Overview

With Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2, you get safer browsing and communication, powerful security tools, and improved experiences. Packed with multimedia features, Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2 aims to unlock the full potential of your personal computer. It also looks great, with rounded window corners, larger and more detailed icons, and a clean-look desktop. The best thing about Windows XP is that, because it belongs to the Windows NT/2000 product family, its designed from the ground up for reliability, security, and networking. XP Home users will soon see the benefits of this. The dreaded Windows crash-and-reboot cycle really is much less common with XP, and, provided the hardware is up to scratch, XPs performance is better, too. The downside is that using a different code base can make compatibility with old applications less assured. Business applications normally run fine, but older games, MIDI software, and system utilities may well cause problems.

Windows XP Home has many strong multimedia features. New Media Player lets you copy music from CD to hard disk, create your own playlist, and write your own music CDs if you have a CD writer. You can also play back DVD-Video (but only if a hardware or software DVD decoder is already installed) and play MP3 audio files and MPEG videos (but sadly not the popular RealMedia formats). Admittedly, Media Player does nothing that you cannot also do with free alternatives, but it is slick and nicely integrated. There is also Windows Movie Maker, a basic tool for capturing and editing videos thats fun to use, although too limited for serious work.

Main Features

• Help protect your PC from harmful attachments. By alerting you to potentially unsafe attachments, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) helps guard your computer from viruses that can spread through Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Messenger.
• Improve your privacy when you are on the Web. SP2 helps protect your private information by applying the security settings that guard your PC to the files and content downloaded using Internet Explorer.
• Avoid potentially unsafe downloads.Internet Explorer download monitoring and the Internet Explorer Information Bar warn you about potentially harmful downloads and give you the option to block files that could be malicious.
• Reduce annoying pop-ups. Internet Explorer Pop-Up Blocker makes browsing the Internet more enjoyable by helping you reduce the unwanted ads and content that pop up when you are browsing the Web.
• Get firewall protection from startup to shutdown. The powerful, built-in Windows Firewall is now turned on by default. This helps protect Windows XP against viruses and worms that can spread over the Internet.
• Take control of your security settings. The new Windows Security Center allows you to easily view your security status and manage key security settings in one convenient place.
• Get the latest updates easily. Enhancements to Windows XP s Automatic Updates feature make it even easier to access Windows updates. Plus, new technology has been added to help dial-up customers download updates more efficiently.
• Help protect your e-mail address. Improvements to Outlook Express help reduce unwanted e-mail by limiting the possibility of your e-mail address being validated by potential spammers.
• Take action against crashes caused by browser add-ons. The new Add-On Manager in Internet Explorer lets you easily view and control add-ons to reduce the potential for crashes and enjoy a more trouble-free browsing experience.
• Go wireless without the hassle. SP2 improves wireless support and simplifies the process of discovering and connecting to wireless networks in your home or on the road.

System Requirements

• Hard Disk
  

  1.5 GB 

  
  
• Memory
  

  64 MB of RAM (128 MB is recommended).

  
  
• Processor
  

  233 MHz processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended).

  
  
• Platform
  Windows 95/XP