The ease with which hardware can be installed on a computer running Windows XP is almost unbelievable to me. With other versions of Windows it was always a hassle to install most hardware. When I moved from Windows 95 to Windows 98 SE I had to download drivers for most of the hardware that was installed on Windows 95 for it to work on Windows 98 SE. In some instances I had to install the driver from a CD that came with the hardware. I recently installed an external CD burner and a Firewire card (IEEE 1394) on my XP laptop. All I had to do was plug in the Firewire card and boot the computer. Viola! XP immediately recognized the card. Next I installed the CD burner via the Firewire card and again XP immediately recognized the burner. My old scanner, an Umax S-12 had been a real headache to operate on both Windows 95 and Windows 98 and I felt sure it would not be compatible with Windows XP. I purchased an Epson Perfection 2450 Photo scanner and installed it via the Firewire card. This time I had to install a driver that came with the scanner but it was no trouble and the scanner worked immediately. One word of caution; the new hardware should be turned on before the computer is booted or Windows XP may not recognize it. The more I see of XP the more I like it!

Trivia:

Number of WinXP units sold in first six months: 17 million.
Number of iMac systems sold in first three years: 6 million.

CER