Why do you guys like Win2k better than Win98SE?

[Looney]

And BTW, what games have people had trouble playing on Win2k? I haven't had a single problem with a game that's been released in the past 4 years under Win2k... that includes, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Deus Ex, BG1 and 2, Diablo 2, UT, Quake 3, and no problems in those.

 

[Magic30]

Moralpanic is right: I could extend his list with about 30 more games (older and newer).

 

[TSDible]

Eventually.... we must all give up the dos games of our youth.

 

[Blackhawk2]

I run Win95 OSR 2.1 just fine, but I don't mess with erroneous programs, hardware or drivers. Its been perfectly stable and I run a server using it, so I don't understand why people are bashing its stability.

 

[dstidolph]

I worked at Origin and was involved in a specific test. We were doing a demo of Ultima Online 2 (Win95 game using DX7). We were doing the demo with two identical machines:

P3 600 (this was a year and six months ago)
512MB Mem
30 GB 10K RPM SCSI drive
GeForce DDR (Creative Labs Annilator I think)
SBLive Sound Card

One machine had Windows 98se and the other had Windows 2000 Professional.

The Win2k machine booted faster and when I had to do a specific processing task within the game, the Win2K machine ran it about 25% faster. What was more intereasting was that over time the Win98 box got slower and slower and the Win2K machine stayed the same speed.

Later we found a memory leak in the software that lost a pretty constent stream of memory blocks. Windows 2000 used the memory better and paged things MUCH better.

Because of this test I got a real world comparison between the two. I now use Windows ME at home and getting ready to move on to Windows 2000 - for the same reasons noted elsewhere - my system crashes a lot. I use Windows 2000 at work, and while I have managed to crash it, it simply happens far less often.

Of note to everyone on the list, most game developers I know have made the switch over to Windows 2000 for developing games. The last Ultima game, for example, saw a 20-30% increase in framerate because of memory management. If you have more than 128 MB of memory you are wasting it on Windows 9x. Windows 2000 handles as much memory as you throw at it.

Also, if you are building a new system - make it a dual processor. Does a lot for letting you do multiple things at the same time without limiting your machine (trying burning a CD and do ANYTHING else under Windows 9x). Windows 2000 comes with dual processor support built in.

There are reasons to run Windows 9x. The main one is devices for which you do not have a driver. If you have an old device (other than a video card), the likelyhood is you will NOT find a driver for it.

Good luck, and make the switch.

David Stidolph.

 

[josphstalinator]

well with win2k i found that starcraft and diabloII were less stable. i also couldnt run certain programs such as partition magic (and other that i cant remember). i also coulndt find correct drivers for some of my devices and others i couldnt get to work at all. internet connection sharing also works better in win2k. i was able to share my connection with one ethernet card but ics in win98 and winme seem to require TWO ethernet cards to share a connection, one to provide access to the internet and the other to connect to the home network. win2k did seem to be the most stable and i didnt have to reboot that often. another thing that i noticed is that my sound card was able to output sounds from two programs at the same time, a feature i couldnt get to work under win98 or winme (i thought this was a directX problem??). winme offered many improvements over win98 such as better regedit.exe. but it also had its fair share of setbacks. i found it to be less stable and its lack of real mode dos support was pretty lame. system restore and other features like internet connection sharing (from second edition) dont work as well as norton ghost and wingate. the best thing about winme is it boots really fast. as for win98 there are certain programs that freeze more often (ex. icq is rock solid under winme and win2k but freezes all the time under win98). but games (starcraft mostly) never crash and its for this reason i stick with win98. thats my two cents.

 

[lilstevo]

I like it because other people like it and so this way I feel I am part of something. Because everyone else stressed it, I'll stress it again. STABILITY!!!!!!

 

[fusion76]

If you can get Win2K to run on your system it works great. Supposively the drivers got better for it also..therefor games can run better. But if you are like the 3 out of 5 people such as myself that can't run 2k due to hardware incompatability...stick with 98SE.

 

[BMdoobieW]

<< another thing that i noticed is that my sound card was able to output sounds from two programs at the same time, a feature i couldnt get to work under win98 >>



The same thing happened with me when I installed Windows 2000 and it really made my day.

The reasons I installed Windows 2000 were stability and memory management. I had Win98 running for almost two years on my P2-266 laptop with 96MB ram, and it got to the point where it crashed almost every day, froze up on shut down often, and would get bogged down after having only a few programs open. I considered reinstalling Win98, but since there aren't many new games that will run on a 266mhz laptop, I saw windows 2000 as being the perfect answer to my problems.

So seven months ago I did a clean install of Win2k. Since then my computer has only crashed 8 times (and two or three were due to USB problems). My laptop is running as a desktop 99% of the time so I leave it on 24/7. My &quot;mean time between reboots&quot; is 3.49 days and I once had it going for a month without rebooting it. Also, it doesn't seem to run any slower than it did with Win98. So for being a laptop and having less than the 128MB of ram everyone says I should have, I am really impressed with its performance.

 

[radiocore]

not having to reboot all the time...stability

 

[superbaby]

WTF SNOBBERY??

DO YOU DO ANYTHING BUT PLAY GAMES ON YOUR COMPUTER???

TRY DOING SOME *REAL* WORK AND YOU'LL EAT THAT SH!T YOU JUST TYPED!!!!

God you are clueless. Get off this board.

 

[jaywallen]

Shooters,

Just a note here on your particular situation. You said &quot;I just installed Win2K over Win98SE and haven't really noticed any significant difference...&quot;. If you actually installed W2K on top of a Win98SE installation, I'm not surprised that you've not seen an improvement. That's not really a fair test. If you want to see W2K shine, install it clean. (That goes for ANY Windows version, actually.)

I see that others here have said that W2K is &quot;arcane&quot; or unfriendly. I find it to be the opposite. Troubleshooting a W2K system is, for me, MUCH easier than troubleshooting a Win9X system. The Event Viewer functionality in NT4 and W2K has no parallel in Win9X. If you want to get to the bottom of a performance issue in W2K you have so many more tools (and more effective ones) than you have available to you in Win9X. It's Win9X that's arcane. Logical analysis of issues works very well in solving issues on W2K systems. In Win9X, one must often resort to ritual dances and chicken blood sacrifices. :Q

My $.02.

Regards,
Jim

 

[Cnuke]

Same as RAINCITY said STABILITY. Not being able to overwrite .dlls primo move by microsoft. Now we do not have to worry about cheap software companies trashing the dlls that are shared.

 

[Eug]

<< run SETI, burn a CD, have ICQ open, download some files, move 2 Gb over network, check E-Mail and surf with Netscape. After the burn and copying process are finished, shutdown all programs and play UT online ... >>


Used to do that all the time in Windows 98. Run OGR, burn a CD (disc-to-disc... yes, on an IDE system), play in photoshop, surf the net, check my email, all at the same time with a virus checker and my HotSync Manager, and a firewall program in the background. Then I'd go download some files, nef on AnandTech, etc., shut everything down, and go play UT online. Repeat as required (esp. the UT part ). (P.S. Note that SETI and OGR are set at minimum priority, so they're probably irrelevant.)

I could do this for days until I needed a reboot. However, if I didn't do all this stuff, I could leave the computer on for more than a week.

OTOH, after several months I still can't get one my CD-ROM drives working properly in Win 2000 (dual boot). :| I'll try again tonite, since I've done a complete wipe of my system and started over. Furthermore, half my software doesn't even run in Win 2000. Many now have updates, but many of those require buying the software again. :|

So, I DO think Windows 2000 is probably more stable if working correctly on a system, but for some of us either we've had problems with hardware drivers, or else the apps we own won't work with it so it's hard to recommend Windows 2000 to everyone. However, I have no doubt that when 2000 and supporting software are a little more mature, it will be much better and of course more stable than Win 98. My sysadmin friends won't even touch it with a 10 foot pole just yet though except for testing purposes and for personal use - still a bit buggy - won't let it loose on their networks. Until it ages a bit, I'm sticking with a dual setup.

 

[Piecia]

Stability....but what would you say about Linuxs' stability?