new drivers

[phungilax]

man i'm starting to have some problems with ME...i guess its time to upgrade to XP or 2k.

[xplicit]

2000 if the pc/server is used in an office. xp home if its a home pc, xp pro if u dont want a limited os (home is the same as pro but with loads of handy features removed :()

[DreamingWolf]

Having used them both and crashed them both numerous times, there isn't a lot of difference in ME & XP Home, (Though NTFS is a more stable file system) If you decide to go XP go with the Pro, as you learn more about computers, it will have the room for you to grow into. And where xplicit says "loads of handy features removed", I say the OS has been gutted and everything that's truly necessary or useful is gone.

I crashed XPHome 5 times in the first 2 days I had it, that's why I went Pro and never looked back.

DWolf:cool:

[jrbob]

If you use your system alot like 24/7 go with XP PRO.
I have Win2k, XP Home and XP Pro, and Xp Pro is the way to go:)

[Oni]

I'd go w/ Win2k. It's faster than XP right out of the box, and I would imagine that it's a fair bit cheeper now, too. Win2k also doesn't phone home to Microsoft.

I love it! :)

[SpyderMatrix]

winxp pro doesnt phone home to microsoft either unless you tell it to

[DreamingWolf]

Well, sometimes it tries to, but Sygate personal firewall will let you know when and give you the option of telling it NO!

DWolf:cool:

[xplicit]

i've never had the experience of windows xp trying to "phone home"

[james.miller]

oh it does - quite frequently - just check your firewalls logs and you'll see.

[DreamingWolf]

Every once in a great while when I access the internet, Sygate will pop up a warning that explorer is trying to access a remote site (I use Mozilla so explorer shouldn't be doing anything) It isn't a big deal and really don't think their trying to steal my information, I figure it's just 'checking in' for updates or some such. I just refuse the connection and nothing bad ever happens.

DWolf:cool:

[Tw00sh]

If you turn auto update off, I bet it stops. Also, how did you crash XP home. I cannot crash it if I try. You really must be doing something wrong to crash it.

[DreamingWolf]

Autoupdate was turned off within one hour of the OS being installed so I know it's not that.

As to crashing XPHome, I install and uninstall dozens of shareware progs and driver versions for my hardware every week. I love to tinker and am always looking for something that works just a little bit better. Registry gets clogged fast (in spite of regular cleaning) and some things are just incompatible. XPPro is just more stable and better able to handle/warn/stop compatability problems than Home. Also 90% of the security settings that I like to tweak are unavailable in Home. I was amazed because everyone always said they were the same yet I bought Windows XP, Inside Out (terrible book by the way) and was met every other page with the note "this feature not available in the Home version." So for the ability to take abuse and keep on running Home can't hold a candle to Pro.

DWolf:cool:

[xplicit]

hmm if anyone every worries about the fone home situation you could try this program. http://www.xp-antispy.de/Eng/setup.exe

Heres a quick overview:
XP-AntiSpy is a little utility that let's you disable some built-in update and authetication 'features' in WindowsXP.
For example, there's a service running in the background wich is called 'Automatic Updates'. I don't know what this service transfers from my machine to other machines on the internet, especially the MS ones. So I play it safe and disable such functions. If you like, you can even disable these function manually, by going through the System and checking or unchecking some checkboxes. This will take you approximately half an hour. But why wasting time when this lil' utility can do the same in 1 minute? This utility was successfully tested by lots of users, and was found to disable all the known 'Suspicious' Functions in WindowsXP. It's customizeable, but comes up with the Default settings, which are recommended. If you like to get more information about those 'functions', read http://www.xp-antispy.de/depth.htm

This utility is FREEWARE! This means, you dont have to pay anything for this program and you can give it to anyone who's interested in, as long as you don't sell it.