xp or 2000

[ian.p.h]

i was wondering which is better xp or 2000? some people have told that 2000 is better because xp is full of spywear(back to the microsoft mother ship as he put it), and then other say that if you do any gaming xp is faster. oh yeah i have 1 gig celeron with 512 megs of ram and am currently running 98se.

 

[littlemar]

This has been discussed in many areas. Basically, this is a question that has many sides and myself I went from Win98 to XP at home. I have had some problems but then when you work with any type of machines you better expect problems. Check what type of hardware, scanners, printers, etc and make sure what you have is compatible with XP.
http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp

 

[wacpt]

I have just posted this reply another XP question and thought I would pass it on to you

It seems a lot of people got WinXP for Xmas, or so it seems. Your problem is a common one with regards to upgrading to XP.

Unfortunately the news is not good. As a Reseller and MCSE technician of Microsoft products I'm going to give you the minimum specs to run XP.

Pentium 233 or similar.
64Mb Ram
2 GB hard disk with 650Mb free space.
VGA Compatible

Recommended Specs.
Pentium 300 or higher
128Mb Ram
2 GB hard disk with 650Mb free space
SVGA or better

These specs are from Microsoft.

There are other issues to take into consideration also.
Not all hardware and software is compatible with WinXP. New technology requires new hardware.
As LITTLEMAR mentioned try the Windows Hardware Compatibility site

Select from the Product category only. This will list all the major hardware manufacturers and will list compatibility.

Personally, I have been running for some time now, and I have only had 3 Application crashes. 2 were my own doing, the 3rd was software incompatibilty. A utility program I once wrote for win 9x.

 

[Brooks]

Your machine is more than adequate in the processor and memory area. Some of your peripherals and and other components might be different. As stated, check the hcl. Also check the manufacturers website. They sometimes will have known issues for upgrading to a new OS in thier knowledge bases.

I have found XP to be more stable than Windows 98, on the other hand, I have not noticed any stability improvements over 2000. What I have noticed, is greater compatability with older programs in XP. Some of the things that it can do is when a program calls for a specific version of one of the previous Microsoft OS's is fake the program into thinking that it has what it is looking for.

A couple of examples are, I have a children's game that thinks that it has to have a Dos kernal to run. In 2000, it would not work until I bought a third party tool to force it to run.

I also have an older EA sports Madden Football game that says it must have service pack 3 to run on NT.(It thinks that 2000 is NT, which it is, but much improved). XP just gives it the info that it needs and it runs.

It also does things like changing screen resolutions for you. Have you ever ran into a game or program that requests a specific screen resolution and/or color depth? XP will reset the depth when you launch the program and the set it back when you exit. This is the type of thing that it will do automatically, it also has some advanced settings for incompatable programs that the user can use to tune it.

It can be irratating what with it trying to get you to sign up for a passprt account, always trying to start MSN Messenger and sending those bug reports, but if you don't mind a little tweaking, you can disable those things.

Now for some of the downsides of XP.

It is new, so the breadth of knowledge on how to fix stuff in it is still a little low.

There are of course going to be some bugs found in it and some security problems, although people are still finding these things even in the older versions of Microsoft Operating Systems.

Some people state that you should wait until at least one service pack before installing a new OS. This was certainly true in NT and to an extent for 2000. Especially for a busness rollout. We are only doing a limited rollout of XP at work, one to address some compatability problems with some older software and the other is so the computer department can do more in depth observation of it.

At home, I am still running 2000, because everything I want to run, runs on 2000 and I have not taken the time to upgrade here yet. I like it and am planning on doing an upgrade at the house when I get the chance.

 

[ian.p.h]

thank you for all your help. I have run the m.s advisor and it told me that I had 1 hardware issue-it is with the hsp56 micromodem,that is on board. I have found drivers for rest of the software issues. I have also found an updated driver for the modem. the reason I am so concerned about putting xp in is that last week I tried putting it on a partion and it crash bringing down the whole system. when I fired it back up it didn't recognize my h.d

 

[wacpt]

Good Point Brooks.
Another good feature of WinXP is by right clicking the software shortcut and selecting properties, there is now a new tab for compatibility. Here you can nominated the original OS and Xp will the try and "Emulate" the OOS environment for that one program.
Sometimes it works, other time it doesn't.

 

[kramnnim]

If you are using a LCD screen, XP's ClearType is VERY nice. 2k almost seems a little faster, but I like XP's GUI, =P

 

[skinnywhiteboy]

XP definately. It's very good at picking up drivers, and is compatable with more software than WIN2K (it seems). Much faster, and a lot more stable. Microsoft (so far) seems to have done a really good job with this one. You get all the benefits of WIN2K and all the functionality of WIN ME. I've been using it for a while and am very pleased so far.

swb