i was actually refering to deleth. sorry for the confusion… my reccomendation? XP Pro. You have the power, find an ‘OEM’ version for $125. It’s worth it.
and a good spellchecker for me, plez.
Everybody I know who used ME was not happy with it. I think you would be better off with W-98. I couldn’t get support for W-95 so I went to 98 and then to XP.
I have XP on my laptop and XP Professional on my desktop. My laptop crashed twice requiring a complete wipe of the hard drive (thank you HP for not including actual program disks). I will blame the 2nd crash on stupidity. The sleeper function of the laptop should never be used. The 2nd crash was identical to the first and occured after I closed the lid while running DeLorme software.
XP professional is “supposed” to be more crash proof. I chose it based on recommendations from someone who eats software for breakfast. It was that reason alone I opted for it.
There are products out there that help with normal crashes. I think one of them is called “go back” and it allows you to pick a point in time before the crash. It’s supposed to be helpful for such things as power failures.
da_pope: :rolleyes:
I was simply curious, and then I cleared up a misconception he may have had. I’m always going to ask questions and fight ignorance, no matter what you bigots think.
By that logic, the Enteprise vs. Star Destroyer threads should be in Great Debates, too. :rolleyes:
I went into a rant here, but it ended up sounding more appropriate for the pit. <lotsa nastiness cut>
derleth, your rollyeyes aside, your opinon about linux being ‘easy to use’ hardly qualifies as ‘clearing up misconceptions’. I believe the OP said linux was NOT an option, why must you shove it down everyone’s throat anyway? and then to claim you’re ‘fighting ignorance’???
Sounds like the usual linux zealotry to me. Can’t leave it alone, can you?
bigot? against linux, no. against fools? yes.
Can we have a more final word on this? Is XP Pro really more stable than XP? Do either of them more often have unrecoverable crashes?
Derleth asked a polite question regarding the rationale for the exclusion of Linux and it was politely answered by MBS, and Derleth then offered some additional Linux conversion resources for MBS if he ever became so inclined. That was it.
Now you’re thowing around “jihad” and “fools” to characterize Derleth’s part in that discussion. Everyone is playing nice, but it is obvious you are absolutely itching to get into a scrum with a Linux enthusiast. Why don’t you start a thread in the Pit offering to take all Linux geeks. Your attempts to start a fight here are pointless and annoying.
They are fundamentally the exact same OS. XP Pro is simply a superset of XP Home with networking goodies. Performance and stability will be more or less identical in 99% of all cases.
See
Windows XP Home Edition vs. Professional Edition: What’s the difference?
The only unrecoverable crashes I have run into wth XP Home and Pro are those tied to low level hardware conflicts or failures and they have been fairly rare. Low level USB conflicts (when installing USB devices) and overheating or forcing the wrong drivers for unknown hardware are only times I have seen XP lock and re-boot. It is orders of magnitude more stable than 98 or ME.
da_pope, few things make me happier than a Linux-hater who so quickly resorts to unfounded, ad hominem attacks.
It makes me feel that my favorite OS is that much closer to gaining even more ground.
Thank you. 
From what has been said, and from my experience:
XP Home at least
XP Pro if you can afford it.
A 1.2 AMD with 256 RAM (I would suggest moving to 512 though) should be good and have you hummin nicely.
If you’re not then you may have other issues. Hey, afterall, you might have a shitty NorthBridge or whole MOBO.
Good luck.
Here’s hoping you’re up and cruising soon <beer>
In my experience, Mac OS X is more stable, more attractive, easier to use, troubleshoot, maintain, upgrade and learn than Windows XP. YMMV.
I’d go with XP Pro over XP Home. Yes there are features that you probably won’t need, but you might. Take a Tablet PC for instance. That requires XP Pro, not Home, on your base PC. And you never know when some application will require a DLL or something that’s only present in XP Pro.
There is no debate: Enterprise always wins. 
So if you have XP Home, and you need to use a Tablet, are you S.O.O.L. unless you upgrade to XP Pro? Or can you get the particular .dlls that you need on a case by case basis?
Urg: that site says that XP Home does not support multiprocessors. I was thinking of getting a P4 with hyperthreading tech, but the whole point of HT is that the OS sees one processor as two processors. But it needs a multiprocessor OS to work. Erg… I want to use my comp mostly for high performance gaming too, and it sounds like XP Pro is slower for that.
As someone who has used every MS OS since 3.11, I’m still sticking with Windows 2000.
The reasons for upgrading just aren’t very compelling. Yeah, it ships with more drivers. It’s a newer OS. What do you expect? Even when I did try XP, most of the drivers were slightly out of date and I ended up upgrading them anyway. None of the hardware I’ve ever used has had a lack of decent Windows 2000 driver support - and I’ve gone through a lot of hardware. Plus, many devices are going to the WDM model now anyway, which incorporates drivers for multiple MS OSs in one package.
So what about gaming? Well, I don’t buy all that many games, but the ones I do get tend to be fairly demanding on my computer, so they’re probably a good example. GTA3 installed and ran great on my Windows 2000 machine. I never even needed the 1.1 patch. Damn thing never crashed. So once I got XP up, running, and updated, one of the first things I did was install GTA3. It wouldn’t run - at all. Geez.
I have yet to read a review of a game I want, only to find that it doesn’t work with Windows 2000. I’ve really had nothing but great luck with gaming and this OS.
XP can take its stupid activation and its stupid, nagging Passport popups from the system tray and shove 'em. Windows 2000 is a more mature, less annoying, less intrusive operating system. XP is little more than couple of new (but unimpressive) features and more bugs.
Oh, and Apos: Windows 2000 Pro supports Symmetric Multiprocessing.
However, the statement was what is better than XP for the majority of users? Whatever the advantages of OS X, i is of absolutely no value whatsoever to the majority of ordinary users, who use computer OS X does not work with. Including the author of the OP, who obviously is using a Wintel PC.
I’d love it if you could give me OS X. But my computer doesn’t run it and I’m sure not gonna buy a whole new system to use it.
Whippersnappers! Why, back in my day we ran Win '95 and were glad to get it! What You See Might Very Well Bear Some Resemblence to What You Get! Those were the days, we weren’t all spoiled, not afraid to tap in the occassional DOS command, get our hands dirty! Harumph. Kids these days, wear their hair all funny, and that so-called music…
As for Linux…the MicroZombies are everywhere. You have been warned!
In my experience there is no appreciable difference. In fact, WinXP Pro runs Warcraft 3 better on my computer (P3-500, 512 mb RAM, GeForce 3 ti500) than Win98SE did, so take that as you will.