Showdown Win2k vs. XP Pro.

[White Star]

I basically started this because I'm not sure of XP at all. Home or Pro. I'm kind of wary of XP in general. XP Home seems to be Microsoft saying, "Fear our bas**rdization of the NT kernel!" But I must confess I have not had much opportunity to play with XP Home, and no time at all to play with Pro. One thing I did note was that XP seems to have some better multi-user support that I've been looking for. I.E. a process started by a user will continue even after the user is logged off and another logs on. Pretty spiffy. However I'm a little frightened of moving away from 2k. When 2k came along it was absolutely fabulas. Almost everything that my Linux friends were bragging about being able to do, I could do. So does XP Pro offer the same amount of functionality that 2k does? Could I, if I for some reason wanted to, turn an XP machine into a router? Can I still tune the networking to get my Windows machine to shut the $@!# up when it has nothing to say?

[Ozzman]

umm ive played with both and own both 2k PRO and XP Pro, im doing a dual boot with 2k Pro and Debian (linux) and i personally think XP is a bit newbish, i mean Pro is much different then Home in the aspect that it allows u to mess with more things, but i found XP to be less stable to tell u the truth, but it is pretty nice, its worth giving it a shot, but i would never reccomend going from 2k pro to XP home, that would just be REALLY stupid..

why do u want to switch anyway? they are almost exactly the same... save ur money and upgrade ur comp or some games ;)

[diggingforgold]

I like XP pro myself. If I had to purchase any of them, I would get xp pro. It's basically a 2000 with a fresh look and a few more bells and whistles. SP1 is a must have if you get WinXP pro though. But after a few updates, it is the most stable OS windows has ever made.

Someone set up us the bomb.

[nealric]

I like my oem xp pro. No activation :D

I bought a laptop that came with 2000, and I ended up switching to xp.

This was mostly becuase I use wireless lans a lot and xp is much nicer with its wireless support than 2k is.

2k is probably better if you want to mess around with system settings a lot. 2k just gets on my nerves for some reason.

[Fiz]

I have both, I run win2k on my server and XP pro on my gaming rig. As far as stability goes, I find them to be equally stable. I have been running win2k for a couple of years, I like it for the ability to play around with alot of system settings and whatnot. I am relatively new (only about 6 months) to winXP, I have to say that so far I like it alot. Most of all I like the look of it, I am reallt bored of the classic look of windows. So far I have been able to tweak most of the same things in XP that I could tweak in 2K. The only reason I haven't switched to XP pro on my server yet is because I am not sure of the security in XP pro(my gaming rig is behind a hardware firewall and a software firewall). With the release of SP1 for XP, it seems to be very secure, but I will wait to put it on my server.

Basically, if you have the extra $$$ I would go with XP. I have no complaints at all with it. The best part is that safe mode looks about a million times better (800X600 with decent color). Seeing as how I spend a good amount of time in safe mode ;), it's a plus to me to have it look nice. LOL

Fiz

[Ozzman]

Originally posted by Fiz

Basically, if you have the extra $$$ I would go with XP.
Fiz

thats seems to be basicly the bottom line here... umm what do u plan on doing with ur system? if u tell us im sure we can let u know whether it would be worth it for u to upgrade..

[Malpine Walis]

Well, 2K works just fine for me. Both on general apps and for gaming. I have XP at work and I find it annoying. It is ugly. That new start menu is kind of hard to find stuff on and I cant figure out how to get the spyware off of the box.


That and product activation. Why should MS get that code based on my Hardware? Don't they trust me to tell them what I have during registration? Every gaming company shows me that much consideration. They are concerned about piracy? Of course they are, now that they are on the top. When they were on thier way up, they accepted the small amount of piracy the same way as everyother software company.

They ought to do what the gaming companies do: CD keys. Have the key transmitted to microsoft during the registration process. If one key gets used more than once a month or at multiple addresses, then they know that a problem exists.