I truly hope that should you upgrade, you check your peripheral devices (i.e. printer(s), scanners, cameras and etc) for XP compatibility. I have found, to my dismay, that my workhorse Epson Color Stylus 480 does not want to work under XP very well - even with the LATEST updated drives. I have experienced the same with clients of mine. Be careful about your equipment. Do you really want to shell out a large amount of money for a new OS only to find out you need new hardware as well? Although I *do* enjoy XP's stability and features, I was fairly taken aback at Microsoft's lack of end-user compatibility (as I've seen since, say, 1992?) - as well as Epson's lack of drive to fix their particular issues. "Planned obsolescence" is definately rearing it's ugly head as time wears on and we're forced to upgrade and purchase more hardware and software. So please, think very carefully prior to upgrading from the wonderfully stable Win2k.

Stephen M. Kuhn 2/8/2002 3:39:48 AM

User Picture on Windows XP's Start Menu


In Michael Otey's "Discover Windows XP" (October 2000), Figure 3 displays XP's Start menu with the author's picture at the top. How do you do that? I've been playing with my XP Professional Edition software, and I can't find this feature. Can you help?



Bob Flaminio


If the system is a member of a domain, the individual picture feature isn't available. Otherwise, to add a picture to the Welcome screen and Start menu, log on as Administrator and open the Control Panel User Accounts applet. On the User Accounts screen, select the Change an account task. On the next screen, select Change my picture to display the standard set of XP pictures. To add your picture, select Browse for more pictures, then navigate to the folder that contains the picture you want to use. Or, if you have a camera attached to the system, you can select Get a picture from a camera or scanner. This selection will display the Capture Picture from Video dialog box. Click the Capture button to use the camera image that's displayed in the dialog box.



This process assigns a custom picture to a user account. However, to display that picture in the Welcome screen and Start menu, you must enable the Welcome screen. Go to the User Accounts applet and select the Change the way users log on or off task; make sure that the Use Welcome Screen check box is selected.


Michael Otey

Bob Flaminio 1/18/2002 1:35:59 PM