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

[Roanon]

No question - use 2000. XP only if you are an expert and know every option and how to turn them off (some of them are carefully mis-phrased and look like turned off when actually on). Or if you don't mind to be spied upon more than any trojan virus does, forced unwanted "updates" on you, and suffer random disabling of non-M$ programms.
Do not forget you cannot even turn off many spyware functions - even if they are made to appear to be off or non-working (like that "unregistered" XP JayBDay wrote about that has phoned home for sure). You have to install XP antispy to be at least a bit safe. Otherwise, M$ can reconfigure any of your settings as they like. I refuse to service any XP computer without antispy on it, and without expertly disabled update options. Apart from the overall personal security, such blatant violation of consumer rights should not be supported, IMHO.

[Fyron]

Or if you don't mind to be spied upon more than any trojan virus does,

forced unwanted "updates" on you,

Extremely easy to disable. Just turn off hte "keep me up to date automatically" feature.

and suffer random disabling of non-M$ programms.

Uh huh... I have never seen that happen to anyone.

[Baron Grazic]

I've have 98SE, W2K & XP on different machines, and Win98 is the most stabilist. I never turn that machine off, just standby, do almost all my work on it, and I haven't had to rebuild it since I first built the computer 5 years ago.

W2K would be my second choice. Once you patch the security holes, it just runs what it is told to run.

XP seems better for running games, for the simple fact that you can tell the game to run in different operating system mode. ie. Run this game in Win95 mode. But the first thing I also do, it remove allthe 'user friendly' crap M$ put on it. Make it look like 98, and away you go.

Not sure where the information came from about W2K not being supported or sold. Microsoft's "hard drop-dead dates" for Win2000 are:-
No non-security hotfixes after 1/1/2004
No paid Online support after 1/1/2005

[Fyron]

You have been extremely lucky with Win 98 if you have been running it for 5 years without rebooting it. If you don't install and uninstall stuff all the time, there is rarely ever a need to reinstall Windows. I only installed 2000 once and used it for nearly 2 years (with the occasional reboot) before going XP.

[ November 28, 2003, 00:30: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Baron Grazic]

Oops, perhaps I should have said 'rarely' turn it off, instead of never.

[JayBdey]

I would like to know how it has managed to "phone home" without an internet connection. Unless all XP machines came with a satellite up link to allow wireless communication with the MS mother ship.

[Fyron]

What exactly did you install? XP Home? XP Pro? XP Pro Enterprise edition? Some of them don't have the activation IIRC (the ones designed for businesses setting up large networks with lots of PCs...).