Disadvantages, if any, of Windows 2000

[winifreid]

I don't like the idea of authentication that comes with XP (I move my hardware around a lot), so I would prefer to use 2000. Also, the price of 2000 is down to about $60, which is a little cheaper than XP. But I have heard that it has driver issues. I would like to install it on my current system in hopes of reducing the blue screens and system hangs with my 98 OS. I have a leadtek 2000 XP to capture with and use winpvr to capture.
So my questions are:
Are there any big disadvantages of 2000 over XP?
I have countlless programs that I would prefer not to reinstall, so I would consider using the 2000 upgrade version. Are there any big problems with that?
Thanks

[bazooka]

XP has better driver support.

2000 is not getting any new service packs and support is ending soon.

The genuine advantage program will soon expand to 2000.

[neomaine]

winifreid,

I went to 2000 Pro two years ago on my PCs at home and wouldn't change a thing. Never had a problem with drivers, installs and welcome the stability. The power went out for a few minutes last night in the storm...first time I've rebooted in months and months.

I've got XP at work at quite frankly don't see much difference.

[bazooka]

I've got XP at work at quite frankly don't see much difference.

XP has broadband support out of the box.

2000 doesn't

[winifreid]

I have dialup (cheap). I guess the driver problem is only important if I have a device that isn't supported. How can I find out?
Any experience with upgrades to avoid endless reinstalls?
Thanks

[budz]

I have WINDOWS 2000 PRO on 3 pc's with no problems. I also have built other computers for friends who have WINDOWS 2000 PRO that use dial up connection. No problems as well. Dump that WINDOWS 98 and upgrade to WINDOWS 2000 PRO. I've only purchased individually WINDOWS 2000 PRO OEM CD's for computers I've built.

[winifreid]

Thanks,
Any experience with upgrades to avoid endless reinstalls? Besides this, if I do get the upgrade CD, can I also do a clean install by just entering the code for my 98 disk?

[stiltman]

I've got XP at work at quite frankly don't see much difference.

XP has broadband support out of the box.

2000 doesn't

HUH? you on drugs or something?

I hooked my NIC into my Switch and I was going...

What lacks in 2000 is RDP, but you can at least install the client on 2000

Everything else is just crayolaware in XP

[budz]

winifreid wrote

Thanks,
Any experience with upgrades to avoid endless reinstalls? Besides this, if I do get the upgrade CD, can I also do a clean install by just entering the code for my 98 disk?

I don't know because I've never did a upgrade. I've always bought the OEM cd and did a clean install from there.

[ViRaL1]

I've got XP at work at quite frankly don't see much difference.

XP has broadband support out of the box.

2000 doesn't

HUH? you on drugs or something?

I hooked my NIC into my Switch and I was going...

What lacks in 2000 is RDP, but you can at least install the client on 2000

Everything else is just crayolaware in XP

I think what he's talking about is built-in support for connections such as PPPoE. If your ISP uses PPPoE you may not be able to just plug into the modem and go with 2000. Some of the newer modems are web configurable and let you get around this, but with just a basic DSL modem and PPPoE you will need to install additional software to get online.

[ChrisX]

I've got XP at work at quite frankly don't see much difference.

XP has broadband support out of the box.

2000 doesn't

Win XP got laptop WEP/WPA wireless support and Win2000 doesn't have.

Otherwise, not much difference to me.

ChrisX

[ChrisX]

XP has better driver support.

Yes or no on this?

2000 is not getting any new service packs and support is ending soon.

Very true and support is near end and due to cease as from COB 31st March 2005.

winifreid,

I went to 2000 Pro two years ago on my PCs at home and wouldn't change a thing. Never had a problem with drivers, installs and welcome the stability. The power went out for a few minutes last night in the storm...first time I've rebooted in months and months.

I have WINDOWS 2000 PRO on 3 pc's with no problems.

I got no problem with Win2000 and working well here.

ChrisX

[Zisguy1]

Grrr... every time I'm reminded that MS is ditching support for my chosen OS (Win2K Pro) my head hurts... they care about nothing except $$$$ so they force people onto XP who don't want to go...

It'll probably depend on the business world's response as to how supported Win2k is over the next few years, despite whatever MS wants. They have Linux to worry about, so they won't want to push too hard. IMHO you'd probably be OK with Win2k for the next couple-three years anyway, as long as "critical updates" are your main concern. Win2k is a mature OS and doesn't really need any more service packs.

P.S. most drivers for XP should work with Win2k as well, or at least it's easy to port to Win2k once an XP driver is written (so usually Win2k drivers are available). I had no problem even finding a driver for my old Scanport SQ-300 scanner, a pretty obscure piece of hardware.

[Cole]

I run two PCs; XP on my Video PC and Win 2000 on my Internet machine.

I run my Video PC without any Service Packs, but this never goes on the internet. The reason why is that Service Pack 2 messed up my PC's ability to burn DVDs and also caused some programs (e.g. TDA) to misbehave.

MS may indeed be stopping the support for 2000 very soon, but I know someone who was quite happily surfing the net using 95 and remaining virus free (although he was finding it increasingly difficult to find AV software that would work with 95). The morale of this story is that (as Zisguy1 says) Win 2000 has a few years to go yet.

I do like both systems but at the moment, but the problems caused by SP2 make Win2000 still viable for me for an all round general purpose Operating System.

I hope that this is helpful.

[winifreid]

Thanks everybody. I hope someone who has experience with the upgrade disk can respond. I would like to know if it is really possible to upgrade and save most of my programs? And whether it is possible to use a upgrade disk to do a clean install by just entering the code for my 98 disk?
Finally, do any of you notice a significant speed and stability difference between XP and 2000?

[Zisguy1]

What I'd do (actually, what I did!) is leave Win98 on the hard drive and install 2K as a second OS... particularly if you plan to stay with FAT32 as your filesystem.

If you have a secondary partition or two hard drives, Win2k is perfectly happy on drive D: -- or you could just install it in C:\WINNT and leave C:\Windows for Win98. If you do it this way, Win2k automatically installs a boot loader and lets you choose between the two OS's... this way you can migrate more slowly to 2K, and also have 98 around for the few program(s) that won't run properly on 2K.

If you don't want to do this, it's probably better to reformat and reinstall Win2k (or XP) from scratch using NTFS as the file system. Installing a new OS on top of an old one is generally a bad idea.

P.S. re: speed & stability, not really. IMO they're pretty equivalent. If anything, 2K may use a bit less RAM and it's easier to make it leaner/meaner than it is with XP. Less useless junk to disable or uninstall.

[bazooka]

Yes or no on this?

Yes

[winifreid]

Thanks,
And whether it is possible to use a upgrade disk to do a clean install by just entering the code for my 98 disk? The obvious advantage is that I can try and upgrade and if it doesn't work, I can do a clean install with the same disk. I undestand this is possible with the XP upgrade disk, I just don't know if it is possible with 2000.
I wonder if the price of 2000 is coming down because of the impending loss of MS support. It used to cost more than XP.

[bazooka]

And whether it is possible to use a upgrade disk to do a clean install by just entering the code for my 98 disk?

You would need to do that with a virgin hard drive.

I wonder if the price of 2000 is coming down because of the impending loss of MS support. It used to cost more than XP.

No

Microsoft usually charges a fixed price on operating systems.

[winifreid]

By virgin, I assume you mean reformatted. Have you done this with an upgrade disk?

Wouldn't installing 2000 dual boot in the 98 partition eliminate one of the big advantages of 2000 - no 4 gig limit? Does 2000 run slower and less stable in fat32?
I several HDs, so I could always install 2000 on another drive, if need be.
Are there any improtant video programs that don't run well in 2000?
Thanks

[zzyzzx]

I tried Windows 2000 Pro and I couldn't get my dial up networkign to work properly. It would automatically disconnect after only a few minutes and was horribly slow. Has to switch back to Windows 98SE.

[Zisguy1]

Wouldn't installing 2000 dual boot in the 98 partition eliminate one of the big advantages of 2000 - no 4 gig limit?

Yes. However, keeping your drives FAT32 would allow you to share progs between Win98 and Win2k. You'd need to reinstall under Win2k to get the proper registry entries, but you could install to the same folders.

Myself, the 4 gig limit doesn't really bother me (but I don't do video capture on my PC).

Does 2000 run slower and less stable in fat32?

Well, FAT32 is inherently more error-prone than NTFS and fragments faster... however, Win2k won't run slower. If anything, FAT32 is faster because of larger cluster sizes and less fancy features (as long as you keep up on defragging). As far as OS stability, the filesystem used won't affect that directly.

Are there any improtant video programs that don't run well in 2000?

I think only the latest Adobe products, like Premiere.

[SLK001]

Are there any important video programs that don't run well in 2000?
Thanks

Some of the latest Adobe products don't run under 2000. Primiere Pro and (I think) Audition require the XP OS (though I have no idea as to why). There may be others, but I stopped looking at Adobe products once I found that they went this route.

[Zisguy1]

Adobe's been going with XP-style product activation too. It's almost like MS bought them or something... :P

[Shadow57]

This thread is interesting.

Our PC's all have Win 2000. We build them ourselves
and they have never crashed......yet.

We had an old, cheap, slow PC gathering dust so I
played with it. Had a 366 Cyrix, so I installed an AMD
K6 500 that I got from newegg for $18. Has 256 ram
and a 'tiny' 3gb drive. Installed Win 2000 and now that
old dinosaur screams. It used to crash every 5 minutes
but it hasn't crashed anymore.

I'm probably going to offend a lot of people but I don't
know why anybody would go through the crap of registering XP
every time they make a major change. I realize that gamers
probably need XP to run their modern games, but it seems like
a pain to keep calling Uncle Bill for his permission.

Just my opinion, and not intended to offend anyone!

[budz]

Which is why on 1 of my computers I haven't activated and registered my XP PRO w/SP2 yet! I had to install XP PRO not once but twice because I had compatiblity issues with my advc-100 & a external enclosure that has the prolific chipset. Reinstalled it last week with no compatibility issues with hardware or software. It's running smoothly so far.

[themichael]

I was dual booting my video box with XP and 2000. With the exact same hardware and software, OS install fresh off the disk, and no AV/firewall/internet. Video capture CPU usage ran at 60% under 2k and 95% under XP.

I haven't been able to crash 2k but I can bring XP to a stand still but not quite crash it. I have been known to really beat computers for short stretches......

[winifreid]

I looked at a comparison which indicated that speeds were similair between 2000 and XP on most tasks, except bootup. XP was 15% faster there. But 2000 and XP was about 25% faster than 98 on most things.

[bazooka]

but I don't know why anybody would go through the crap of registering XP every time they make a major change.

You are mistaken.

You only register once and that is when you first install. If you have the corporate edition, you do not have to register at all.

Activation is different and is not the pain that you perceive it to be. It can be done online and is really quick.

[Shadow57]

but I don't know why anybody would go through the crap of registering XP every time they make a major change.

You are mistaken.

You only register once and that is when you first install. If you have the corporate edition, you do not have to register at all.

Activation is different and is not the pain that you perceive it to be. It can be done online and is really quick.

Actually, this is what I wrote...

I'm probably going to offend a lot of people but I don't
know why anybody would go through the crap of registering XP
every time they make a major change. I realize that gamers
probably need XP to run their modern games, but it seems like
a pain to keep calling Uncle Bill for his permission.

I put all of that in one paragraph because it belongs together.

I stand corrected, and should have said activation.

That being said, I don't want to call Uncle Bill when I
make changes to my PC. Just like I wouldn't want to
call Chrysler when I put new tires on my car!

Also, I've read people's gripes about having problems
registering/activating their XP.

I apologize if my post was a bit vague. The point of my
paragragh in question is this...

Windows 2000 is perfect for me/us, so I don't need to move
up to XP. The other reason I won't upgrade is because I'm not
going to have my crotch squeezed when I build or make changes
to my PCs. Millions of people are under that spell but that's just not
for me.

Hopefully I cleared up the point of my post.