OT: Which is better: XP or 2000? > Another Piracy Discussion

[se5a]

if you are wanting compatibility (both HW and SW) get 98SE
if your carefull you can get it fairly stable.

I dont know much about 2000
but others have told me that XP is a little more stable.
I have XP pro on this and its prety good, I still havent looked at tweeking it yet, but I am impressed at the stability, even if I do get some kind of lockup it will usualy sort itself out given half a chance.

[Atrocities]

Avoid the problem of stablity all together and just buy a Mac.

[Alneyan]

PvK, what changes in XP user interface were you talking about? For me, XP looks almost like 98 after a few tweaks (removing the horrible basic interface, disabling Messenger and so on). Of course, with the basic interface, I can understand your problems.

As for old games, it mostly depends on the game in my experience. While Daggerfall runs like a charm on XP (yes, I even managed to play Daggerfall for several hours without a crash on XP), I have quite a few games that refuse to launch when they don't basically crash the whole system. But I would believe the same can be said of 2000 as well.

If given the choice, I would gladly go back to 98SE as soon as possible, as this OS is much simpler and less cumbersome. (And my computer is a bit slow to run XP with ease as well) However, I don't have the Second Edition of 98 and cannot find it anywhere, so I am basically stuck with XP since 98 (first edition) is lacking connection sharing. Either that, or I couldn't make it work, your choice. And I don't recall having much issues with stability back in those days when I used 98 either.

[Suicide Junkie]

Connection sharing? Why not just grab an inexpensive router (or hub if your ISP gives you multiple IPs) and be done with it?

[tesco samoa]

Terran C... WinXP.

The code is updated from win2k.

Both are good OS's And both will run what you need.

But Win2k is getting up there in the years and will be unsupported soon enough. Where Xp still has a few years left in it....

Security... Their both flawed. Its MS. And its open concept.

Accessiblity. Both are good. Except that XP does not have the power user level. Its either all or nothing..

Game Compatibility. Possibly win 2k... But xp will play most games

Stability. Their the same

Anything. XP makes a nice little gaming machine. But win 2k does as well...

At least with win 2k you can install something on your computer hardware side without making the call.

[Loser]

I got this question a lot back when I was doing onsite computer support for home and small business Users. Here's my typical answer.

If you have Win2k there is no real need to go to XP (termination of support had not yet occurred). If you have 98SE, and your machine has sufficient power (we recommended 750+ MHz, 256 Mb RAM minimum) then XP where you want to go. If you have ME then you need to get something, anything, else on there right away. What a dog.

I always disabled the automatic update. If you disable this, nothing will ever be installed without your specifically choosing to install it.

If the user was interested in performance I would disable all the shiny-happy crap in XP, it ended up looking like 2k.

Activation was trivial. You either connect into them over the internet, use one of their dial-up numbers, or even just made a phone call and read strings of letters or numbers to the rep, who then gave your letters or numbers back (I don't remember the specifics of their codes).

XP Home is fine, as long as you do not need to log into a domain. If I recall correctly, the only differences between Home and Pro was that Pro could log into a domain, could be accessed remotely with that keen built-in feature, and could support file-level sharing. I think that was about it.

I hope Thermo hits this thread. He always has informative things to say about Microsoft's products.

My XP Pro box does not crash. Ever. My Win98SE file server is in desperate need of yet another reload (I think this time I'm going to put that super-GUI Linux distro, Xandros, on it), my old Win98, 98SE, and 95 machines crashed all the time, and ME was purged from the house only a month, or so, after it was introduced. Heck, even the Win2k 'guest machine' is having problems, though that is more likely related to what the 'guests' have been doing to it than inherent vulnerabilities in the OS.

[edit: that should be file-level permissions, not file-level sharing, and I should add that Home and PRo use the same kernel: other than a few features, they are the same OS]

[ November 27, 2003, 13:13: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Fyron]

Windows XP has also worked well for me. Be sure to turn off both the XP and Win2k instant messaging program, or you will get spammed regularly with window pop ups.

2k doesn't have a messaging program. XP is the only one to ship with Windows Messenger.

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Avoid the problem of stablity all together and just buy a Mac.

Or get 2000 or XP, which are extremely stable. I think 2000 crashed 3 times in nearly 2 years for me. XP has crashed only once in the Last 8 months or so for me, and that has due to hardware related troubles.

[ November 27, 2003, 14:41: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Connection sharing? Why not just grab an inexpensive router (or hub if your ISP gives you multiple IPs) and be done with it?

You don't need multiple IPs to split the connection with a hub... hubs are a switch + router.

If the user was interested in performance I would disable all the shiny-happy crap in XP, it ended up looking like 2k.

And I tell ya, it is beautiful. None of this "skinning" garbage for me!

XP Home is fine, as long as you do not need to log into a domain. If I recall correctly, the only differences between Home and Pro was that Pro could log into a domain, could be accessed remotely with that keen built-in feature, and could support file-level sharing. I think that was about it.

A number of the configuration utilities in XP Home have only the bastardized "wizard" Versions or "simple" Versions, wheras XP Pro has the actual configuration methods for everything but user accounts, which is still bastardized.

[ November 27, 2003, 14:45: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[David E. Gervais]

Win XP Home is running fine for me. I installed it Last Xmas and haven't had any crashes since. My bro had Win 2000 Pro and his comp locked up and crashed very often. It generally ran like a turtle on valium and he had to re-install 2000 every other month. He now runs XP Home and has virtually no more problems.

I find that way too many people blame the OS because their systems are not running well. I think the Hardware is a bigger culprit where compatability is concerned. I did have some problems when I upgraded my computer but quickly found that way too many devices were sharing the same IRQ's I moved the various cards (sound and network) to alternate slots and they no longer share any IRQ's. Think of it people, you have one OS, but there are 1,000,000's of different hardware configurations. Nuf said.

The only thing I find apauling about Win XP is that when it came out I paid $139 cdn for it. the other day I walked into a store and saw that XP Home now sells for $249 cdn and XP Pro sells for $399 cdn. I feel sory for people who have to pay that kind of price. I also see no justification for the OS to have gone up so much in price.

Just my 2 cents. Cheers!

[Suicide Junkie]

You don't need multiple IPs to split the connection with a hub... hubs are a switch + router.

Switches are the big fancy boxes, hubs are the "dumb" wiresplitters.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue42/tag/6.html