With Windows XP, Microsoft is making a play for the home PC user as never before. This is the company's biggest upgrade for home users since Windows 95, and it claims to combine the robustness of a corporate operating system (the system is based on Windows 2000) with a bunch of features directed squarely at the home market.

For instance, the company has made it much easier for a single machine to be used by many people, since most family computers are shared. There are also significant improvements to the operating system's ability to handle multimedia, which make it much easier to listen to music, play around with photographs, and so on. A general tinkering with the user interface has made it more friendly.

Under the new system, every user of a PC can have his or her own identity, with password protection, and the heads of the household can protect their settings and documents and set security levels for the rest of the users just as an administrator can on a corporate network.

This is an obvious attraction for families, where parents might want to keep sensitive documents away from the prying eyes of young children, and children who might want their own colour schemes and desktop. It also takes only a few seconds to switch between one user and another.

Some of the interface changes to the new version are obvious, such as the start menu, which has two columns containing much bigger icons than before. The icons for e-mail and web browsing (through Microsoft's Internet Explorer or "a competing browser") stay at the top of this icon list, while the others appear in the order in which they are most used.

When looking for files in places such as the 'My Computer' folder, people will be able to look at larger thumbnail-style icons describing each file type - this should prove less confusing to users who found it difficult to distinguish before between the icons for document files, spreadsheets, and so on.

Thumbnails are also used to great effect where pictures are concerned: instead of seeing a list of filenames when you look at your digital photographs, you can see an array of miniaturised versions of the pictures, obviating the need to open up each one in order to view its contents.

Other changes are more subtle, and even a little light hearted. For instance, to make it easier to find files, users can place them in the order of when they were last modified - because sometimes people remember when they were working on a document more readily than they remember they name they gave it. The files are listed in terms of "last week", "last month", and so on, up to "a long time ago".

If this sounds a little familiar, that is because it is: since Microsoft first started producing operating systems with a graphical user interface, the company has been treading in the footsteps of Apple and its Macintosh OS.

The Mac has always been noted for the friendliness of its interface: some observers attribute a large part of the system's success and the loyalty it inspires in users to the cutesy, jokey touches such as the smiley-faced Mac that greets the user when booting up, and the little cartoon bomb that signals a crash. So it is hardly surprising that Windows is growing ever more like the Mac, and even exhibiting more of a sense of humour than ever before. The emphasis on helping users to play music and video and to transfer photographs from digital cameras also recalls Apple, which, since the iMac, has traded heavily on its usefulness as a home digital production studio.

Ease of use

Windows XP contains a new photo wizard that takes the user through each step of transferring images from digital cameras and printing them. There is also a greatly improved music player, and users can play DVDs or connect the computer to a TV very simply.

Rob Enderle, analyst at the Giga Information Group, applauds the ease of use of the new system. "Home users want something that you just plug in, and it works - they don't want to have to become computer experts. XP comes close to that ideal. Previous Microsoft operating systems required users to become much more intimate with computers than they would have liked," he says.

Another addition to the operating system is the Windows Messenger. This gives users access to such advanced features as voice over IP (internet protocol) - something the corporate market is still getting its head around - and video over IP. Messenger also allows users to chat, share applications, share games, and in the small office, users might want to use it to collaborate on projects or to whiteboard ideas.

Perhaps one of the more unexpected features of Windows XP is the built-in firewall. Firewalls to help protect users from attacks from the internet have long been the preserve of corporate networks, but Microsoft believes the improved security they offer will also prove attractive to home users, and is likely to appeal to the small office market.

Home and small office users are indeed more security conscious than they used to be, thanks to the recent spate of virus attacks, notes Jay Hunter, senior manager for the technology risk group at Andersen. He believes the choice to upgrade is "a fairly obvious no-brainer". The improved robustness of the system alone, which makes the product "significantly more stable" than its predecessors, would make it worthwhile.

He adds the caveats, however, that many users will find they have to upgrade their PCs to take advantage of the new system. "It's very resource hungry. There are also some applications that will have compatibility problems [and so may not work on XP] and some hardware compatibility problems," he warns.

The system requirements are a PC with at least a Pentium 300MHz or equivalent and a recommended 128Mb of Ram - fairly standard for a bang up-to-date personal computer, but owners of models only a couple of years old may have problems.

Users with Windows 95 will not be able to upgrade their PCs, but will have to pay an estimated retail price in the UK of £179.99 for a whole new version. Users of versions of Windows after 95 will pay an estimated retail price of £89.99 for an upgrade version.