Built-in CD-R software: It's about time; XP finally does away with the need for third-party tools for basic CD-R burning. You simply drag files to your CD burner's drive letter, and XP caches the files and then burns them to a blank CD-R with good reliability. If you do encounter underrun problems, XP ratchets down the write speed of the next CD-R burn and keeps doing so until you get 100% verified writes. It couldn't be simpler to use.
In the mean time, your CD Writer is temporarily assigned the job of "pretty coaster dispenser".
Indexing: XP's Indexing Service just might be a candidate for the most inefficient piece of software ever written. I've never seen any indexing tool run as slowly or as resource-hungrily as does XP's.
So disable it. It shouldn't be that hard. I mean, you had to manually activate it, correct?
On my primary system here, even with XP-certified video hardware and drivers, I get an unreadable, scrambled screen on resume from hibernation. Working from memory and navigating blindly, if I log off and back on, the screen clears and everything's fine. But this is dangerous and annoying. Clearly, hibernation still has some rough edges. See the next item for a guess as to why this is.
I have the same problem in Win2K. It doesn't bother me, though, since I leave my PC on all the time anyways.
For example, I naturally suspected my hibernation troubles above were video-related, but I was using drivers supplied by Microsoft itself, with all proper certifications and signings. I then visited my video-card vendor's site (Nvidia) and downloaded its "designed for Windows XP" drivers, but things only got worse: Not only would hibernation fail, but even ordinary suspend/resume generated a system error. So, even with all the proper checks, branding, and certification, XP's drivers may still be problematic. This is a situation that probably will improve rapidly with time, but it's a major pain now.
Ahh yes, and did it tell you that the drivers weren't signed? Just because it says "Designed for Windows XP" doesn't mean it's signed.
Another mixed-bag networking item is XP's built-in firewall. It's a great idea on the surface, but it's anemic.
Well duh! Since when do you expect a security solution from Microsoft to actually work?
"For example, I naturally suspected my hibernation troubles above were video-related, but I was using drivers supplied by Microsoft itself, with all proper certifications and signings."
So wise but clearly unable to read an article properly
You seem to be a very angry young pixie.