Which OS, XP Pro or Win2k Pro

[jediphx]

Ok guys This is my system in a nutshell. I play alot of games, DVDs, burn alot of VCDs etc and yes do work on my PC LOL. I own copies of both win2k pro and winXP pro. Which do you feel I would be happier with? (PS I tried win2k pro only up to SP1 and have been running WinXP since it came out but im curious abount win2k pro again since SP3 is out) Thx

AMD Athlon 1800+ (AGOIA)@ 1680 on a Epox 8K7A, 512 PC2100DDR, Matrox Parhelia 128,Turtle Beach Santa Cruz etc etc

 

[MedicBob]

Best reading come from searching here.

 

[jediphx]

hmm any other opinions?

 

[tigerwannabe]

i'd go for xp pro myself--with nero as the burning software. that would be beefy enough to handle work & play

 

[Mem]

If you`re asking a straight answer between 2K and XP PRO then my answer is XP PRO,however it`s really a personal thing so whatever you`re happy with the most is the important thing.

 

[MainFramed]

Originally posted by: tigerwannabe
i'd go for xp pro myself--with nero as the burning software. that would be beefy enough to handle work & play

xp pro...unless your gonna be setting up some huge netwurk..go w/ win2k

 

[StanTheMan]

2K all the time, unless Microsoft stops annoy me with XP's "bug" such as:
- always ask what i'm going to do everytime i insert a new cd (i like the autorun feature for games and CDA, just like win9x - 2000, but i hate being asked abt what todo everytime i insert a new cd without autorun)
- heyy... msn messenger is here, pls sign up
- IE anoyingly change the size of image when the image is too big
- Stupid request error report to microsoft everytime a software crash
- long load time (sometimes) due to error recovery
- damn windows update which most of the time cause your system unstable (automatic update is enabled by default)
- XP treats you like stupid and computer blind. Everytime you open C:\ it always say hey its fvcking dangerous to open this, can cause system corruption bla bla, bs bs, do you still want to open it?
- when you open my computer, there are 2 useless shared folder (dunno share with who)

In short, if you want XP to run cool and easy, you need to configure lots of things. Most of the times by changing the setting, but sometimes (just like the last problem mentioned) you need to do registry hack.

plus:
plugging digital camera to onboard VIA based motherboard USB can cause some headache, which i heard could only be resolved by putting a USB card. such thing does not occur with Windows 2000

If you remember infinite loop error that happen with most nvidia card a while ago, the IL error occur mainly in XP (though sometimes it also occur in 2K).

geez, what a h3ll of trouble running XP

 

[Insidious]

I can't help but agree that all of the above are annoying, but did you know that every item in your list
can be easily turned off with menu options? (No hacking necessary)

well, except the one about M$ being condescending

Anyway, I just put up a thread "One for the list" or something like that which has a link to a great site
for making XP run like you want it to. (Actually, try to recall what you had to do to get 2K running like
you wanted and you will probably find it is MUCH easier to do the same with XP.)

XP is next generation 2K........ with the exception of martyrdom, there is little reason to resist it.

Great site to remove annoyances from XP

 

[jediphx]

Well my understanding is that win2k runs cleaner, takes less tweaking. XP has better gaming support for older games. Now my question is since win2k pro and winXP each have essentially the same core should games etc that were made to wrok with XP work just fine on Win2k whether M$ stops supporting win2k or not?

I own both OS's but think I might benefit from going back to win2k because XP seems to get "junked" up so quickly

any thoughts?

 

[jpetermann]

Dual Boot. Use both. That way you don't have to make a decision.

PJ

 

[Insidious]

any thoughts?

Reading through, it sounds like you have been answering your own question????

I think the suggestion to dual boot, compare and then post what you find is a good option.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

XP Pro..I like it.



Just my opinion

 

[jediphx]

so what I split my 80 gig HD into two seperate partitions and then install win2k on 1st and winxp on 2nd one?

 

[Insidious]

Exactly

 

[paperfist]

I say Win2kPro... I have been using mine for a while now and have never had any gaming issues/conflicts at all. Well except maybe I can't play really old DOS games

I won?t switch to XP until I have to cause my Win2kPro isn?t broke and if history is true XP has more bloat in it then 2k and I don?t need more bloat BTW, the only thing I wish I did when I installed 2k was made it dual boot with DOS, but that's just cause I have a few DOS games I'd like to play.

 

[jediphx]

hmm how would you dual boot win2k and dos?

 

[UrbanAchiever]

GO with XP, if you machine is powerfull enough, as XP desktop takes more power when full options are enabled. XP has all that w2k does, and then more. Plus, M$ will stop supporting w2k in 3 years and is currently "phasing out" w2k for XP. There are some apps that don't work with XP, but very few. XP has a great system restore feature, and a lot of others. (true, you may want to turn off some of these annoying M$ helper apps, but thats easy enough and you only do it once.)PLus, if you run an LCD monitor it has cleartype, which w2k does not have --- real plus for LCD. (ON my laptop XP text looks much better then W2K, espessially at 1600x1200). Don't dual boot w2k and xp, it is a waste of space, most dos games work ok in XP, it also has speciall conpatibily modes for dos, w98, etc.

 

[matheusber]

Originally posted by: StanTheMan
2K all the time, unless Microsoft stops annoy me with XP's "bug" such as:- always ask what i'm going to do everytime i insert a new cd (i like the autorun feature for games and CDA, just like win9x - 2000, but i hate being asked abt what todo everytime i insert a new cd without autorun)- heyy... msn messenger is here, pls sign up- IE anoyingly change the size of image when the image is too big- Stupid request error report to microsoft everytime a software crash- long load time (sometimes) due to error recovery- damn windows update which most of the time cause your system unstable (automatic update is enabled by default)- XP treats you like stupid and computer blind. Everytime you open C:\ it always say hey its fvcking dangerous to open this, can cause system corruption bla bla, bs bs, do you still want to open it?- when you open my computer, there are 2 useless shared folder (dunno share with who)In short, if you want XP to run cool and easy, you need to configure lots of things. Most of the times by changing the setting, but sometimes (just like the last problem mentioned) you need to do registry hack.pluslugging digital camera to onboard VIA based motherboard USB can cause some headache, which i heard could only be resolved by putting a USB card. such thing does not occur with Windows 2000If you remember infinite loop error that happen with most nvidia card a while ago, the IL error occur mainly in XP (though sometimes it also occur in 2K).geez, what a h3ll of trouble running XP

this dumb XP features made me get back to my dear Win2000 ... its weaks are games .. and some games only ( basically old ones ), just for gaming i'd say XP ( not for me ... ) anywhere else i'd go Win2000

NdN

 

[aircooled]

Since you're a gamer....XP Pro

Just make sure to turn off all the "phone home" stuff and all the eye candy abd you'll be fine...


I also like win2k, but for gaming I've found XP to be a step ahead....

 

[Intelman07]

XP pro because M$ is going to make Office 11 only run on XP and 2k.(on 2k you got to install a patch even) Anyways in the future they might have stuff run only on XP. Just a thought.

 

[Sunner]

I tried out WinXP when it came out, got it for free from MSDN, and I love playing with new stuff, so I figured why not?

Tried it for a few months, then went back to Win2K.
The way I see it, WinXP is basically Win2K with a load of crap I don't want or need, and that useless crap fills up my HD for no good reason.
And disabling some of it(most notably MSN messenger) is a PITA.

As for gaming support, I haven't had any problems with any games cept some really old DOS games, and those didn't work under XP either.
XP has a built in compability mode, Win2K has the exact same thing, cept it doesn't get installed by default, you have to install it from your Win2K CD, but once you do that, you're fine with older Win9x only games.

So, in short, I think Win2K is fine enough, definately the best Windows so far, WinXP is Win2K+crap, so why change?
Oh and yes, stuff made for WinXP will work for Win2K as well, unless MS decides not to release future DirectX versions for Win2K, which I guess they will at some point, but maybe at that time I'll be doing all my gaming in a real OS

 

[StanTheMan]

I would say, no games that doesn't run in win2K will run on xp.
as for the dos support, XP is better. however, 2K has the possibility to be better.
what does i mean with that?
well, yeah, out of the box you get sb emulation for dos gaming with XP. But the emulation only covers midi emulation (my quick observation, i could be wrong).
however with 2K, you can use third party software like soundfx 2000 and get complete comprehensive emulation for sound blaster

 

[straubs]

This is how I see it. WinXP is win2k plus some added niceties and some not-so-niceties. BUT, you can have BOTH with XP. You can't "turn-on" the missing features when you are in 2k. If you go with XP, you can turn stuff off that you don't like and leave others on and you got the best of both worlds.

In my experience, XP is even a tad more stable than 2k and 2k is by FAR the most stable OS that microsoft has put out.

If you are starting from SCRATCH (nothing installed at all yet), go with XP.

If you already are running 2k, there's not a whole lot of reason to upgrade other than:
-ClearType (mainly for LCD screens)
-*Amazingly fast* boot times... which isn't too big of a deal because I don't reboot for 25+ days at a time.
-Built-in system restore. It actually works well.
-Much less fussy about which software will run on it (mainly games).
-And if you run a home network, it has much much simpler network sharing. 2k requires you to always propagate the permissions every time you put a new file in the shared folder or the other users will get "access denied" messages. This is EXTREMELY annoying when you just want to share some mp3's or whatever with the other PC's in the house.

 

[straubs]

Originally posted by: StanTheMan
I would say, no games that doesn't run in win2K will run on xp.
as for the dos support, XP is better. however, 2K has the possibility to be better.
what does i mean with that?
well, yeah, out of the box you get sb emulation for dos gaming with XP. But the emulation only covers midi emulation (my quick observation, i could be wrong).
however with 2K, you can use third party software like soundfx 2000 and get complete comprehensive emulation for sound blaster

Not trying to be mean or anything, but most of what you just said is just plain wrong.

In my house we have 2 win2k computers and 2 winXP computers. The 2k's *very rarely*, and I mean almost never, have issues with games, but the XP's *never* do. And the dos mode SB emulation works much better on XP. I've tried third-party on the 2k boxes and they never worked right.

I believe Grand Theft Auto (the original) is extremely hard to get running on 2k. It works fine on XP. I've come across one or two others, but I can't remember what they were. It is rare, but it does happen.

 

[Lonyo]

Can you turn off the annoying (to me) thing in XP where it combines all the windows of a program (like Internet Explorer) into one thing on the taskbar? I hate that feature. Win 2k is what I would go for, it worked nicely from the go, and looked nice as well. In XP I couldn't live with all the crap, the Start Menu by default sucks for me, I like the classic 95/98/2k one, the windows have all rounded buttons which suck imho. Aesthetically I think 2K looks nicer, and that should be a major factor, after all, you're gonna have to look at the screen lots, and XP takes lots of stuff to make it look like classic windows. If you like Day-Glo stuff go with XP though.