Customer Reviews
owner 
2007-12-23
Tried to install the XP Professional Upgrade at least 10 times, kept coming up and fatal error on the disk. Had to call Microsoft and they replaced it with a new one.
XP Pro Upgrade 
2007-08-11
upgrading has never been easier! Don't want to jump into Vista just yet but tired of 98? Even if you have XP home, upgrading to Pro will give you better stability and more access!
OP System upgrade 
2007-08-09
The product fulfilled everything that I expected it to do. Delivery was as promised!
Better than Vista 2007-07-29
No One could get me to buy a Vista operating system until at least the first upgrade. Win xp Pro is the best thing going.
Technology meets user... 2007-07-26
I'm still hanging on to the idea that technical products should not require assistance from technical support in order to get them working... In this case the support "although very good" still took a week or so to help me iron out a problem with "windows update" after the install.. This may sound a little whiney to all of you who have made an adaptation to getting stuff that works "sort-of" but, I do from time to time manage to get some pretty impressive software/hardware that works the first time I try it...
Microsoft...what can I say 
2008-06-27
This was rather complicated to install and I just don't have to much good to say about microsoft. I'm sure glad I don't have to buy a new license everytime I play my music CD's on a different CD player!!!!
Amazingly overpriced for a captive audience 2008-06-13
At the same time that Microsoft is discontinuing sales for Windows XP, they continue to charge $199 to upgrade XP Home to XP Pro. There is not much additional functionality provided except for the networking support required to allow a computer to join a Domain. Hence companies of any size that require this must pay an artifically-inflated price because they have no option. It is also somewhat buggy in that the upgrade can disable some functions as documented by Microsoft Knowledgebase entries.
Exactly what I wanted... 2008-06-06
This was exactly what I wanted and delivery was very prompt. I will order from them again.
Another Crash for Microsoft! 2008-04-18
I ordered this upgrade product after careful review and preparation, I do have a PhD from MIT in EECS, and actually am back doing research at MIT after a few years, so I assumed that this would work and that I had a modicum of intelligence to deal with a Microsoft product. Bad idea. I loaded this on my laptop, a good trusty Dell, and it removed my old WIN2K and then when it was halfway thru loading XP it crashed, "FATAL ERROR".
Now I had a dead laptop. Off to Microsoft Customer Service in Bombay, they were patient and we found that there was a corrupted file on the disk. They told me I would have to mail in the disks and order a complete and new XP load for which I would have to pay an additional fee, for now upgrades would not function. I then told them how I would file a lawsuit in two days in the Newark Federal Court in a Class Action against Microsoft, they then after checking with the Supervisor agreed to give me a new key to load an old copy of XP. Five hours later I am back to the beginning and then ten hours later I have most of my files back up again. I did lose a few because I had used the keys before and they required a new purchase, Adobe was the number one issue there.
Thus my advice to anyone even thinking of this, DO NOT EVER CHANGE! Microsoft quality control appears in my opinion to be quite deficient. Bombay can become very helpful but Redmond is not. I measure lost hours of humanity and its creativity dealing with Microsoft issues in Megagates, a Megagate is one second of human creativity lost trying to deal with a Microsoft glitch, multiply that times the number of users and one can see the great lost to humanity wasted on these poorly engineered products. Imagine if Civil Engineers designed bridges the way Microsoft does its software!
However if you want to upgrade, here is a bit of advice:
1. Do a clean sweep, buy the total system not the upgrade.
2. This is critical, before doing anything, check all programs which have authentication keys and properly unload them to be certain you can reload after you reformat the disk. For example, Adobe 8 will wipe itself out and if you have loaded your two copies, you will have to buy a new one again. Same for Quick Books and many others. If you fail this step it will be very costly!
3. Always back up everything. Always back up the registry, even if you are dumping it.
4. Watch out for the BIOS changes, for that is the way an OEM Activation Code is checked, and you do not want to play with that!
5. If you are also going to add hardware remember that every time you turn the machine on or daily, whichever comes first, Microsoft is checking your configuration. If you change too many things in an upgrade, they will disconnect your OS! So before you do the sweep, and with your Internet connection off, that means no internal cards etc, make the change, then clean the files, and do a fresh load. It will only take a day of your life or so.
6. Write everything you see down! Write everything you do down. Stay close to a phone, there may still be a Microsoft gremlin somewhere!
Good Luck, Yes XP is better, and no I still do not like Vista. It is like being forced to watch someone else's 35 mm slides from their first vacation to Hawaii.
XP for Me is Solid and Good 2008-03-21
I have XP running on a bootcamp partition on my MacBook and it is doing just fine. I spend most of my working time in Word, hardly ever using any of the other programs in the Office suite. However, I use the Adobe products Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator a whole bunch. Other than that I play solitaire, watch videos and, of course, use both Explorer and Firefox when I go online. That's about it for me, software wise, and XP handles it all without fail, without crashing and without giving me any headaches.
And I will miss it when I upgrade to Vista, however my machine can handle the upgrade. If yours can't, then I'd recommend you stay with XP. It's solid and good. Vista may be better, but it's not worth buying a new computer over.
