You already know the good stuff about Windows XP--the Windows 2000 core, better performance and stability, a friendlier, colorful user interface, and, finally, a full replacement for Windows 9x and Me, which are still built on old 16-bit MS-DOS underpinnings.

You may have heard some of the griping, too, about ever-higher memory requirements (128 MB is recommended), forced registration, and the proliferation of helpful-but-brain-dead features such as dates sorted into categories such as Yesterday and Last Week. You see some of it in Internet Explorer 5, and you'll see a lot more in XP.

Frankly, that kind of stuff drives me crazy. Like Windows Me, XP tracks your activity and rearranges the Programs tab off the Start button according to the applications' frequency of use. I find that I have a positional memory when I use the mouse to start programs, and I get annoyed when they're not where I left them. This idea of fluid first- and second-level menus takes too much reading and attention-paying for my taste. I haven't looked into defeating the feature yet; I hope there's a way.

Beyond the petty complaints, though, there's an incredible amount of good stuff in XP. But it's going to take you a while just to read and absorb all the new functions. For instance, it can now burn CDs unaided, can record and play virtually any multimedia file, supports remote access, can print digital photos in a variety of useful formats, and much more.

It doesn't quite add up to a full application suite, but some of the utilities vendors will have to reevaluate their offerings. When Microsoft incorporates a utility into its operating systems it typically stops short of all of the features you'd find in the commercial equivalent. But the basic features will be enough for many users. For example, the firewall in Windows XP will lock your connection to a single IP address, forsaking all others. It's good, basic stuff, but does it go far enough? Users will have to judge for themselves.

DV Bridge Solves DV/Analog Problems
DV is the best thing that could have happened to camcorders. The quality is better, the images can be transferred and edited multiple times without quality loss, and the feature set, such as stills, synchronization, and other advanced editing features is vastly better than VHS and Hi8. And Firewire/1394 is definitely the slick way to connect a camera and computer. But it's still a VHS world out there. You need to show your DV creations on normal tape decks. And sometimes you need to grab stuff that's on VHS or Hi8 and bring it into the wonderful world of DV editing. You can get an analog I/O board such as Pinnacle's DC10 (I use one of these, and it's great), or you can load the finished digital film back into the camera and use the camera's analog outputs to drive a VHS deck. But these are the hard way, and they both involve a computer.

DV Bridge is a piece of standalone hardware that does the DV/analog conversion in both directions. It has a host of other convenient features, with or without your computer. Very cool.

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