W2K is the cleanest of the currently supported NT flavors. I have a Dual PII300 w/512MB and FW SCSI which runs great under W2K, but generally I'd want 700Mhz and 256MB with 40-60Gb of reasonably fast storage to run it. Actually, the more memory the better, and of course, the same with chip speed. My new rig really flys with a Gig of memory and a 2.54 P4.
 
Gaming compatibility and eye candy are not as good as XP, but stability is far better.
 
The only thing I worry about is, when MS discontinues support, my only option appears to be Linux, or, XP. I'm looking at Linux builds right now. ;(

Yup, that's where I am headed after 2K. Wintendo for gaming and *nix for everything else (and gaming when game is compiled for *nix.)
 
Oh and NT4/2K/XP runs fine on my box...NT4 is the least trouble but is less supported and compatible, 2K is better than NT4/XP and XP just pissed me off to no end (mostly due to M$ laziness than anything else).

I got no problem with Windows XP, I just don't use it primarily because I like how fast Windows 2000 runs on my lower end machine. A 750MHz, 512 MB RAM machine. Windows XP runs well enough, but I find that some games run a tad slower, and I found the stability to be a notch below Windows 2000. After a few service packs I am sure Windows XP will be fine.

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Gaming compatibility and eye candy are not as good as XP, but stability is far better.




i found quiet the opposite - XP was FAR FAR FAR more stable for me then 2k ever was! - and it should be, as it is a newer release and have some feature to help prevent b.s.o.d's

i have never b.s.o.d Xp due to XP (due to nividia drivers - yes, but not XP itself) - where as 2k i used to b.s.o.d at least once a day (and yes, i used XP and 2k on the same system)

Just my experience.

Is it just me or is the disk caching in Windows XP rubbish. I find it expands far too much and it pages out everything to fill all of physical memory with the disk cache.
 
Thats my biggest hate of Windows XP.

Quote:Is it just me or is the disk caching in Windows XP rubbish. I find it expands far too much and it pages out everything to fill all of physical memory with the disk cache.

Thats my biggest hate of Windows XP.

turn off the pagefile executive

i run xp pro from beta 2 and the only think that i have do is to upgrade from version to version. now i work with sp1(not sp1a).
no format for almost two years.just upgrade.

I got so fed up with XP and its gimecks and instability, that I ended up swithching back to Win 2k. At this time, I just see no REASON to use XP since 2000 works better and all the programs and games work on it

i REALLY do not understand all these people that say 2k is more stable then Xp?
 
i had 7 B.S.O.D's in under 10 mins when i put 2k back into a system for the heck of it - to which XP had not given me any! and yes - i was using the right drivers and all - i had 2k previously on tihs system before i got a hold of XP years back.
 
if anything i think it is due to incompatible hardware that pepole do not bother to check and think - yeah - i will just use 2k drivers - or something along that lines.
 
XP has built in crash isolation - wich prevents an applicaiton that crashes from BSOD'd the O/S as well - and this works very well - sometihng 2k does not have - not to mention more comaptibilty with many software applications and games. - more so newer ones.
 
 
Also 2k3 is the most cleanest of the NT supported flavours in my thoughts.

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XP has built in crash isolation - wich prevents an applicaiton that crashes from BSOD'd the O/S as well - and this works very well - sometihng 2k does not have - not to mention more comaptibilty with many software applications and games. - more so newer ones.


For the second time, this is NOT true.

Crash isolation has been there ever since Nt4. Windows 2000 has crash isolation too. windows 200 shells out proigrams such that if one program fails the others remain unaffected!

Quote:Quote:
XP has built in crash isolation - wich prevents an applicaiton that crashes from BSOD'd the O/S as well - and this works very well - sometihng 2k does not have - not to mention more comaptibilty with many software applications and games. - more so newer ones.


For the second time, this is NOT true.

Crash isolation has been there ever since Nt4. Windows 2000 has crash isolation too. windows 200 shells out proigrams such that if one program fails the others remain unaffected!

well iwould have to say it does not work for crap in win2k then...lol or at least it never did for me.

that's odd!
I have had much worse luck with XP crach isolation than windows 2000.
In my opinion, Micro$oft screwed around way too much with XP and ruined the OS.

guess we will have to see how long horn does.
 
 
i use server 2003 myself when possible - it just kick's XP in the butt
 
but on a serious note - 2k always BSOD'd for me when something went wrong - or it would hang for ages - or my system woudl just reboot.
 
it was not the hardware as when it started i went nuts finding the problems. - and in the end it was 2k it's self - i always used 2k drivers and comaptible hardware and everything i had ran fine on XP and never crashed like it did on 2k

I prefer Windows 2000 to XP anyday, for every day tasks (except gaming), Its more reliable doesnt crash, is more stable. XP has a bitch every now and then and causes u to loose important dats, so i stick to 2000 for music/college work/accounting finanance and XP for games

XP and 2K have both been exceptionally stable for me. I run XP on my laptops and desktops because I need ClearType for my LCDs. I also run Windows Server 2003 on my dev/troubleshooting laptop for many reasons, but one of which is that it does many things faster than when I had XP on it (yes, this may be odd to many people, but it is true). However, I run all Intel equipment, in addition to many other high-end components from companies that believe in putting out really good drivers.
 
As for Linux, I love Gentoo and Mac OSX (BSD core, but with all the pretty stuff on top). I went back to Windows mostly because of:
 
1. Visual Studio.NET (yes, it rules. I program in C# because I dig Java, well mostly... )
2. MS Office XP, and now Office System (no, OpenOffice.org is not a viable replacement for me, and yes I used it for a long time and found KOffice to be better, but still not good enough)
3. SQL Server (if you have used it along with other client/server RDBMS options, you would know why)
4. Exchange Server (very cool, especially when linked to...)
5. Active Directory (you can get many of the same features using Linux and Open LDAP, but you have to recompile many of the apps to tie into it, such as the kernel itself and SAMBA)
6. Windows Server 2003 (it hosts all of the above, and is the fastest and most stable Windows OS ever, period)
 
As a desktop, Gentoo was fine if you learned how to tweak everything (like fonts, but that's mostly an art anyway). However, I had simple apps crash X-Server, which in turn crashed every GUI-reliant app you were using. I still like it a lot though, and recommend it. Gentoo with Fluxbox was the way to go.

XP and 2k have been good to me. Unfortunately, my college hasn't quite gotten all the boxes running Win2k, and now I really despise Win9x...of course, WinME was the worst of all.

Quote:I got so fed up with XP and its gimecks and instability, that I ended up swithching back to Win 2k. At this time, I just see no REASON to use XP since 2000 works better and all the programs and games work on it

It's a surprise to me that XP can behave badly on your computer, because it is fundamentaly the same system as Win2000... with a bit more coding pages than 2000.

May be you don't have enough RAM, or your hard drive is not a 7500 UDMA type.

We had cases where 2000 would «freeze» (nothing could move) with less than 256k of RAM and a small cheap hard drive connected to an ElCheapo motherboard... BUT NOTHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAPPEN WITH XP IN THE SAME SETUP.

WHY IS THAT ?

ANSWER : because 2000 is much more demanding on the hardware than XP, since XP can recognise 16 bits programs, instead of being limited to the 32 bits coding of 2000.

To make it short, XP is more versatile than 2000... even if they are nearly twins.