2001 was a busy year. Apple was popping off. Napster and Sega, meanwhile, threw in their respective towels. We got three new game consoles, one from a brand new Challenger. Scientists found this little guy, and America had her worst day ever. And for those of us who still remember all of that, Windows XP holds a special place in our hearts. But was it really that good, or was it just better than the Millennium Edition and Vista dumpster fires that bookended it? To find out, we gathered some of our young and young-at-heart friends to see if they could navigate Microsoft's most iconic Windows ever. There's lots more where that came from, but before we get to it, there's one more thing that came out in 2001: this Segway. Well, not this one exactly, one like it. Wa does this thing even work? Not even a little. We're still going to get to our sponsor, though: Hetner. With their new Singapore location, Het's GDPR-compliant high-performance Cloud servers are now lowering latency on a global scale. Check

out their metered pay-as-you-go options using our link down below. Windows XP was chock-full of important milestones. It was the first consumer version of Windows to be based on the more stable NT kernel. It was the first to require Microsoft product activation online, and it was the first major overhaul of the Start menu since it was introduced back in Windows 95. It was also the first Windows to use graphical effects like alpha compositing and drop shadows to pretty up the interface, and it introduced ClearType for better readability on LCD displays, which were just starting to approach affordability for the home user. There were also big changes to the Control Panel, Windows Explorer, networks and internet connectivity, multilanguage support, and multimedia tools, many of which have changed a fair bit since then. So let's see if our test subjects are able to navigate our challenges. I'm Katie, and I'm 18 years old. I am McIntyre, and I am 17 years old. Ah hi, I'm Elijah, junior writer here. I am 26 years old, and I have

Actually, I never used Windows XP. I've never even used Windows 7. Whoa, Windows XP is running on this display, man. I haven't used this since like 2001. I remember it was my favorite operating system all the way until probably Windows 10. You know, the funny thing is, it actually looks really alike. Windows hasn't actually changed all that much. WoW, the local area connection with the little two monitors or whatever. Oh my God, I forgot all about this stuff. Oh my God, is the control panel the good one? Oh, I can't search anymore. No, I have to actually hit the search button. I want you to set up the screen saver. Where is it? Can I search for it? Try. What was it called again? Probably pictures. Oh gosh, this is bad. Oh my, oh my gosh, it's right there. Oh, that one for sure. Oh, that. Oh my God, I forgot about all the screen savers. Oh, where's the like pipes? 3D pipes. [Applause] Yeah, all right. Well, properties, obviously desktop screen saver. Wait, does this have

the pipes. Hell yeah, there you go. It has been applied, so I think the first person to go to properties to do that. Oh, where did everyone else go? Everyone El went contr the dog. I forgot about the dog. I remember Merlin. Yeah, Merlin was dope. Who else? Courtney? Earl? I don't remember Courtney or Earl. I mostly just remember Merlin and Rover. Uh, 100% using Merlin switch. Why didn't he switch? Oh, he's going away, and then he comes in. What an animation. Oh my God. Uh, probably my favorite thing that I used to do in XP was turn everything off so that I could get higher FPS in halflife and Counter Strike. I took it sweet time. All right, my CD's in. Now we need to open it. Does this thing even open? I don't think I've ever even touched one of these things. I'm trying not to break it. I have no clue. Okay, now it's... I've just gotten a bunch of options of different audio I can play, the audio, copy it, play it from different I

think apps. I think I don't know how to do it. No, there's no copy. Just this is enable and disable selected tracks. Is there anything C right um oh yeah copy music. Oh there okay oh this will be easy. I want track one and I want track six and I want track nine. Let's do one and 24. Wait now the 24 is gone. Okay this makes no sense. Okay now they're all gone. Now they're all unchecked. What oh I can hear it. It's oh the high pitch is actually really annoying. It's doing a some sort of coil wine of some sort. Well it sounds like coil wine. I don't know it's actually coil wine but like it it's that type of sound. Is it done holy crap this takes forever. I could probably Google this CD faster on YouTube. Go to a youtube. mpp3 ripper. Don't do that by the way and then rip it faster than this. This is crazy. Hey I got my my three songs. All right good work. Now I want you to make an audio CD with

those tracks insert blank SE. Okay, well, conveniently, there's a BL CD right here. Why are you so BR on it? It's a CD. They scratch like these. Do they? Oh, okay, now it's copying to the CD. Nice. First one's done. This is mine. Here you go. There we go. Did you do I? I did 15 and 16. Okay, so oh yeah, yes. Sweet, I got my own CD now, right? Just clicking your drags? No, it's not click and drag. Oh, copy, insert blank CD. I did a little closer, huh? They look the exact same. What do you mean look closer at the drives? One says LG, one says DVD. Is it because this one says SEC, your disc, or super multi? Yeah, the super multi is what you're after. Okay, copy. Holy, this is the fast version. That's crazy to me, dude. This would drive me like if my Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer was acting this slow. I would immediately be reinstalling. I'd be like something's wrong. I forgot how long

you'd put a CD in, and you'd like rip it, and then you'd walk away for a while 'cause it actually takes some time. What a process. We just don't even do this anymore. Wow, I get to open it. I get the privilege. Sheesh. [Music] Amazing. Smells like 2000, baby. Which one's what? It should say on them. Select the programs you want to install. I see it. Okay, okay. Oh, there it goes. It's installing. Oh, insert Microsoft Suite disc 2. And then why do it ask me to do disc 2? I, yeah, back in the day. And this is after floppies too 'cause you used to have to do this with floppies as well where you'd get like a stack of floppies, and then you'd install them disc by disc. And then CDs came out, and they could hold a lot more information, and that was great, but you still had to do a lot of things one by one. I remember installing Diablo I, and you could skip part of the

install, but you wouldn't get the cinematics 'cause they were all on like disc 3 or whatever. All right, let's see if this just auto-launches. It did setup. Wow, this may take several minutes. That's very true. It would take even longer if it was on a hard drive, which everyone had back then. All programs, holy crap, this is the worst organization I've ever seen in my entire life. Could not find streets and trips on this machine. Oh, disc on this machine. Oh, do I need to... Oh, okay. What the hell is the point of installing the program if I have to reinsert the disc anyways so it'll install what it needs to run? Oh, is that just because people didn't have hard drives big enough back then? Probably a lot of... Yeah, okay, we did it. Wait, how do I... Oh, God. I just... H... Oh, I can search lonus. No, that wouldn't work 'cause it's... What's our address right here? Would be the office. That doesn't look anymore. Yeah, it does not look like this. I found the

office. Let's go all right now. Let's doc Linus. His exact address is I want to go to cheatcc.com, Cheat Cod Central. Because back then, you could actually cheat in video games without like hacking. Wow, member of the week. This guy, I don't know who he is, but sure. Oh my God, GameCube, free CCC email, DVD, PlayStation codes. You go to codes and you'd find codes and you'd enter them in. You'd have to search by, oh my God, you'd search, be like, I want to play, I want the Crash Band cheat codes. And then you scroll down, oh yeah, cool borders 4, man, this sucks. Is this because we're using web archive or is this how long it would take to load a website back then? Little call, little okay, there's an Athlon XP800. Is that, oh, and a motherboard, so that's a combo. 160 CAD for a motherboard CPU combo, that's pretty good. A broadband router, 60 gig hard drive, $140 Canadian dollars. Uh, do you want to not be able to

install the newest Call of Duty. Here's $140. Have a good day. That's crazy. You play a lot of pinball? Nope. Played once in an arcade machine in a bowling alley, but that's about it. This was like the hot new game that came out with this version of Windows. Bas, yeah, that's pretty sad. Yeah, it's... I got a new computer. You want to play? Play pinball with me. Here we go. He was right here, or is this a girl? Why'd you hit her? No, I didn't hit her. I'm right where the arrow. Oh yeah, now I hit her. My bad. Yo, GTA 3? No, Max Payne. I love Max Payne. Yo, I want... What's this monitor? Is it 1920? Yeah, hell yeah. I want anti-aliasing off. Yeah, high settings. Everything's on high. Let's see how this game runs, baby. Oh dude, this is like 30, 60. Oh God, my frames dropped. Oh God, there's another one. Such a cool game, dude. This game is sick, man. It makes me respect where we're at now for operating.

systems. I think like even even just the simple things like hitting windows and search or the load times for things you know as much as I reminisce and like to think I miss XP. It's really easy to just fly through Windows 11. There's a lot of like submenus that I originally was like oh why' they get rid of all these but once you get used to it. It's so much faster looking back then Windows XP really was a huge step in the path toward modern Windows 95 and '98. Deserve some credit. They had vastly more usable interfaces than what came before them but they did nothing to solve the issues that were inherent with the dos-based reality that was behind behind the curtains. 2000 addressed a lot of the stability and security concerns thanks to its business grade NT kernel but it was only intended for business users and was priced to match. So it fell to XP to bring those benefits to the average user and aside from just stability. There are glimpses of the future all over Windows XP. The

start menu moved away from the monolithic all programs list in favor of highlighting your most used app. It had improved search, meaning you didn't have to go digging for things quite so often, and it had improved networking and internet features that were central to ushering in the always-connected world we live in now, where most of what we do on a computer is in a web browser, say with Wikipedia, rather than loaded onto our machine with a disc like, uh, Microsoft Encarta. Speaking of mind-blowing things, this will probably blow our younger viewers' minds, but thumbnails, slideshows, and the task pane, those didn't exist before Windows XP. And while auto-run wasn't new, there was finally enough functionality in the operating system and bundled apps for it to be genuinely useful, as we saw in our music ripping and our disc burning challenges. So XP, you know what, you stood up to the test of time, even if your usability could have been a little better, just like this segue could have been a little better to our sponsor.

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Young People Try Windows XP

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.
