Choose Between Windows XP and Windows 2000?

[seacue]

How would I choose between Win XP and Win 2k if I want to upgrade? (Other than price)

I see that Microsoft's minimum/suggested system requirements for Win 2k Professional are substantially lower than for Win XP, either home or professional.

Is this because of all the fancy sound / picture manipulating software that comes with XP?

I really, really dislike the fact that MS has gone out of its way to make the human interface to XP different (and clumsier IMO) than that 9X. Win 2k sticks pretty closely to the 9x human interface.

I don't have much interest in the picture / sound features.

Opinions?

Thanks,
seacue

[englishal]

I wouldn't go for Win 2K unless you have to. You can change the look and feel of XP to be the same as 98 / NT if you want to, via a simple Control Panel > Taskbar and Start Menu and select "Classic start menu"

XP is easier to configure and maintain and I'd only recommend 2K for a networked business environment myself.

EA

PS XP runs fine on an Amd Athlon 600MHz, however unless you have 256MB (preferably 512MB) I wouldn't bother running either 2K or XP, I'd stick with 98

[seacue]

I know about the "Traditional Look" feature of XP ... but it definitely is not the same as 98/2000.

It's not as different as the default XP, but certainly still a chore to wade through (for me at least).

Just look at the Find/Search in XP. It's a mess with the most likely choice down in the middle of the list.

Look and feel is one thing, but I was searching for comments on compatibility with older software, etc.

I have to use ancient DOS-based software that only understands LPT1, etc. XP allows aliasing network printing with "net use LPT1 <network printer path>". Does 2k offer this feature? I guess I should have stated my interests better.

Any other comments?

seacue

[englishal]

Look and feel is one thing, but I was searching for comments on compatibility with older software, etc.
Ah in that case I would go for XP. 2000 can be a nightmare to configure old software / peripherals to work with. XP makes the job much easier, even easier than 98 in my opinion.

The differences between "look and feel" between each of the microsoft windows versions is not that bad, something you get used to pretty quickly. For example, each has a control panel, each has a start menu, each has a task bar etc......They may all have slightly different options available, but are essentially the same.

If I were a business (....hmmm, I am a business :D)......I would run Win 2000 / 2003 server on the server, and Win 2K on the workstations.

For home use I'd choose XP every time, or if my computer is too old and slow, Windows 98........

Cheers
EA
:D

[ORAC]

The range of software and devices with Win2k drivers is restricted and getting smaller. XP is a much better choice for that reason alone.

[seacue]

Thank you both very much. The choice seems clearer now.

I am the fourth-rate guru for two XP systems, so I know something about it. My desk-top at another location runs 2Kpro, but I don't do anything serious on it.

I was just "shopping" the question of upgrading a couple of other systems from 98SE to XP/2k.

Thanks again,

seacue

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

seacue,

Once you get used to WinXP, you will not want to go back to Win2k. It is the best option and will have the most support for the future.

Take Care,

Richard

[Basil]

I'm running XP on original 233MHz and upgraded 196Mb & 80Gb and v pleased, esp with graphics capability. Bit slow of course.
Must buy new 'pooter - will it be desktop or desktop replacement laptop??

[stagger]

Avoid XP Home if possible - many important features are not easily accessible.

I use XP Pro and 2000 Pro for my work and have found that the main advantage of XP is the ability to switch between user accounts "on-the-fly" - i.e. without logging users off. Very useful if several people will use the machine - you can switch between accounts without each user having to shut down their applications.

Aside from this XP doesn't seem to do much else that I need to do better than 2000.

As seacue has noted searching for files in XP is a pain. Also I find it much easier to configure user accounts and file shares in 2000.

As for minimum system requirements - Microsoft say 133Mhz and 64mb ram for W2K Pro, 300MHz and 128mb for XP Pro.

However, in practice the system will be unbearably slow with less than 128mb for 2000 or 256mb for XP.

[FJJP]

At home I have WinXP (home edition) and W2k The XP is set to classic and really I find little difference. But then, I'm not doing anything fancy.

I've also got both at work (Pro editions) and NT servers. All of them seem pretty well bug-free now.

It's your choice, really. The only difference is that eventually MS will stop supporting W2k before XP. But then, there will no doubt be another version...

How can they keep improving?

[Lost_luggage34]

Having run along with a Windows NT server at home, a laptop running Win98SE all over Europe for a long time, I took the plunge and went for Win 2000.

I like it.

Same feel. Much more stability. All the nasty niggles have been ironed out.

Never had much contact with Windows XP - can't quite see what all the fuss is about.

[dons tin hat awaiting flak]

[IO540]

To me, the biggest drawback of XP is that one cannot do a serious PC hardware upgrade, because it will think it has been copied onto another PC.

Whereas with win2k you can just install the original CD onto a completely new machine and there is no online registration.

I believe that once software has been bought, the user has an absolute right to use it in perpetuity, on hardware which is of course his responsibility.

This is the same argument as with the dongle anti-copy devices. In 1991 I spent £10k on some FPGA design/layout software; then the dongle broke and it became useless. Luckily some Russian posted a crack for it :O With XP, the solution to this situation is the full professional version, I gather, but that's very expensive. There are cracks for XP but then one cannot install SP2...

So I stick with win2000. I still run NT4 at work - it works perfectly and we don't need USB there.

[englishal]

because it will think it has been copied onto another PC
I have a copy of XP Pro, which I bought in Baku (Azerbijan) for the pricely sum of $3. (It says its genuine, honest, so I guess Microsoft has got a different licencing strategy in the former soviet states :O ) Seems to work, whatever hardware I use it on :D

Seriously though, you can change your hardware, it just means a phonecall to Microsoft.....but I agree, its a pain in the arse!

Cheers
EA

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

IO540,

It is not as bad as you make it sound. If you change a couple of pieces of hardware, usually WinXP does not trigger the WPA.

Here is a list of what the WPA checks for:


Display Adapter
SCSI Adapter
IDE Adapter (effectively the motherboard)
Network Adapter (NIC) and its MAC Address
RAM Amount Range (i.e., 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc.)
Processor Type
Processor Serial Number
Hard Drive Device
Hard Drive Volume Serial Number (VSN)
CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVD-ROM


WPA asks for ‘votes’ from each of these ten categories: ‘Is the same device still around, or has there never been one?’ Seven Yes votes means all is well — and a NIC, present originally and not changed, counts for three yes votes! Minor cards, like sound cards, don’t come into the mix at all. If you keep the motherboard, with the same amount of RAM and processor, and an always present cheap NIC (available for $10 or less), you can change everything else as much as you like.

If you change the device in any category, you have lost that Yes vote — but will not lose it any more thereafter if you make changes in that category again. So, for example, you can install a new video display card every month for as long as you like.


You can read more about it here:

activation explained and troubleshooting (http://www.z123.org/techsupport/xpwpat.htm)

Take Care,

Richard

[IO540]

Richard,

Fair point, but if I change the motherboard I tend to change most of the other stuff also. A lot of the time the NIC stops working, so that has to go. It's also time to upgrade the video card. Hard drives get updated regularly on my office PCs which run 24/7 for reliability reasons.

I might also go SCSI -> EIDE.

[englishal]

I *think* all you have to do is reactivate windows. I stuck a hard driver from one PC into another for testing the other day, and got a msg from XP saying "there has been a significant hardware change, you must re-activate Windows within 3 days"......

Don't know what would have happened if I had re-activated XP, maybe it would have allowed it, or maybe I'd have had to call customer support?

Cheers
EA

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

englishal,

If you stick and Hard Drive with WinXP on it from one comp into another, you will need to first do a repair of the OS, since it will not even boot if the two mobos are different chipsets.

Take Care,

Richard

[englishal]

It booted fine on the two PCs I was messing with, though you'e probably right about the chipsets. But after boot, the "activate windows within 3 days...." message came up...

Cheers
EA

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

englishal,

Last night I was moving a pair of WD Raptor Drives (on RAID 0) from an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (nForce2 Ultra-400) to an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (nForce2 Ultra-400) and it would not boot into Windows (WinXP Pro SP1). Then I tried the Repair and that would not make it either. I had to do an install on top of itself to get into Windows.

The interesting thing was I did not need to setup the RAID Array again though, the new Mobo saw it right off and took it as an active Array.

So it is a crap shoot each time.

Take Care,

Richard

[englishal]

So it is a crap shoot each time
Seems to be that way. My test PC MoBo was a Gigabyte GA-7S748-l which has the SiS 748 chipset and the clients computer was MSI-6533 which is based on the SiS 650 chip set. The disk removed from the test PC was a WD Caviar 80GB with a fresh install of XP, SP1A and not much else. I was trying to verify the inetgrity of the clients hardware, it was a HD failure, but not in an obvious way (and thought I'd better be 100% sure before I started billing him for it :D), and was a little surprised when all booted up with not a single windows error, as normally like you say it either won't boot, or goes crazy (in the case of 98). First time I saw the "...you must reactivate windows within 3 days...." message.....

Interesting about the RAID array. It can be a bit tricky to set-up those SATA disks. I remember the first time I stuck a SATA disk in one of my computers, and tried to install Windows.....took me a while before I figured out that I had to "press F6 to install a third party...... blah blah blah".....

cheers
EA:D

[IO540]

I think SATA is a waste of time.

They could have made the SATA controller look like an IDE controller, so every O/S would work just fine, out of the box. But NO..... they make it look like a SCSI controller, you you have to press F6 and insert a floppy/CD with the driver.

But SATA doesn't do the drastic CPU load reduction which SCSI gives you; it is just like IDE actually. So you can get a situation where you have a 3GHz CPU, a SATA HD, and be writing a CD on a CD writer, and when somebody on the LAN prints to an inkjet attached to your PC, the CD writing fails spectacularly. OTOH, you could have a 200MHz CPU, a SCSI HD, a SCSI CD writer, and no matter how you load it up, it won't fall over.

SATA just looks better on paper but for single user situations there isn't any point because the HD can't deliver the data fast enough, and the SATA controller doesn't do the queue reordering, posted writes, etc.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

IO540,

The whole idea of SATA was that is was a cheaper solution for future technology. Still it is much cheaper than SCSI. Also it is a smaller form factor which helps inside cases for airflow and as well as for computer footprints that keep shrinking.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. SATA with WD Raptors is a sweet combination. :cool: