How to Help Displaying Screens

To see the Help And Support Center window (shown in Figure a), choose Start | Help And Support. The toolbar shows many of the same icons you see in any Explorer window, including Back, Forward, Home, Favorites, and History. You also see Index, Support, and Options commands. The Task pane (left side of the window) shows a list of topics from which to choose. The rest of the window displays the help information you request from the Task pane.
















Figure a.: The Home page of the Help And Support Center

When the Help And Support Center window first appears, you see lists of help topics and tasks (click Home on the toolbar to return to it). Click a topic to see a detailed list of subtopics in the left pane. When you see a plus box to the left of a topic, click the plus box to see its subtopics. When you see a topic with a question-mark icon to its left, clicking the topic displays an explanation, and steps to follow, in the right pane. If a word or phrase becomes underlined when you move your mouse pointer over it, click it to see information about that topic.

If your computer is connected to the Internet, Windows automatically updates the home page of the Help And Support Center with news and updates, which appear in the lower-right corner of the window

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How to Installing Programs Using the Add Or Remove Programs Window

Follow these steps to use the Add Or Remove Programs window to help you install a program:

1. Choose Start | Control Panel. You see the Control Panel window.
2. Click the Add Or Remove Programs category. Or, in Classic view of the Control Panel, run the Add Or Remove Programs program--if the icon is underlined, click it once; if not, double-click it. You can control whether you need to single-click or double-click icons to run programs.
3. You see the Add Or Remove Programs window. This window has three buttons down the left side. Click the Add New Programs button so the window looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1: Add or Removes Programs window, when the Add New Programs button is selected.

4. If you are installing a program from a floppy disk or CD-ROM, insert the disk or CD-ROM into its drive and click the CD Or Floppy button. If you are installing a program from a file on your hard disk or on a network drive, click the CD Or Floppy button anyway--you'll have a chance to tell it where to look for the program in a minute. Windows looks on any floppy disk or CD-ROM in your drives for an installation program (that is, a program named Setup.exe or Install.exe). If Windows finds an installation program, skip to step 7.
5. If Windows doesn't find an installation program, you see the Run Installation Program dialog box, which asks for the full pathname of the installation program.
6. Click the Browse button and specify the installation program you want to run in the Browse window. You can browse to any disk on your computer, or any disk accessible over your LAN, if you are connected to one. Click Open when you find the installation program.
7. When the pathname of the installation program appears in the Run Installation Program box, click the Finish button. The installation program runs. Follow the instructions on the screen to install the program.

Once you install a program, the program name usually (but not always) appears in the list that the Add Or Remove Programs window displays when you click the Change Or Remove Programs button.

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Shutting Down and Restarting Windows

When you need to turn off the computer, you must shut down Windows first to allow Windows to close all its files and do other housekeeping tasks before terminating. To shut down Windows, choose Start | Turn Off Computer, click anywhere on the desktop and press ALT-F4, or press CTRL-ESC and choose Shut Down. You see the Turn Off Computer dialog box:

Your options are

• Stand By Stores the programs and data that are currently open, and then shuts down Windows so you can turn the computer off. The next time you turn your computer on, you can pick up just where you left off.
• Turn Off Shuts down Windows. Windows displays a message when you can safely turn off the computer. Don't turn off the computer until you see this message. Computers with advanced power management shut off automatically.
• Restart Shuts down Windows, and then reloads it (useful if your computer starts acting funny).

If programs are running, Windows closes them before shutting down, switching to standby, or restarting. If a program has unsaved files open, the program should ask you whether you want to save your work before the program exits.

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Various Type of New Networking Features

Windows XP also adds many new network features especially designed to make corporate networking easier and more reliable, including

• Networking has been integrated into the Task Manager to display real-time network usage and connection-speed information.
• An enhanced Netdiag.exe command-line diagnostics tool is provided on the Windows XP CD-ROM.
• An enhanced version of Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS), version 5.1, with support for PnP and Power Event Notification, send cancellation, better statistics capability, and better performance.
• A new version of the Windows Telephony API (TAPI), version 3.1, with support for H.323-compatible IP telephony and IP multicast A/V conferencing, recording of streaming A/V data for playback, USB phones, automatic discovery of telephony servers, and support for H.323 services such as call hold, call transfer, call diversion, call pack, and call pickup.
• Support for newer network devices, including HomePNA phoneline networks, USB-connected network devices, software-based (also called controllerless or "Winmodem") modems, and infrared-enabled cell phones (as modems).
• Support for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) devices on a network, and use of UPnP to detect Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) hosts on a network.
• Network bridgingOne computer can run two different types of networks (such as Fast Ethernet and IEEE 802.11b [Wi-Fi] wireless Ethernet) and act as a connection between them. You need a network card for each network type you're bridging.
• Auto-configuration of IEEE 802.11b Wi-Fi networksWi-Fi (wireless Ethernet) networks are harder to configure than wired networks such as Fast Ethernet, because you must synchronize the card to the wireless access point that allows your PC to talk to others. Windows XP Professional detects the correct settings automatically.
• Ability to store and recall settings of various wireless networks the user has connected to in the past for automatic configuration when the same network is encountered again. This feature simplifies moving between multiple wireless networks, such as home and office or different offices. Post SP2, the UI for wireless is more graphical and intuitive, and XP remembers which networks you have previously authorized an insecure connection for, and automatically connects when that network is available in the future. Available networks are arranged in order of signal strength, as show in Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1. Friendlier wireless networking interface reports available networks and remembers last session's settings.

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• An enhanced Connection Manager with new management options, split tunneling (secure VPN and public Internet access at the same time), Favorites feature for storing connection settings for different locations (useful for business travelers), client-side logging for troubleshooting, and support for ICS.
• The enhanced Network Troubleshooter feature, available from the left-hand menu of the Network Connections menu, provides one-stop access to network-related tools in the Help and Support center. You can start Ping and Net View commands to diagnose and check Internet and LAN connections, as well as run troubleshooters for Internet Connection Sharing, Modems, and other home and corporate network configurations. A new Network Diagnostics tool scans the network and tests your network card. As shown in Figure 1.2 at the end of the testing process, it displays the results of its tests for Internet service settings, computer information, and network adapters (including modems).

Figure 1.2 The Network Diagnostics tool displays the configuration of both hardware and software components on your network.

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• Support for encrypted folders with multiple users.
• Remote desktop support via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), enabling users to access their computers remotely from anywhere with network access, including other offices, at home, or airport kiosks.
• Improved Group Policy feature with hundreds of new policies provided, making it easier to choose a predefined policy instead of needing to modify one.
• Remote Assistance to allow network or Internet-based help desk personnel to view a user's display and provide training or technical assistance. This feature can be centrally enabled or disabled as desired.

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Difference Between Windows XP Versus Linux

Trying to compare Windows XP versus Linux is difficult for several reasons, including
• Windows XP requires a relatively recent computer with at least 128MB of RAM to function, while Linux can run successfully on even 486-based systems long obsolete for use with Windows
• Windows XP is available in just two versions (Home Edition and Professional), while Linux is available in numerous distributions
• Windows XP is primarily a GUI-based operating system, while Linux is primarily command-line driven (although KDE and Gnome, the two most common GUIs, are increasingly popular)
Although Linux has made great strides in so-called "back end" uses such as Web servers, network servers, and embedded devices, Windows XP is a better choice for desktops for several reasons, including
• Journaling file system for higher reliability and crash recovery.
• Compatibility testing and guarantees for operating system and applications.
• Wide availability of commercial applications at retail and online stores.
• Clustering and base-load balancing.
• Long-term roadmap of operating system deployment plans.
• Larger hard disks and maximum file sizes. Linux's maximum file size is 2 Gigabytes; Windows XP's limit is 18.4 quintillion bytes (Petabytes).
• "Synchronous I/O," which allows smoother running in Windows XP when multiple threads are being processed and waiting for input or output. It improves SMP scalability as well.
• Consistent GUI across all toolsLinux has no single standard GUI at present.
• A single version which can be installed for most major languages and countries.
• Dedicated support network, with close to one-half million Microsoft-certified trained professionals and engineers.
We believe that the entire Linux/Windows controversy comes down to this: Microsoft offers lots and lots of powerful stuff (which you can use to build very sophisticated software) from the C++ compiler, to the component-nature of Excel and other apps, to the ASP scripting language, COM, and so on. These tools let you leverage everything Microsoft offers to make very powerful applications. As people used to say in the '60s and '70s, nobody ever lost his job buying IBM. Now it's safe to say nobody ever lost his job buying Microsoft. True, you're locked into Windows because the stuff you build on Windows systems can't be ported to UNIX variants, but that's the price you pay for the tools, the user base, and the support and training. Although increasing support options are available for Linux (see www.linuxcare.com), enterprise-level support for Linux is still not as widespread as for Windows.

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Windows XP Professional Compare to UNIX and Linux

Windows XP's kernel, like Windows 2000's, has its roots in UNIX. UNIX is a very popular multitasking operating system developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s. It was designed by programmers for programmers. In fact, the language C was developed just to write UNIX. Even though UNIX has become a friendlier operating system with the addition of Windows-like interfaces such as MOTIF, it's still relatively user-unfriendly, requiring cryptic commands much like DOS.

UNIX

Because it is written in C, UNIX can run on any computer that has a C compiler, making it quite portable. AT&T gave away the UNIX source code to universities and licensed it to several companies during its early years. AT&T no longer owns UNIX; the UNIX trademark is now owned by OpenGroup, though the source code is claimed to be owned by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), though this is now in debate.

Unfortunately, to avoid even the licensing fees to AT&T, UNIX lookalikes sprung up over the years. Without the proper license, these versions could not call themselves UNIX, only UNIX-like. And as these clones proliferated, cross-compatibility became an issue. More than a handful of versions (dialects) of UNIX have appeared, the primary contenders being AT&T's own, known as System V, and another developed at the University of California at Berkeley, known as BSD4.x, x being a number from 1 to 3. Other popular brands of UNIX these days are HP-UX from HP, AIX from IBM, Solaris from Sun, and SCO's version, UnixWare.

In 1984, industry experts were brought together to create guidelines and standards for UNIX clones, in hopes of creating a more coherent market. The result was a single UNIX specification, which includes a requirement for POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX) compliance. Accepted by the IEEE and ISO, POSIX is a standard that makes porting applications and other code between variants of UNIX as simple as recompiling the source code.

NOTE

Another popular version of UNIX that runs on the PC platform is called FreeBSD. Briefly, FreeBSD 4.x is a UNIX-like operating system based on U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-lite release for the Intel 386 platform. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2 to the Intel 386, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD code remains. You can find a fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how it can work for you at www.freebsd.com.

UNIX has been the predominant operating system for workstations connected to servers, mostly because of its multiuser capabilities and its rock-solid performance. Windows NT and its successors, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, have been making inroads due to the extensive number of development tools and applications for the Windows platform. However, the low-cost UNIX variant called Linux is revitalizing UNIX across all platforms.

Linux

Linux is a UNIX lookalike. Linux isn't a port of a preexisting operating system, but rather it was written from the ground up by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-born computer scientist who wanted to develop a UNIX-like operating system for computer students to run on low-cost Intel computers. Torvalds wrote the kernel with the help of a handful of computer programmers. Like all variants of UNIX, Linux has many of the features of NT/Windows 2000/Windows XP, such as true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, intelligent memory management, and TCP/IP networking.

Linux is an open system, and programmers worldwide are invited to participate in its building and refinement. Unlike other flavors of UNIX that were based on licensed source code, Linux is based on Minix, which mimics UNIX in a way that does not infringe on the UNIX license. That's why Linux distributions are practically free.

NOTE

Actually, the term Linux pertains only to the kernel. What people have come to refer to as Linux is actually a collection of separate pieces of code, the majority of which are GNU. It was not until Linux came together with GNU that the full power of the Linux OS (what GNU enthusiasts would called GNU Linux) crystallized.

The several popularly distributed Linux versions are differentiated mostly by the selection of tools and utilities bundled with them. The most popular package at this point is Red Hat Linux. If you want to go it alone, you can acquire Linux for free, but buying some commercially bundled packages makes the job of installation and support easier because you get support. Technically, the distribution of the software must be free, in accordance with the GNU General Public License (GPL) agreement governing the distribution of Linux and the collected modules that accompany it.

Linux is now running on a wide variety of systems, including Sun JavaStations, the IBM RS/6000, and the Alpha chip originally developed by DEC and later sold by Compaq, MIPS, SPARC, Open VMS, Digital UNIX, and other platforms.

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Differences Between Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, 64-Bit, and Server Versions of Windows XP

Windows XP comes in two distinct varieties for 32-bit processors:
• Home Edition
• Professional
Although both versions contain the same integrated applications and multimedia features, Windows XP Professional also includes corporate network support, backup, and security features similar to those found in Windows 2000 Professional.
The now-available 64-bit CPUs such as Intel Itanium and AMD's Athlon 64 and Opteron can run advanced versions of XP designed to take advantage of their speed and other enhancements. Windows XP 64-bit Edition is the Intel-based workstation version. It supports up to 16GB of physical RAM and up to 16 terabytes (16TB) of virtual memory, and takes full advantage of the superior floating-point performance of the Itanium processor. One or two Itanium processors can be used. Windows XP 64-bit Edition runs 32-bit Windows programs in a subsystem. The user interface is very similar to Windows XP Professional but the features will vary. Another 64-bit version has been developed for the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron chips, dubbed "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems."
Both 64-bit versions use an emulation layer called WOW64 to run Win32-based applications. When running on the Intel 64-bit processor, complaints are that the 32-bit programs run a bit too slowly. Early testing indicates that the AMDs run 32-bit applications considerably faster than the Itaniums do. 64-bit versions are supplied preinstalled on computer hardware.
Both 64-bit versions use an emulation layer called WOW64 to run Win32-based applications, although for best performance, Microsoft recommends using 32-bit software on 32-bit Windows systems. The emulation feature allows organizations to use their Itanium-based systems with existing Windows applications until 64-bit versions are created internally or purchased from software vendors.
What about 32-bit server versions of Windows XP? Microsoft has multiple server editions of Windows XP, generally dubbed Microsoft Windows 2003 Server. The editions differ based on variations in the total amount of memory used by each version, the number of processors supported, and the number of domains that can be controlled. As of this writing, I counted 16 specialized servers for areas such as storage servers, SQL servers, speech servers, commerce servers, and so on.
Table 1 Compares Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional to other versions of Windows.
Table 1 Various Capabilities of Windows XP Home Edition as Compared to Earlier Versions of Windows

Fig. 1: Differences between windows XP

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