From: "Gary Britt" 

My wife was given a new computer with XP Pro for Christmas by one of her
sisters.  It took me about 30 seconds to add the network printer to her
win98 laptop.  About 15 to 30 minutes to do the same when forced to sit
down at her XP machine.  The "helpers" didn't want to let me
connect the xp machine to the network and the internet the way
"I" wanted, and I had to literally stumble around trying to get
past the crazy stupid help stuff to try and configure it the way
"I" wanted.  Parts of XP networking told me that the workgroup
name I was trying to use was invalid, because it has a $ in it.   Win98 and
Win2k have no problem with the name, and parts of XP's
networking doesn't mind and will use the name.  Her XP machine is using the
name with the $ in the workgroup name right now, but some of the wizard
"help" will abort and tell you the name is invalid and can't be
used.

Don't ask me to duplicate how I got the damn XP machine connected to the
network and the printer finally added.  I went through so many
incomprehensible "help" screens that I have almost no clue what I
did to get the thing set up.

About the only thing XP did that would have been of some help, was that it
apparently turns on netbui automatically, unlike win2K, that or XP doesn't
need netbui the way win2k does to see a win98 machine on the peer to peer
home network.

Its not possible to convey how much I find XP to be a substantial downgrade
in usability from Win2k.

Cheers,

Gary

"Randall Parker"
 wrote in
message news:401d7752{at}w3.nls.net...
> Gary,
>
> No, you are not alone.
> 5annoying and I
> find XP to be the worst. XP's networking settings are especially annoying.
Why is the
>   network neighborhood Workgroup name now somewhere else? It is a
networking-related
> name in my mind.
>
> Gary Britt wrote:
> > The very limited experience I have with XP, have been very frustrating.
> > Everything seems to be in a different place and hidden behind layers of
> > "assistants" and "help" that make the MS
Office paperclip seem like a
very
> > functional slim and trim help system.
> >
> > Why does MS continually have to change the names of things and move them
> > around so experienced users are completely dumbfounded?
> >
> > I'm sticking with win98 and Win2K Pro just as long as I possibly can.
XP
> > seems like an awful, strange cartoon interface.
> >
> > Am I alone in this thinking?
> >
> > Gary
> >

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