentioned 10 kernel panics and that's probably not indicative of the OS so much as a bad install (which is somewhat indicative of the OS.)
No, my install was absolutely clean on a formatted partition, on Apple's newest hardware. And non-upgradable hardware, at that. I don't think you can blame anything but the OS on this one.
OS X doesn't have easily reproduced lock-ups here, but I often find the Finder goes wonky after some marathon uptime runs.
Originally posted by alcimedes
actually, i would point to bad RAM in this case. usually (read: every single time i've ever seen) that many crashes on a clean install is hardware related.
A lot of them were related to my ~/Library/Cache. This was causing a crash on every other logout. Once deleted, the problem went away (which doesn't sound like a RAM problem).
If the system were generally unstable, I'd agree RAM would be a good candidate. However, my problems tend to occur on very specific actions, such as inserting/removing PCMCIA cards and (for my wife, not me) accessing an SMB share on a Windows XP machine (in this case, the system crashed every time she attempted it on one day, then I tried and succeeded on my account, after which she had no more problems).
There might be some problems in the PCMCIA hardware on my computer, although unless I am hot-plugging the card it works perfectly (I download digital pictures from a CompactFlash card). The SMB mounting issue is almost assuredly software, since the only hardware being used is the AirPort card, which works stably for every other task. At this point I still lean towards coding issues for both (and I'm usually a good judge of this).
I'll stop here and reiterate that I vastly prefer OS X to Windows XP, even with the crashes. It runs "stable enough" for me to be happy, and to not see crashes in my day-to-day use.
John
Originally posted by FotNS
Early reviews!? XP has been out for more than a year and a half, I think there are in-depth reviews of it available now. If a good idea of its reliability isn't available now it never will be.
Heh. You have to realize that I'm in a very cautious work environment. We don't upgrade immediately (we moved to 2000 last summer) and we don't get our opinions from the trade press. The reviews from the IT guys at work are trickling in, and they're "early" because we're in no hurry to jump on anyone's upgrade treadmill. XP sounds like the usual: It's reliable until you do something it doesn't expect, or until you need it to be. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
At this point, I'm totally jaded. "Dude, you're using 95? Upgrade to NT!" So I do, and I still have to reboot once a week. "Dude, you're using NT? Upgrade to 2000!" So I do, and I've had to do a hard reboot the last three days in a row — the last one after losing a solid hour's work. "Dude, you're using 2000? Upgrade to XP!" Well, pardon my skepticism, but the main IT guy already has, and it sounds like more of the same. The differences between 2000 and XP are incremental at best, and few of them are relevant to my needs, so I'm expecting nothing but the option to choose between traditional Windows drear and the new, cheesy plastic look.
Well, that's not true. I've seen benchmarks showing that the tasking and threading is even less efficient than 2000's already dismal performance, so I'm expecting everything to be just a little more sluggish. Yay.