Guest FrankyG Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Hey, I'm running a very stable box ATM, with W2k SP3. Not sure about SP4 and thought about just biting the bullet and starting fresh with XP. I don't really have a great reason to upgrade, other than to stay up to date. Would anyone recommend avoiding XP...and why? If I do go for XP, what's the current service pack? Any BIG issues or problems with XP? Thanks for any input, FrankyG
Guest siu99spj Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Being that you currently live in 2000, you won't notice any probs upgrading to XP. However, if you are going to go to XP, may I recommend the Pro version? Although you won't use most of the features, you may find some are life savers (Especially if you need ICS or similar). Generally though XP has better driver support (And an annoying screen that pops up when you try to install uncertified drivers), curvy interface (Though you can turn it back to normal if you want), runs more software, is more stable (2000 HATED my machines, lots of resource sharing) and is the latest MS OS. However, its not all good. Firstly, assuming you use it, the NTFS is incompatible with older versions, so no dual boot unless you use FAT. Secondly its a massive install, no good for those with a diddy HDD. Finally, some people hate the WPA (Though you can 'avoid' that). Personally I'm in XP and have no complaints, but thats just me. Oh we're currently on SP1 but the rumour mill has it that we'll be in SP2 before long.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 SP2 this year i reckon. Installi s a little under 2gig. Also why would a different filesystem stop you dual booting?
Guest siu99spj Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Also why would a different filesystem stop you dual booting? If you try dual booting with 2K on its version of NTFS, XP moans that it don't like the NTFS implementation. Also, if you spit over different HDDs or partitions, XP has been known to destroy the boot sector of your 2K NTFS drive. The data is still there, you just can't boot. However, FAT32 is fine AFAIK. Just some advice from personal experience and a friends headaches. Now I'm purely XP all is OK. :)
Guest Mr_Protozoa Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 I'm running XPPro and it's great, by far the most stable windows platform I've used, one of my PC's been running for 32days (and counting) without and problems or restarts.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Mm ok siu99spj ;p I know theres compatability issues reading between ntfs versions, didnt realise it affected dual booting though. Anyway, why are peole still dual booting? VMWare is the only way to go :) Oh and i've had a XP Home lappy up for over 5 weeks before, only had to reboot after i installed a load of patched (remember when MS relelased about 2 dozen in a week...? ;p). So yeah, all is good in the land of XP ;)
Guest Emad Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Sp4 is running fine for win2k on my machine - if you want a nice looking desktop, get AstonShell - very swank :) I'd say XP Pro isn't worth the hassle having used it - win2k is a sturdy lil performer and imo a dash faster. Which is why I switched back from XP Pro ;)
Guest MECX Posted July 15, 2003 Report Posted July 15, 2003 Xp pro all the way for me. Stable and faster than 2000 with a few tweaks :wink:
Guest siu99spj Posted July 16, 2003 Report Posted July 16, 2003 Don't know about which is faster. You could probably tweak both to death and end up with them faster. Personally I found XP better. Its much more user friendly with apps (As in more run in XP than in 2K, when it worked). XP works perfectly well on my still crumbling (I am going to upgrade, just need to decide on Graphics, so hard!) Athlon 1.1GHz with 512MB RAM, GeForce2 graphics and 150GB of HDD! Oh, and Mono, why pay for VMWare when you can dual boot for free? Personally I like free a lot, especially whilst a student.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted July 16, 2003 Report Posted July 16, 2003 Ye of course, i've been working for the past year and using it off and on here. Corparate licenses rock :)
Guest fraser Posted July 17, 2003 Report Posted July 17, 2003 XP Pro wins hands down, simply due to the fast boot stuff. W2K takes an age to boot up, then you log in and have to wait even longer to get to the desktop. On my box, XP is at the login screen within 20 seconds, then it takes about 5 seconds to log in. The fast-user-switching is brilliant as well, if more than one person uses the computer. A lot more like Unix, you can have multiple users logged in at once. Other nice things are the sys tray icon hider, where notifications you don't use are hidden (it's customisable). The new start menu is pretty good as well.
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