On my Compaq desktop, I’m running Win98 and Office Premium (mostly Word, Excel and some Publisher), and can get a legitimate copy of Win2000 Professional from an old friend in exchange for some financial advice (plus cash).
I’ve been told that 2000 Pro is more stable than Win98–something that appeals to me. Please clue me in as to plusses and minuses of upgrading. Is it an improvement over Win98?
It all comes down to what you are using the computer for. Windows 2000 is excellent for a business environment–it’s very stable; I reboot once every two weeks whether I need to or not. On the other hand, it can’t handle multimedia (especially games) as well as Windows 98.
I’ve just completed several upgrades from 95 and 98 to 2000. All 3 of them went smoother than any other upgrade. I’ve also noticed that I don’t have to reboot the machine these days, it just sits there and runs. I DEFINATELY prefer 2000 to any other MS-OS that I’ve tried. Be sure to get the service pack #1 though.
Best regards.
Testy.
I’m running Windows 2000 on my home desktop, and I’ve had no problems whatsoever. At my last job, I was pleasantly surprised with Windows 2000 fairly early after its release, and ended up having all of the desktops upgraded (more than 125). Luckily, the experience was nearly universally positive for all of the users, and I wasn’t made to regret the call (it helped that I had anything slower than 350 MHz upgraded to 700 or 800 MHz machines).
Oh, and I have quite a number of games on this machine. Some of the older ones (Deadlock II comes to mind) insist that they can’t be installed on “Windows NT,” but a lot of the newer ones run flawlessly.
The only caveat would be the configuration of your machine. I wouldn’t recommend running with less than 128 MB of RAM, or anything slower than about 400 MHz. But, YMMV.
I can tell you what an awesome OS it is. IMHO, it’s the best product microsoft has ever produced. Part of that is because it is an NT operating system, which means the basic architecture is different than win9x. That brings up the next point: upgrades.
The majority of calls I handled for win2k setup support were on upgrades from windows 98. As I understand it, during the installation it takes all your files, puts them on a temporary partition seperate from the OS, then incorporates them into the finished installation. I could be wrong but I doubt it.
I don’t know where exactly the potential for weakness comes in, but a lot of the issues I ran into were with device drivers ( it was still a very new OS when I supported it and legacy hardware support was lacking).
My suggestion is this this: back up all your data to removable media, format the hard drive, do a clean installation of win2k, then add your data back. DON’T install service pack 1 unless you have one of the issues it fixes. search http://www.microsoft.com for those issues.
NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I installed it, wanting greater stability. Later I found out nearly anything I would buy software wise would not work! Then I read a preview of some of the most exciting new releases planned for NEXT year, some of which would not support Win2000! Not even then!
So, all in all, it was crippling me and I had to reformat my hard drive to get rid of it. However, it is FAR more stable and technically advanced. Too bad you can’t run your favorite games/programs!
— G. Raven
Will MSN’s mediaplayer integrate with Win2000? I want to listen to CD’s now and then.
What about things like McAfee anti-virus? MS Office Premium?
Okay, so Win2000 is sophisticated and stable…will I find the learning curve fairly steep if I know win98 fairly well?
If you’re running a server, Win2k is a better and more robust operating system.
For the home user, it’s overkill. Like using an Indy racer to drive to the grocery. And it’s not compatible with a lot of Win9x peripherals. If that doesn’t matter, go ahead, but you won’t be using a fraction of its power.