[thechat] winXP vs. win2000 (was RE: networking fun and a stu pid question)

[Joel Canfield]

>Now I'm wondering about upgrading to Win2000 vs. WinXP for my
>3rd computer that currently has Win98se. I thought I'd go
>ahead and upgrade and I'm wondering if I ought to jump to
>WinXP rather than Win2000.

Gaaaa!! Sorry; I panicked. XP scares me. At least two arguments against it;
one practical, one more theoretical:

1. Without going into boring details, XP has some fundamental security
issues.
2. and, the practical point ;) if you go with 2000, I know someone who'll
give you free tech support, since that's what he does for a living.

>
>I've been reading some reviews about WinXP, but
>1. I'd also love to know some thoughts from any of you who
>actually use it,

We have a couple testbed machines (yes, it's inevitable, so we're analyzing
the beast) and it's still tough to find some of the hardware drivers (and
even software versions) to work with XP. Granted, our needs are way beyond
your burgeoning network, but I'm deadset against jumping into a new version
of Windows until thousands of other beta testers have worked out the bugs,
and vendors have had time to completely rewrite all their drivers from
scratch.

2. Any problems with upgrading from Win98se
>to WinXP or upgrading from Win98se to Win2000,

Let's don't upgrade. It's consistently buggy. Back up your data, gather up
all your software, know what hardware you've got so you can get drivers, GET
THE DRIVERS FOR THE NETWORK CARD onto a floppy, then wipe and rebuild from
scratch. Upgraded machines ran at about 50% capacity until we manually
replaced almost every single hardware driver. Wiped/rebuilt machines didn't
go thru that adolescence.

3. Is upgrading
>to Win2000 still preferable to upgrading instead to WinXP?

Every review I've read says that the functional differences between the
Professional versions are minimal to non-existant. 2000 has been the best
Windows OS I've worked with; better even than NT4, which was pretty darn
stable for Windows.

>
>I'm after the better stability and better networking support
>of the two. Any experiences, thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Win2K is way cool to network. My home network has 7 Windows machines
(besides the server.) Only two '98s are left, and the axe is soon to fall on
them. My son the helpdesk tech/gamer just whacked his ME machine and
converted to 2000 because he was tired of being his own best customer. He
manages 200 Win2K machines at our office, and rarely has to involve the
secondary helpdesk (me.)

>
>Thanks!
>
>Warmly,
>Shirley
>
>

Whatever you decide, you know where to come for tech support :)

joel