Announcement

**Gurm** · 8 August 2000, 21:15

Yes, you do - and yes, you should.

However, I say that very conditionally. If you're going to go apeshit every time a game needs a bit of tweaking to run under Win2k, or every time you lose a few fps because the Win2k drivers aren't as optimized... then no, don't bother. Maybe try Millennium.

If, however, you are interested in all the benefits of an awesome OS, and are willing to suffer from the idiocy of driver writers and developers who refuse to acknowledge the OS properly... then by all means yes, join the rest of us. Hehe.

Ok, that sounded way too zealous. But the point remains - if gaming and fps are your top priority, then no - Win2k is bad. If you want a stable system with lots of power, Win2k is good.

But plan on upgrading to 256MB at some point, the extra RAM will do you good in either OS.

Also, be forewarned that Win2k has issues with the SB Live!. I urge you to thoroughly check out the SBLive news server (news.soundblaster.com) before deciding, as I notice you have digital hookups on the SBLive.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**giskard** · 8 August 2000, 22:09

Windows 2000 is *much* more stable than Win98. It's not FreeBSD or anything, but it's quite robust. Once you've gone for a few weeks without having to reboot you'll see that having to tweak games up a bit is a small price to pay for a stable o/s.

Ditto Gurm's comments. I'm running with 128mb ram at the moment, which is not too shabby, but 256 would be rather nice.

Cheers,

Giskard

**DataOrb** · 9 August 2000, 03:36

Well, I am not much of a gamer anyway...
I don't think I play a games more then 1 hour a week or so, and some times, even less... I DO enjoy playing games from time to time, but it's not the primary function of my computer...
Anyway, I just worry that Win2K will just be TOO Heavy to run smoothly on my computer.
I DO plan to upgrade my ran to 256mb, but first, I want to get a new cpu, a ~800mhz Coppermine. this is what is on top of my shopping list.
so, how much ram do you think win2K Takes for itself? and do you think 160mb will give me some breathing room? because I DO HEAVY Multitasking all the time... (and the way Windows98 handles multitasking is the reason I want to upgrade to win2K).
so, to sum it up, I would go out TODAY and buy myself a copy of win2K if I knew for sure that:
-My Computer specs, and the RAM I currently have are okay to run Win2K as smooth as Windows 98 runs (I am not talking about games here).

Thanks for the advise.

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"Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven..."
__________________________________________________ ____
Worstation Specs:
Asus P3B-F w/Celeron@680mhz
160mb PC100 7ns RAM.
Matrox G400 142/190Mhz.
IBM 75GXP 7200RPM 15Gb.
Seagate U8 4.1gb Hdd,
SBlaster Live! Digital.
17" Mag InnoVision 770Ti TrinitronFR Monitor @1152X864
Logitech MouseMan Wheel USB (on Everglide Giganta SE)
Focus 127keys MM Keyboard.
HP SCSI Cd-Rw 7200Si
AOpen X48 CD ROM.
AOpen 1040Pro Slot DVD
3Com NIc @ Tevel/3Com Cable Modem
Modded case, the "banshee". 6 fans.
3Com Palm IIIx + GoType + AxxPAC

**DataOrb** · 9 August 2000, 03:37

Hey, that post made me a MURcer!!
Yeeeee!!!

------------------

"Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven..."
__________________________________________________ ____
Worstation Specs:
Asus P3B-F w/Celeron@680mhz
160mb PC100 7ns RAM.
Matrox G400 142/190Mhz.
IBM 75GXP 7200RPM 15Gb.
Seagate U8 4.1gb Hdd,
SBlaster Live! Digital.
17" Mag InnoVision 770Ti TrinitronFR Monitor @1152X864
Logitech MouseMan Wheel USB (on Everglide Giganta SE)
Focus 127keys MM Keyboard.
HP SCSI Cd-Rw 7200Si
AOpen X48 CD ROM.
AOpen 1040Pro Slot DVD
3Com NIc @ Tevel/3Com Cable Modem
Modded case, the "banshee". 6 fans.
3Com Palm IIIx + GoType + AxxPAC

**Raptor^** · 9 August 2000, 05:13

I have found that Win2k performs at least as well as Win98 for heavy multitasking on 128Mb RAM, on a Celeron 433. I would expect your machine to perform better under Win2k that 98, although boot up times will be significantly longer.

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P3-700E, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC100... Mouse, Keyb, Stuff

**moreau** · 9 August 2000, 06:30

I can say without reservation, Win2K is the best OS microsoft has ever written. That could be construed as noncommittal, but I do mean it as a compliment.

We're probably another 6 months from a full compliment of driver support, and a year from really good drivers. (let's face it, there are things I'm still waiting for good 98 drivers for )

Don't be afraid to trade one set of quirks for another, if the return is there.

And if you are worried about hardware, I'm running W2K on a Dual PPRO 200, with 128 MB RAM, and run Photoshop 5.5, Microcal Origin (data analysis), X-Win32, plus a mixed bag of old DOS and NT stuff (including a proprietary analysis package for images I acquire on a Digital Instruments Atomic Force Microscope). All run nicely. The few errors I get are trapped by the OS. No rebooting all the time.

The only advantages I have over your system are larger cache (256K), dual processor (though much slower), and UW SCSI drives (less cpu load).

Hope this helps.

**Gurm** · 9 August 2000, 06:34

Moreau, actually the PPro is an unfair comparison - dual PPro 200's will make a Win2k box perform like a P3-500, for starters.

- Gurm

P.S. It has to do with the PPro architecture and the way NT was written. Basically Intel designed that chip to run NT.

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**Lucid** · 9 August 2000, 06:44

On the SB Live! issue.. Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 2000 does not support AC3-pass-thru.
And who knows when there will be an update, if at all..

BTW, is there a version of pcAnywhere that works in W2K?

**spoogenet** · 9 August 2000, 06:57

Might wanna check into issues with your CD writer. Not sure that SCSI CD burners have the same issues, but I know HP isn't releasing much by the way of drivers for Win2k, and a couple friends of mine with IDE HP CD writers can't burn in their software because they don't have the correct drivers.

Again, not sure if this relates to the SCSI or not, but something you might want to look into, or something that maybe someone else here can shed more light on.

b

**Brian R.** · 9 August 2000, 07:54

spoogenet - I'm still using Win98 for burning CDRs. I purchased Easy CD Creator 4. Have had some trouble with it trashing my CDROMs. After some short time, both the SCSI and the IDE CDROM drives disappear from my hardware and are never heard from again (that is, until I reinstall W2K).

PS. I have a Plexstor 8/4/32A

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 09 August 2000).]

**Hunsow** · 9 August 2000, 08:52

Unlike Windows9x, 2000 for some reason does not include an ASPI manager. You'll need one to be able to burn cd's. Allthough the last version of CDRWIN doesn't need one.

**HedsSpaz** · 9 August 2000, 09:01

Well, here's my .02$. At home I run Win2k on my Athlon 650 w/256mb RAM. Everything is great, I used to have a memory leak from something, I'm not quite sure what, but it seems to have gone away. Aside from that though, I had no problems, I have to reboot about once every 2 weeks or so. I leave my computer running all the time, and when I'm not actively using it it churns out seti units.

At work I use a PII 350. It also has Win2k. Up until 2 weeks ago it only had 64mb RAM. It sucked. It was usable yes, but man did it do a lot of swapping. Fortunately I had a spare 64mb stick of ram at home which I plugged in to bring it up to 128 and now everything is just fine. Even though Win2k is still in it's infancy really it still has a lot better mem handling than WinNT did. I rarely get bogged down now, and I usually have Outlook, Netscape, IE, InstallSheild, and VC++ all open at the same time. Plus running SETI in the background.

So, I should think that you will be quite comfortable with 160mb for the time being. I do agree however that you should definately upgrade to 256 when you get the chance. That added bit of breathing room is nice. In fact, I'm hoping to be able to go up to 384 eventually, maybe even 512.

**Pace** · 9 August 2000, 09:07

I'm running Win2000 on 2 machines here - the one I'm using at the moment has quite high memory usage at 140Mb. Seti takes 13, GoZilla 10, a few IEs 17Mb which is 40Mb in total. Add to that I'm running DHCP, BlackICE and it runs absolutely fine. I've got a beta SP1 and various other beta stuff and it's still stable - though WMediaPlyr7 (Beta!) is a little messed up. I've also had IIS5 half-installed (power cut) and tried to uninstall (not sure if it's fully gone). If I reinstall it works fine though.

I stick the CD in and install - no drivers needed whatsoever! I've got a P2 (bah!), Super P6SBA BX, 256Mb, TNT2, SBLive!, 56k modem, Advansys SCSI, 3Com 905B-TX, 2 hard drives, cd, cd/dvd and cd/rw, HP 4100c scanner, HP LaserJ4000, HP DJ950C (which W2k thinks is a 970Cxi). I love this feature of getting new hard drive and installing from 1 CD. Some points to remember:

ACPI has to be forced on mine (press F3 on install)
Newer hardware won't be supported like this (see 950C)
Scanner software is easy - but auto-resolution guff is annoying
No OpenGL
Basic sound drivers (and I don't use AC3 etc so don't know of problems with that)

Networking is excellent as is security (though not to *nix people). I don't know about VIA and ISA support (though I would be wary).

Striping hard drives is nice (software RAID). Admin tools are nice too - kill all the little background tasks/services to optimise Seti that little bit more.

Games run fine and stable (see <a href="http://www.firingsquad.com">Firing Squad</a> for a comparison with 98/ME). Apps run excellent and stable. IE5 and Internet Connection Sharing both run well.

It's a little annoying that right after clean install it is already taking 50-60Mb just for itself though a little tweaking can help this. As to whether your machine is powerful enough probably not from your description. If 98 is near 160Mb on yours then 2000 will boost that by about 40Mb - what do you actually do on your machine though?! I use Photoshop and Dreamweaver heavily and think my 256Mb is enough by far - including running firewall and IE etc

Hope this helps and I can post some more if you want ,

Paul.

--
<font size="-2"><a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.mccarroll/hosted/arena">The Pace3000 Arena</a></font>

**Hunsow** · 9 August 2000, 09:19

I forgot to answer the main question:

Should I upgrade to windows 2000?

YES!

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Should I upgrade to windows 2000?

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