Comparing Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Linux operating systems

Microsoft holds a competitive advantage in the computer software industry with both its innovative and functional products. For the past decade Microsoft and its office suite products have held a substantial 94% market share. In addition to being the most prevalent software product offering in the market, more than 500 million individuals worldwide use the product (1). In an effort to maintain this market share, Microsoft continually and consistently upgrades its product offerings to meet growing consumer demand. Most notably, this has come in the form of Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Linux. With these new iterations come very distinct similarities and differences between the individual products.

To begin, the most obvious difference between this operating software is the user interface. With user interface enhancements Microsoft XP intends to streamline the consumer experience. This has been accomplished primarily through the use of shortcut keys within all three iterations. With the enhancement of shortcut keys within all subsequent installments of Microsoft Office, more efficiency and convenience was added. In addition, shortcut keys allow for the seamless transition of one activity to the next without sacrificing unnecessary time. Further the Windows XP addition utilizes new style and formatting task panes which further enhance the customer experience. In older installments of windows, dialog boxes were used predominantly to display options. These dialog boxes however were often intrusive and confusing. Now, within Windows XP, these dialog boxes are instead replaced with task panes. These task panes allow for more variability in regard to consumer choice. They allow for multiple options for a given function or criteria with windows. This choice and freedom was not imbedded in Windows 2003 or its predecessors and thus is a welcome addition. Finally in regards to the user interface aspect of windows, new tools were also added to help with inconveniences of previous iterations. One of the most distinct aspects of the tools option within Windows XP that was new for many users was that of application recovery. This feature allows for documents that may have not been saved in the event of a computer failure to be automatically recovered once the computer reboots itself. This is especially helpful when customer forget to save extensive documents that may have taken hours to complete. As oppose to retyping the paper altogether, the auto recovery system will recover the lost document once Microsoft word is used. This is yet another welcome addition to the Windows XP that was not apparent within previous installments such as windows 2003. The expanded tools option in Windows XP also is home to an array of new document enhancement services. These enhancements include document imaging, document scanning, and picture manager, all of which are good additions, but not necessarily widely used applications (2).