Should I upgrade to Win 2000 or XP?

[Gargoyle]

I'm running Win98SE with a PIII-866, 512 MB of SDRAM, ATI All-in-Wonder 128 (AGP), and was just wondering if there are advantages/ disadvantages to either one.....

[khelms]

Both of them are pure 32-bit code vs. the old Win 9x 32-bit code sitting on top of 16-bit legacy DOS code, so applications will run slightly faster. The NT kernal that they're built on is more stable that Win 9x, so the OS doesn't crash nearly as often. Plus, the longer you stay on an older OS, the less likely vendors are to support it with new or updated drivers.

Personally, I'd recommend Win 2000 over Win XP. 2000 has been out for a while and a couple of service packs have fixed any blatant bugs in it. XP seems to have weekly, sometimes daily, press releases about security bugs. I've only used it for games, for which it worked fine, but some coworkers ran into compatibility problems with business applications. The rule of thumb for Microsoft products seems to be "wait until the third release, then wait for the first service pack on top of that". We really don't know how much Win 9x code got "grafted" on top of the NT base, so it's hard to say if XP is really NT release 5.5, or a totally new hybrid product.

[Greg12]

I would say XP, it's very good., I luv it

i find it is 10000000000000000000000000 times more stable than me.


I have went days without a crash

and crashes r small

usually it's just a minute or 2 of 100 cpu and no activity. then it closes


i only have one complaint.

the fan won't run at a steady face, it runs in bursts and that can get annoying

[Digifreak2]

You might want to consider software compatibility depending on the tools that you use. I am having problems with XP that I never had with 2000 or 98 for example:

http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=82787&highlight=

Also, I was running 2000 for its dual processor support, don't know if XP supports it, does anyone know this?

[tinycorkscrew]

Windows XP Professional supports dual processors. Home version does not.

[Greg12]

my friend has an old comp with old hardware (1997) and he has had so many problems thouggh

[tinycorkscrew]

What hardware was current in 1997?

If I recall correctly, Pentium II's had just come out and were very expensive. A Pentium I 233mhz system with MMX, 32mb of RAM, and a 3gb hard drive would go for $1500 or so back then.

That kind of setup won't even run Windows ME very well.

[nfl2k2]

windows 2000, I know where you can get it cheap. pm me if you wanna know.