Win2000 Question. Very simple.

My hard drive died today (violin playing in background)

I have a decision to make:

Stick with Win98SE or upgrade to Win2000.

Which is better (if any) or if possible, the pros/cons of Win2000, since I
already know about 98.

Thanks In Advance

P.S. I figured I would post this here due to it being the "Advanced" section,
people would know more about the advanced tools being compatible.

[sterno]

I moved from 98 to 2000 a while back, I wish I'd ditched 98 earlier. I've done video capture and encoding, and DVD ripping. Off the top of my head:

Pros of Windows 2000:

• NTFS instead of FAT32
  Much, much greater stability
  Better overall performance on modern hardware
  Better multitasking
  Support for large hard drives without using 3rd-party software

Cons of Windows 2000:

• Less hardware support (mainly older devices)
  Wants more memory
  More likely to drop frames on video capture (because of the better multitasking)
  Less game-friendly (mostly because DOS is nowhere to be found)

Older hardware; like an ISA Soundblaster? (Unfortunately).

About the only games I have are Star Trek:Elite Force, Descent 3
and, or course, Quake and #2.

No DOS stuff as far as I know.

Thanks for the input!

[BJ_M]

ISA Soundblaster is supported ...

quake runs great on win2k .. dont know about the others ..

[Thorn]

Yes, like an ISA soundblaster... my ISA soundcard wasn't recognised, but I'm glad I had to get one that didn't suck. Besides, if you're capturing video, you want to capture sound, and a better sound card will make that easier.

It doesn't matter if the game ran from dos, some games were written specifically to the win9x architecture. While you can fool them into thinking they're still on 9x, some just refuse to run. Those games may or may not work, I don't think I've tried any of them since I moved to win2k.

[Kevin Henry]

Why bother with win2k when you can go straight to winxp? has much better driver support and is just as good as 2k, if not better.

In reguards to Kevins post:

Both 98SE and 2000 are free for me. A friend is helping me rebuild
the hard drive (acutally just a replacement) and these are my only
two options.

Last question about 98 vs 2000:

How would it run on an AMD K6-2 500MHz with 327meg ram?
You can just browse my "Computer Specs" for the details but
I have heard alot about the "Muti-tasking" being pretty good.
Whenever I was encoding with 98 and I would have to let it run
over night, if I needed to do anything the next morning the system
would be very slow to respond.

I know I am not working with a P4 2.4GHz but at least I am running
something kinda fast.

Awaiting Input and Thanks In Advance!

[Kevin Henry]

There should be a MS page or bit of software to check compatibility for win2k & xp.

Personally, I'd upgrade your hardware before getting a new OS but for sure, win2k will be better than 98. I was SO glad to get rid of 98 finally.

However, it's a real hard drive space hog - but not as bad as XP. So if you got the spare space, go for it.

Try it and see. Just back all your stuff up first.

[sterno]

At a guess I would say your 98 machine was slow because it had paged lots of stuff from memory to disk to leave more for tmpgenc. 2000 will probably do the same, and it has the same problem as 98 with disk activity - heavy disk I/O will easily grind the entire machine to a halt. But once it pages stuff it needs back in to physical memory it shouldn't really be much slower than it was before you started. 2000 won't leak memory as fast as 98, but it will leak so you'll want to reboot regularly.

Thanks for all of the replies! I believe I will try 2000. I usually leave the
system running for days on end so I believe I will be better off using 2000.
I do not always encode. Whenever I get some movies I will work on one
at a time so I may encode just once or twice a month. As long as my work
still leaves the P4 2.4GHz pc just sitting around I can usually just burn
stuff to a cd-rw disk and work on the encoding at work (weeks worth of
encoding in one night is fantastic).

Thanks again for all of the input.

There should be a MS page or bit of software to check compatibility for win2k & xp.

Personally, I'd upgrade your hardware before getting a new OS but for sure, win2k will be better than 98. I was SO glad to get rid of 98 finally.

However, it's a real hard drive space hog - but not as bad as XP. So if you got the spare space, go for it.

Try it and see. Just back all your stuff up first.

I plan on backing everything up. The night before my HD crashed I
did my very first ever backup. I backed everything up except for the
folder that I hold my movies in. I only lost 2 but at least I have my
OS and all the programs.

BTW:If you know: Is 2000 backward compatiable with the MS Backup
from Win98? That is what I used to backup my stuff. It would be a
shame to have to re-enter all of the email addresses from Outlook Express.

Thanks again!

[Executioner]

It would be a shame to have to re-enter all of the email addresses from Outlook Express.

Have a look here: http://www.tomsterdam.com/insideOE/

I don't know about MS backup, but I would not use it. I would copy your DATA files to your CD-R drive.