2K or not 2K?

[coyote]

I guess I'm fed up with WinMe. My Dad's Socket7/AMDK6III/450 on a tyan S1598 board running Win98SE bigtime out performs my KT7RAID/DURON600 Running WinMe.

I will not go backwords, so perhaps Win2K is the answer? Whatdaya Think? What would I be giving up if I went to Win2K (from Winme)?

I currently use NT4 SR6 at work and am familiar with NT, but never thought it would be good for home use...or would it?

Your thoughts are much appreciated. Help me decide...I probably will not go for XP unless it proves itself and has been out for a year.

[RobUK]

I've used Win2k and WinMe on my system and i find that WinME is the better choice for me. Its faster and better compatiable with games.
Can't understand why your Duron 600 is out performed by a K6/3 450! Is one of the hard disks faster or has one got more ram than the other??

RobUK

[coyote]

It was probably an unfair statement. We both have 256Meg and he does have ATA100 drives, where I have ATA33. Sandra 2001 says my machine is where it is supposed to be. I guess I'm fustrated with the instability of WinMe more than the performance. For instance, the way it sucks up memory and when IE explorer (5.5) locks the entire machine on certain web pages. Maybe I'm looking for an excuse.

Are you saying that I have nothing to gain with regards to performance? I'm thinking Win2K has a better managed OS than WinMe, such as memory leakage, etc...

[NDC]

I've found Win2k much superior in performance and memory management Vs. any Microsoft OS that uses 9x kernel. Win2k is so much more responsive and multi-tasks at much more idea speeds.

[coyote]

NDC, your comments are inline with my understanding of Win2K as well. However, how do you address the comments that I have read that Win2K is a resource hog? What do these comments mean? That it requires a lot of memory? That's OK, memory is cheap (at least right now) and I already have 256M which 'should' be sufficient. Or are they saying that it is sluggish as a result or something else I can't think of?

[1Old Fart]

I dual boot 2 machines with ME and 2k, and in intense apps [games] I need about 64 megs more ram to get same performance.....128 on ME and 192 on 2k.
With 256 you will do fine on 2k unless you are a graphics junkie like NDC, but he has lots of ram to do that http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[S.D.Willie]

for gaming and better speed in windows id put my money on ME over 2K. i removed system re(whore)store and PC health though. these eat up your disk space and resources. plus the windows media player 7 bites. i ran 2K at home for a while and dumped it in favor of ME due to its speed and compatibilty issues.. i dont have the slowest system either
(p3 700, 256megs, asusv6600 pure)
oh yeah.....i went nuts trying to install my canon fb320p parallel port scanner to no avail. that was another thorn in my side.

its all preference.....give it a try. ya never know..

SD

[Wilan Wong]

I'll suggest going to Win2k, the 9x line is usually unstable, but Win98 hardly crashes for me, it can go on for 1 day without crashing or blue screen, maybe even more. But Win2k has superior performance, and a lot faster multitasking than the 9x line, even though Win2k is a memory hog, it uses the memory much more efficiently than Win9x/ME. Since you already have 256Mb RAM, Win2k should run great, if it's not enough (if it gets sluggish if you run lots of applications, or memory-intensive apps) then just upgrade then.

[Yar1182]

Absolutely Win2k. It's no speed demon, but it is stable. I'll trade a little speed anyday to be done with the headache known as win9x anyday. The OS is a little picky about hardware and it's not the easiest thing to install, but well worth it.

[PORNOST4R]

W2K is not a king of stability, but t's still the best. if u want it to be fast, u really need +192 mb ram.

[NDC]

NDC, your comments are inline with my understanding of Win2K as well. However, how do you address the comments that I have read that Win2K is a resource hog?


One of the reason that Win2k, like NT4 , is such as memory hog is that the NT kernel loads more system files that 9x kernel does to memory which optimizes the performance of the OS since it will be done through RAM rather than read through the system hard disk which is perhaps 100 times slower than RAM. You will notice that running Win2k with the same amount of memory leaves you with less memory resource after you've booted to the desktop Vs. 9x... I have 1GB memory and when I boot to the desktop, I have 81% free memory (and NO I don't have any memory leaks! I've done just about every possible OS optimization). I should have a bit more resource than 81% (approximately 190MB used as soon as the system boots to the desktop), but my system has over 1200 fonts which also lessens my memory resource as well. Think of it this way, if Win9x leaves you with 80% memory resource after you boot to the desktop, Win2k will leave you with about 65~70%. Why you ask? As I have explained above, NT kernel loads most of its vital system files to RAM to run at faster speeds. And just like Win9x's "ConservativeSwapfileUsage", Win2k also has "DisablePagingExecutive" in the registry to hit the PageFile less....

Whatever the case, Win2k is a superior OS compared to Win9x in all areas except game compatibility. If you're not much of a gamer and you want to run 32bit applications in true-32 bit mode, Win2k is gonna be a wiser choice because of its responsiveness under multi-tasking environments & stability. Win2k may be a memory hog compared to Win9x, but it manages it much better with continuos use since you don't have to worry about manually recovering the memory resource using a 3rd party utility like you do for Win9x. Frankly speaking, only other OS from MS that's kept me as happy as Win2k is NT4... I could never go back to 9x kernel where I feel like I'm computing in molasses multi-tasking or not. And besides, I use a dual processor system as my primary system so I don't have much of a choice but to use NT4 or Win2k among the OS's from Microsoft. As you already know, 9x kernel doesn't support multiple processors. All my single processor systems run Win2k as well except for my son's system which runs Win98 because some of his favorite games wouldn't run under Win2k. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

People seem to have different opinions regarding NT kernel Vs. 9x kernel so opinions will differ. However, you will notice that majority of the people who have gotten the taste of Win2k or NT4 usually never go back to Win9x. Just do a search in SysOpt forums and other forums on the Internet and you will know what I mean... Better yet, install Win2k and use it for about a week and you'll know exactly what I mean...

You also might want to look here on some registry adjustments I made for my Win2k box:

http://pub51.ezboard.com/fxtreme89487frm15



[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 05-08-2001).]

[coyote]

I do appreciate the differing opinions, no matter what the view point. What I will do is take a good image backup of my ME system then try a clean install of Win2K.

Although I'm not a gamer, the compatibility issues do concern me. My big project now is to scan a library of slides HiRes and burn onto CD. The two image devices I use are scsi attached (Advansys card) which I don't think will be a problem, but the drivers for these devices concern me. I guess the only course of action is to check out their sites and see if they address the Win2K issue and/or just try it and cross my fingers.

I assume that Win2K would be a good OS for photo imaging work...my guess is that the professionals out there are either using Macs or NT/Win2K based systems using Adobe/Painter/JASC or similar professional software.

If the gaming does not work and I'm really bent on those issues, I'll use my kids machine.

That's where my interests are...so I guess a follow up questions is, just how 'bad' or limiting are these compadibility issues? Is there a site that documents hardware issues for Win2K? Oh yes...hardware...my board (KT7-RAID) is VIA based...I am leading myself down a road of dispair?

Thanks Much

[NDC]

As for Abit KT7-RAID, it will work flawlesly under Win2k. I have a T-Bird 1Ghz @ 1.4Ghz running Win2k. Most hardware that was released before Win2k will be automatically detected by Win2k. All my devices such as my Adaptec 29160N SCSI Adapter, Soundblaster 128 PCI, Realtek NIC's, SCSI Zip 250, SCSI ORB, etc are detected automatically without the need to install the driver. The only devices I need to install the driver for is my scanner and HPT370 RAID controller.... Also make sure to download the latest VIA service pack (4 in 1 V.4.29) and install it...


Look here to see what software and hardware is compatible with Win2K:
http://www.ntcompatible.com/


Good luck, Coyote.

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 05-08-2001).]

[coyote]

Thanks NDC, and everyone else. All this helped. I guess we'll see.

[HaroldW]

Below is a link the official Microsoft Windows 2000 Compatibility site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/howtobuy/upgrading/compat/default.asp