We can’t get Win 98 anymore.:mad:
So, in a residential academic lower through high school setting do we want 2000 or XP?
I like the security in the Win 2000 lab I have, and I can keep the little monsters from installing AOL. I know nothing about XP. I’ve heard that the differences are cosmetic.
We use Novell and the dorm and lab PCs share printers and files with Microsoft sharing.
Thanks.
Having used both extensively, I’d say go with Win2000 SP2. Less system intensive, faster boot, and doesn’t include alot of the fluff that makes up WinXP.
My attitude is that Windows XP is basically Windows 2000 without the suck. Fast as hell, compatible with everything, and not too many annoying issues. I like the new GUI, also. Very nice OS. For the school environment though, you may want to go witn Win2k, especially if you get a much lower price on it. I’ve been told that if you disable the fancy GUI on XP, it uses a similar amount of RAM to 2k, but boots much faster.
XP does require a little more oomph from the PC’s it’s on but it boots faster, is nice and stable (more so than 2000), and if you use the professional edition (the XP version of Workstation), you can set up the same level of security as 2000 workstation.
It has some nice bells and whistles but you don’t have to use them, and as previously stated if you don’t like the new interface you canchoose to use the 2000 interface.
Microsoft released a suck-free version of Windows? You lying dog!
Actually, I’ll be migrating from Win2K to XP when I upgrade this week. I’ll report back what I learn.
First question is why can’t you get Win98 anymore? Most manufacturers still offer it with their business line PC’s. We buy Dell here, and the Optiplex line still offered 98 last time I checked. What I want to know is why am I paying for any OS at all when we already have all the lisences we need and are reinstalling everything fresh anyway? (We have dozens of copies of Office XP which we aren’t using too, for the same reason.)
Having looked at the options, the only issue we have run into so far is video card driver support, which is probably why the Optiplex line comes with a 16 meg video card. My boss wants to try to stick with 98 for 2 more years. (good luck!)
The second point I’d like to make is in regard to your Novell network (excellent choice, by the way 
). XP Home does not have full networking support (just like WinME) and the Novell client is not supported on that version. We have a laptop set up with XP home which can connect using a Cisco VPN and Novell client that works just fine, but again, there are no guarantees there.
As an aside, XP may look a lot different (read: ugly) from Win2000, but if you go to a command line you will see that it is version 5.1 (2000 was 5.0). Not a big enough revision to make me interested much, and why I agree that it is a good business decision to wait for the next version before upgrading everything. I think we will be stuck with a mixed 98/XP environment before then though.
You know if you cut open the top and bottom of an ‘8’, it looks like an ‘X’, and if you flip a ‘9’, it looks like a ‘P’ ?
This symmetry puts the whole 98/XP thing in perspective, doesn’t it?
If you look at investment, go with 2000 because you basicly own it when you buy it. With XP you have to activate it. Who knows how long MS is going to allow people to activate their software.
I still have a copy of Win95 I install from time to time on older, slower, single use machines.
I for one will not be using any MS software which requires activation.
Seven: I’m assuming that carnivorous wasn’t planning on simply going down to Office Depot and picking up a dozen boxes of Windows XP Professional off the shelf. If you buy in sufficient bulk from MS, you get what is known as Windows XP Corporate Edition, which has no activation or registration. You just install it, enter the CD key, and go. Just like Windows 95/98.
That would suck. If you toss a machine you have to toss the OS because they won’t activate it on a different PC? When the software and devices can’t run on Win98 Microsoft will rule the world. It’s a plot.
