It was launched on October 25th 2001

It brought the separate operating system code bases together (xp home and xp pro). This has made getting drivers for hardware almost guaranteed.

In fact drivers are going to be the biggest issue with Windows Vista until its been out for a while.

I wonder how history will remember XP. After all its been the most attacked operating system in history.

Today I had to deploy a clean Windows XP Pro SP1 machine and put it in service.

Before I could I had to.

Upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack2 (SP2)
Run Windows Update against the SP2

In total 68 Updates were downloaded and took the best part of 2 hours to bring up to date.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I should just be thankful that Microsoft put a lot of effort in trying to keep XP secure.

So happy birthday XP.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP