Windows.XP.in.a.Nutshell.1002005.2Ed [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 1. The Lay of the Land

In many ways, Windows XP is a bit of an anachronism. On one hand, it
is technically only an incremental upgrade to Windows 2000, released
only a year earlier. On the other hand, it is the first
consumer-level operating system based on a powerful and robust
platform previously available only to advanced users and network
administrators.

Windows XP is easily the most technically sophisticated operating
system Microsoft has ever released, but it is adorned with an almost
cartoonish interface. It has an advanced, scalable networking system
built in, but networking is easier to set up in Windows XP than in
any other release. It has the heftiest system requirements of any
version of Windows to date, but given the same hardware, it ends up
outperforming its predecessors in almost every way. It also has more
superfluous bells and whistles than any other OS, but will likely be
the OS of choice for most power users for several years to come.

There's more to understanding Windows XP than simply
knowing how to open applications and manage your files effectively.
In this chapter, we'll cover what's
new in this release and how Windows XP fits into the big picture.
Move on to Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 for some of the more basic aspects of
day-to-day use of the operating system, or skip ahead to the later
chapters for more of the meatier content.