A little heavy on the anti-Apple bias, don't you think. The comments damning OSX are way over the top Travis, despite XP's goodness. At least everyone thats actually used OSX for more than a second knows its better than XP (or Vista) could ever hope to be.

"The competition may think they are cool with the animated enlarging icons, but that shit eats the ram, hardcore."

Kinda ironic that Vista is going to have all the RAM-eating eyecandy then...consumers are stupid and Microsoft knows this.

Just a note : CompUSA puts Windows XP Professional with SP2 at $299.99. That means it's 'possible' to get a complete desktop unit only if the rest of the desktop costs all of 1 cent. That's what I call competiton.

All I have to say for you XP, is it's made me more intelligent in everything, it's shown me alot about PC's, your right mouse button, your ability to use about every program there freakin is, your oh so compatibility, gadgets, and all your fine custom made things that make every PC running windows different. I used to use mac, but now use windows operating systems cause they are MUCH easier, slightly technical, but hey...MAC IS A PC no matter what you say....but then again when I say I use PC..I mean a PC that runs windows operating system..not OSX.

PC: Personal computer, mac=computer, it's yours, so it's personal..same for windows computers.

Xenobiologayista your saying apple also knows consumers are stupid?

I'll throw in some love for XP. When I was fairly new to Linux and was taking a Linux admin class in school I had installed some RPM packages from a CD. I couldn't for the life of me get that CD out. I tried unmounting the drive, killing the process(es) EVERYTHING. I ended up having to reboot the computer to the the CD out.

I've never had to do more than push the eject button on an XP box.

I think the biggest thins XP had going for it, was that it wasn't Windows ME

I watched a co-worker try to upgrade their Mac G4 to OSX and I nearlly fell off my chair in laughter. Yes dont ask me why any self respecting would still be running G4's, well were cheap what can I say.

Windows XP would never given me the headaches that that G4 did. I love you WinXP Pro, Happpppppppy Birthday muahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"Just a note : CompUSA puts Windows XP Professional with SP2 at $299.99. That means it's 'possible' to get a complete desktop unit only if the rest of the desktop costs all of 1 cent. That's what I call competiton."

Three letters sykora....OEM... No pc manufacturer in their right mind would put retail versions of windows on their computers.

"Holy crap you have to try out this new game! It's incredible!!!"

"I use a Mac"

"Oh... "

Thank you XP for giving me something to do when I'm bored and want interactive entertainment at it's finest.

It's actually refreshing to see the ol' Giz bashing Apple every now and then. After all, there are some days when we see nothing BUT Apple products up here. Kudos!

And there was I, thinking the good folks of Gizmodo were fair and level-headed when it comes to such things.

@ sykora

I think that the $300 computer was under the "machine competition" section... that would translate to the fact that you wouldn't have to go out to CompUSA to get your copy of XP

There are MANY computers out there that you can by, with xp already included (this is called OEM), that are around the $300 price mark.

WOW actually showing M$ some love GOOD STUFF!

Good lord, people...calm down. As mentioned in the article, they're givin' some love to an OS that doesn't get much...just like they put down the iPod which gets waaaay too much love. Balanced and fair, no? Ha ha.

This was nice to see.

Like it or not, Microsoft makes kickass software and XP did almost everything right.

JB3- Define 'better'. You must have tons of extensive beta experience with Vista.

We could learn a lot from you, I bet.

The best thing about XP is the hardware options. However, the worst thing about XP is the hardware options (think blue screen of death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death ).

At least it doesn't have built in DRM bull crap.

I guess with the release of IE7, XP is finally out of Beta-Testing and ready for full release.

I use both Windows PC and MAC PC. While I'm at work for about 9 hours a day I am using a MAC. I'm as unbiased as they come, well sorta, MAC makes it easy to hate. But as a real gadget geek windows XP thank you very very much and happy birthday. I can't wait for Vista!

Having worked for a company making Mac accessories, I had Apple products thrust upon me for a couple of years. Daily I grew to hate their OS'. From OS9 to 10 and all those silly cat names.

People think Microsoft is a monopoly. Ha!, they've never had to work with Apple.

For good or bad, Microsoft standardized computing. Since the introduction of Windows, everyone knows that the Save button looks like a floppy disk, and the Print button looks like a printer. Apple puts flash over function. Drag a disk to the trash to eject? Whisky Tango Foxtrot! If you're not told that's how it's done, who would ever think to do that?

Apples motto, "Think Different", really means "Think Different from Microsoft even if it means changing things that work for the sake of not being Microsoft".

I thank Microsoft, and by extension all versions of DOS and Windows, for keeping me gainfully employed for going on 20 years.

Office depot this week

Mac notebook:
NEW 512MB MAX ram
60 gig HARDRIVE
BUILT IN WIFI
HUGE 15.4 inch screen!
DVD player

1200 after rebate

PC notebook:
2 gigs ddr2 ram
100 gig hardrive
built in wifi
built in dvd burner duel layer with lightscribe
Built in 1.3 MP webcam
256MB graphics card
899$

the better...the PC notebook....this may have been this week or last week..the ad doesnt say and I always keep last weeks ad......

lol @ Whisky Tango Foxtrot!

FROST, you mention laptops, but you don't mention a processor? For shame. Oh & BTW, that $899 Laptop runs a Pentium 3. HA.

I agree, windows gets all the bashing, but look again, they are the giant & need to be taken down a peg.

Why on earth M$ would ship an OS that looked like Fisher Price out of the box is beyond me...

Happy b-day, now for a spanking.

Frost 1 makes an excellent point, apple is overpriced

Yes, this is definately a top 10 from a man that hasn't spent much time on a Mac. Let me help you with your Top 10:

The Right Mouse Button: Yes, Mac supports the additional feature and has for a very long time. It's called the CONTROL + mouse click. What else are you gonna do with your left hand while surfing the net (wait, never mind)?

Application Support: That's one of the biggest issues with a PC... there's too much "crap" being made for it. Go ahead, load up your PC with a bunch of appz made from teenagers and watch the fatal blue screen of death appear. Just wait till you want to delete the app (yeah, it never fully gets removed... we all know that... unlike a Mac). Besides, I'll take less appz made by professionals any day of the year.

Gaming: Yes, XP does run games better than OSX. But isn't that why there's Xbox, Playstation, GameCube, and more? If you want a computer, buy a computer. If you want a gaming machine, buy a gaming machine. Does your car cut your grass?

Customizability: Go ahead XP Fan Boy, buy that prepacked XP machine. Call me before you start it up though. I want to come over and watch you uninstall all the AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Encarta, Trial-me-and-this crap software that destroys the OS performance. As far as the case mods, I haven't seen one that even compares to what Apple puts out. In fact, I've seen several that try to immitate the Mac. However, the cheap, painted, plastic case is a dead give-a-way. A Mac case is built like a Mercedes, a PC case is built like a kit car.

Machine Competition: It's called "you get what you pay for". Going back on using cars as an example: do you really think a $15k car is as good as a $60k car? If you do, then you've never owned a $60k car (just like you've never owned a Mac).

Speed: I'll just point to Xenobiologista's comment above for this one.

New Technology: What about dual quad-core Macs? Yeah, count 'em-eight cores. And let's not forget (if you know ANYTHING at all) you know that if it wasn't for Apple, there would have NEVER been Windows.

Media Center: I'll give you this one. Media Center is very nice. I use one in the bedroom. But I have faith that Apple will definately have something better on the rise.

Versions: Yo, Spin Doctor!!! You can spin it anyway you want to, the fact is this: After 5 years, Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to secure and stablize XP (that's why they're creating Vista). Apple on the other hand year after year delivers an amazing OS. Sure you have to pay for it if you want it, but you don't NEED the latest OS. Do you buy a new car every year?

Piracy: Your comment here is just juvenile. P2P and BitTorrent programs are for Macs as well. Before these programs there were Message Boards and News Groups (also accessable by Macs). But stealing software comes with a price. If you try and tell me that you've never illegally downloaded a piece of software that wasn't infested with virus', you're lying. But then again, Macs don't get Virus'.

One thing I know for sure, EVERY SINGLE person that I know that has switched from PCs to Macs were ecstatically happy they did. I can't say the same for the few that "tried" to switch to a PC (they hated it and immediately switched back). And by the way, I own both a PC and a Mac (PC for work, PC for Media Center, Mac for everything else). I'm well experienced on both machines and am able to make an informed comment.

Come on guys lighten up...This is just a funny article. And give credit where credit is due. MS has done a lot of things to make easier for us to build, mod, run computers. Does it do everything well...no...but then again nobody does.

Although it does make me think...what will apple start calling their OSs once they run out of cats...I mean do I really want an operating system called Ocelot?

seriously (Frost1).

i work at a University (wont say which one) and we purchase Macs for these friggin professors.

I never thought anyone would be stupid enough to spend more than $2500 on a laptop with less than 2Ghz and 1Gb of RAM. But I see that s*** every day!

If only people knew how much of their tax dollars (since its a public University) were going towards S. Jobs' pockets because people still think that Apple products are better they would crap their pants.

I got a laptop 3 years ago for $1k with a faster AMD CPU than what Apple is hawking now.

Now I run a system i got at Frys for $199 that has a 2.6Ghz CPU and came with 40Gb and 256mb or RAM.

I cant even get a Nano for that much.

In summary people who buy Apple are tools.

Dumb dumb tools.

Its like buying a Daewoo for $60k just because its a Daewoo.

tsk tsk Apple.

If you're gonna pin Windows against OS X at least try to do a good job about it. It's true that more games are made for Windows...but oh, yeah, Bootcamp!

And the fact that it takes microsoft 5 years just to come out with a update to XP isn't a good thing. It just shows that M$ has no innovation whatsoever and most of the features in the long overdue Vista were in systems as far back as Panther or Jagaur, or even Cheetah (yeah the one that came out in 2001, Vista=2007).

The $299 boxes from Dell/hp are just ugly boxes with some kind of hardware that can come together and make the crappiest version of XP (home vs pro vs whatever) to do nothing but broswe, most dont even come with word.

So don't go all out on xp's bday. Just wish it happy b'day and we can't wait for vista to come out in 2011 and have millions of lines of codes filled with nothing but bugs and bad software. And i'm not gonna even go into iLife that comes on every mac for FREE and can't even be compared to the apps for windows for hundreds of dollars...

Shervyn,

maybe Apple can go into the PDA business again and call that OS "Kittens"

haha.

and then charge +$1k for a slow-ass PDA.

It's nice that people take a post about things to love about Windows XP, & then turn it into a way to bash Apple. This post was about software people.... SOFTWARE. What has this world come to. Lighten up people.

I will sum it up like this:
If you currently use a Mac, you probably started with a PC.
If you currently use a PC, you probably never used a Mac.

Travis,

Thanks for vindicating XP were it belongs, as one of the best workhorses around. Seems like too many Mac fanboys do nothing but boast the greatness of their Macs and put down Windows every chance they get.

Xenobiologista,
From your comment it seems that own a Mac.
If you were at least a bit interested in using Vista you would know by now the hardware requirements.
The hardware requirements for all the eye candy of Vista are far superior than most PC's used on average today. Otherwise the Aero interface in Windows Vista will be disabled.

Vista will be basically crippled with old hardware.

Would you be able to run OSX in and old Apple II ?... I didn't think so either.

Consumers are stupid, sure... but Microsoft placed minimum hardware requirements very early on because when creating Vista it re-wrote the OS from the ground up eliminating the entire legacy of bloated code to maintain compatibility on old hardware.

So please stop puting Vista down when it may turn out to be the most robust OS for the next 10 years.
Also Vista is compatible with 99% of all your previously owned software... unlike Apple that screwed every MAC owner's software when it changed to Intel chips...
How's that for Apple thinking their followers are stupid.
And best off all.. they all bought it!

God bless you Travis! So true, so true. While "The competition" makes some neat computers with fancy, ram-obliterating, tricks, XP will always stand strong and perform (unless you're stupid and downloaded something with a virus) no matter how crappy your machine gets.

Try installing tiger on a G4.. go ahead, see what happens. Now try installing XP on a P3 : beauty!

Whenever I use a mac I feel like a huge retard because everything is so pretty and animated and then all the icons all over the place start to get to me because there's no 'program files' folder.. XP won't leave you feeling that way, Installing a program? Just keep pushing the next button and you're going to do fine. Want to get rid of it? XP will take care of that for you too, just keep pushing the next button again and enjoy watching the blue bar race across the screen.

The best part comes when you get to watch a die-hard mac user defending his or her precious mac when you tell then that you like XP. XP doesn't need anyone defending it, it's already doing that on its own by being installed on just about every computer around...

Terrible article. 50% or more of these things have nothing to even do with Microsoft or Windows or Windows XP. And could we cut down on the underhanded jabs at Apple? Mac-Zealots are enough to deal with already.

"And there was I, thinking the good folks of Gizmodo were fair and level-headed when it comes to such things."

Funny, I always seem to say the exact same thing after seeing an Apple story....

This balances out at least two of the nauseating OSX-Is-Our-God stories we've been seeing as of late on Gizmodo.

I love how people call Windows XP a "workhorse" and generally think it is a great piece of software.

Why then does XP have all these security it holes? Why do you need to restart windows machines so often? How come you need to re-install windows about every 2 years because of the 'half-life' of XP (the OS degrades to an almost unusable state over time)? Why are so many machines bogged down with spyware and viruses?

If everyone is bashing Apple, then why is M$ copying the majority of functionality in Apple's OS thats been around since XP debuted?

M$ is 7 years behind Apple's products and their features. (Look at vista and the Zune...which will become crap when the true video iPod comes out)

I recently got a MacBook Pro for free (on one of those "Win a free MacBook Pro" websites). Well, kind of free, it ended up costing me about $250, but not bad for a $2000 laptop. Anyway, I have the convenience of running OSX Tiger and Windows XP Pro on the same machine.

I'm enjoying OSX Tiger, but I think I'll always be a Microsoft guy at heart. I would like to thank Apple for offering a machine that will run both OS's. Can't beat that.

ummmmm Windows fanboys approve. Oh and btw apple fans, we don't listen to your whining, because its kinda fruity. Look how pretty it is....um...yeah ok travis...

I love how everyone here seemed to have missed the tongue-in-cheek humour in the article.

windows xp…meh.

Just a random tip for all you one mouse OS X users, (mainly powerbooks/mackbooks). if you wanna steal pictures from the internet, and dont feel like Ctrl-Clicking, there's an even simpler way. Just click on the picture in safari or even firefox, and drag to the desktop. Who needs a seond mouse button anyways... except maybe for minesweeper. (which is a fun widget.)

Finally Gizmodo gives XP some love! Its all about the gaming and the cheaper hardware.

Terrible article. More than 50% of these "features" aren't even part of Windows. And thanks for all the underhanded jabs at Apple/OS X. I can't get enough of the Operating System wars!

OKay im sorry to sink all of your "my computer is more reliable because steve jobs smeared his favorite enchanted cocoa butter on it before it shipped." BS, THE ONLY REASON why macs have less viruses and less user created problems is that THERE ARE LESS USERS, Mac only takes a little under 2 precent of the market for computers And it has been structually proven that there are no architectural diffrences that put mac in any holy place away from viruses. IF macs became as popular as Pcs are THEN THEY WOULD HAVE JUST AS MANY VIRUSES AS WINDOWS.... understand? your popular because your unpopular! And if you became more popular, you would be subject to the same stupid, exaggerated insults that us windows people (that actually know how to fix our own computer) are subject to everyday, AND YES< im speaking of Those RIDICULUS commercials in which the say that windows cant do things that it has always been able to do, and then some.

erm... All the mac's come with right clicking mice now (and trackpads). Why it took them 10 years, well that's just sad.

Anyone ever heard of the phrase "To Each, His Own?"

How does a story celebrating XP turn into a pissing contest between XP and apple?

I use both, and I think that they both have their own strenghts and weeknesses. My G4 runs great and Apples software is designed to run good at lower operating speeds. It's got killer graphics and does awesome work with my Flash and Dreamweaver programs. The downside is that the Mac has little 3rd party Support.

On the other hand, my Dell and Presario run just as good with XP and 1.5GHz processors with 1GB of ram each. They play games and run media as well, albeit thy are slow by today's standards.

My point is as long as it does what you want it to do, be happy that you have it and enjoy using it.

Happy 5th Birthday XP...no matter what system you run on.