[thelist] Win 2k or XP and why?

Peter Kaulback pkaulbak at idirect.ca
Wed Jul 31 21:24:00 CDT 2002


In the hour of 12:44 PM 7/31/2002 -0500, Dave spoke this:

>I am about to upgrade operating systems (yeah I know, it's about time)
>but I need to do it because Visual.Net won't run on 98. Out of these two
>choices which I am narrowed down to, Win 2000 Pro or Win XP Pro, which
>would be better and why? I have read stories about the product
>activation on XP and also the hardware and software incompatibilities,
>so I was almost leaning towards Win 2k but I realize its the older
>technology. Advice is most welcome...
>Thanks,
>Dave

I recommend win2k over XP unless you have the latest and greatest hardware.
Win2k is older (2 years old this November) and MS is moving it into the
extended phase of it's lifecycle in March of 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle.asp but XP hasn't seen it's
first service pack yet (due September 2002) and has issues with Java.
The main sticking point with XP is the WPA, especially if your drive fails
or you change your motherboard then you have to call M$ for the activation
code. Also XP sometimes balks over other vendors software, I've seen a
number of clients drop NN 4.x because XP would choke on it.
Some of my clients find it slower on their dialup connections than on the
broadband connections, that is the system is slower overall.
XP has a higher hardware requirements than win2k, more ram and it takes up
more room on the drive too.
I run a number of OpenGL based games under win2k flawlessly, but on XP the
same games irritate the eyes because for some reason MS has  decided that
OpenGL games should have their refresh rate locked at 60 mhz. With DirectX
games the rate is locked at 75 mhz. Interestingly enough that MS chose a
stripped down win2k for their X-Box game console over a stripped down XP.

Peter Kaulback

--
Eventually the revolutionaries become the established culture, and then
what will they do
-Linus Torvalds




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