Choice: Win2000 or XP? Will some new apps only work with XP?
 

Hi. I need to get a copy of Win2000 Pro or WinXP Pro.

The cheapest I can find for WinXP is ~$130USD OEM. Found a COA bundle (i.e. Dell, HP, etc. OEM. COAs must be sold with media now, by law) for $99USD, but it's out of stock with a "no clue" back in stock time estimate - I've waited for a couple of months for it to perchance become available again, with no luck.

But I saw a Win2000 Pro COA bundle (Compaq to be precise) for sale, in stock, for a nice ~$49USD. So now I am considering just getting a copy of Win2000 since the OS is just to upgrade a WinME 900MHz box I have anyway.


Anyone know of any apps that only really run on WinXP and have issues with Win2000? I know there are some, but I haven't really had to worry about it personally before, and my memory fails me. The OSes are very close siblings, I know, so of course the're aren't going to be a whole lot of differences. I don't want to find Win2000 won't run/play some app/game I would like and wish I had layed out the extra for WinXP.


Thanks,
DrCR

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Uni pure science major, IT Techy for ~8 years

P.s. For those who don't know. You can get a COA from a Dell, HP, etc. OS bundle and just use a generic CD to install the OS on your non- Dell, HP, etc.. You can't mix Retail and OEM COAs/Media though.

For the most part, I've had nothing that won't run on both.

I've had some software that won't run on a 2000 box that was upgraded to XP. But reinstalling the software fixes it. Some apps just have OS specific DLLS.

what software was that? (just curious)

Its a controls package called Iscope from Novar.

Its basically just a service that allows calls to your modem to be logged to a DB application and then piped to a modem. Its primarily used to monitor controls alarms at remote sites.


1/2 of the software works flawlessly post upgrade but the service didn't - all DLL related issues.

Cool deal. I'll think I'll go Win2000 route. Wasn't there a newly released game that only supported WinXp... :shrug:. I can't remember what it was...

There is always a chance...

But Win2000 and XP both support DX 9.0c and the .NET framework all the way out to whatever SP they are on these days.

I suppose there is a possibility that someone made an XP only game but who knows.

I've actually had more issues running old software on new OSes than new software on old ones. Especially ones were programmers were idiots - had a few that were NT 4.0 compat, but required SP 3 or greater. It read Win2000 Server as NT 5.0 SP0 (or 1 at the time) and would not install. I had to wait until Win2000 SP3 was released.

I've still got some legacy stuff that required NT 4.0 SP6 that we had to ditch because it wouldn't install w/out SP6 - regardless of the OS - and, of course, they never released a patch to fix it. Bleh.

i run both XP and 2K and like them both (seperate machines)
friends have stated that getting 2K to work w/ games can be tough but I had no trouble
didn't even do anything special just killed the extra standard processes the bill likes to start...

At the moment there is functionally no difference between the two. They support virtually identical APIs (XP has some new ones for the firewall, but thats nothing compared to the big things like Win32, DX and .NET). Eventually this will change as IE7 will be XP only. Fortunately thats still a ways off and unlikely to effect much.

Yeah, I've heard of game issues, but never seen a case in either person or online where it has been an actuality. I wouldn't be too suprised if game devs still use Win2000 even now. Yeah, disabling all the startup junk is always good. Look out for non-taskbar related extras i.e. services too.


Thanks for the info redleader. I don't use IE anyway so that isn't an issue for me. I've used FireFox since .8x days and to be honest, I've *never* had a website incompatiblity issue. Most of the websites I go to are techy related though, so that might have something to do with it.

I'm glad the FF competition induced an earlier than planned IE remake though. IE6 isn't exactly what I would call secure, but yet with few exceptions it is the only brower we support/allow at work (I'm an IT techy) so I would really like to see an increase of security.


[on the side] Hum, I wonder if you could mod Win2000 to use XP's desktop environment. Not like I would want to since this machine is a '00 era i.e. slow machine, but I'm curious.... Linux is starting to wear off on me lol. :D


DrCR

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Win2000 all the way! The entire school year my roomate had been running XP and he had to reformat about 3 or 4 times while I ran 2000 and stayed stable the entire year though I could prolley use a good HD whipe right about now.

i think that's more what he does with it than pbs w/ XP
i've had installs of XP & 2K running side by side running for months (very few restarts on either) with no issues

Yeah, that's definitly a user or hardware issue. :)

I know what it's like to have to reinstall your OS once a year or so though, considering this WinOS upgrade is for a WinME box... lol :rolleyes: :D

w2000pro always.
xp isnt worth the effort.
Sure , its purdy, and has all those annoying little (but resource consuming) apps.

one complaint thou. sata support.
i have to go the extra mile to install it (w2k) on a sata hdd.