Is there any difference between Windows 2000 and Windows 98? I am not sure whether Windows 2000 is worth the money. Thanks... -Alex ^ / / /___\

Oh yes, there are some significant differences. for one 2000 is fuggin huge from what reports i''ve heard (dont use it myself, so prepare a grain of salt or two whilst you read on) but i do hear its more stable. and it has that neat-o menu effect and what-not, heh. It DOES NOT however, support all teh hardware that 98 does. its based of NT so things that didnt have NT drivers are questionable at best (i believe that it may be able to use some 98 drivers, someone else will have to clarify) but as for being worth the money... that depends on what a little added stability is worth to you. unless your an admin of some nature, i''d imagine that 200+ is most definately not worth it. i''m not sure of teh upgrade price, but knowing teh redmond boys, its over 100 at least.
If i were you though, i''d just hold off a bit, unless your 98 box is just terribly unstable, because you''re not likely to see "windows 2000" in teh minimum requirements of much software in the near future.

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HitScan

I really think it will be better to wait until Windows Melenium (Windows ME). It''s really the sequel to the Windows 9x versions, and made for home use. Windows 2000 is more in the NT category.

Windoes Millenium I heard Totaly takes over your computer and does way to many things in the back ground, Ive seen Millenium(the Beta, or Alpha, or sumtin), and I think performance wise, if you got a kickass computer, 2000 will get you MUCH better performance, and once the Service Packs come out, it will support much more hardware, I have to say, I use 2000 Beta 3, and it crashed onece in two weeks, and it ran Much faster than same comp with 98, though my modem would not work, because it had to be on COM5, and dats messed wit 2000. So could get on da net(before I got DSL). But now 2000''s probaly much better.

Try looking at this site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/voices/directx04172000.asp

I use Win2k exclusively for my game development now, leaving Win98 around for testing only.

It''s wonderful to be able to mangle something horribly, and have Win2k just kill the process and carry on, when Win98 would keel over and die.

Not that I ever do that.

Yes, Win2k is a lot bigger than 98, and takes loads longer to boot and shutdown, but in use, it doesn''t seem all that much different.

It''s just a question of drivers, unfortunately. Luckily, all my hardware is now supported.



TheTwistedOne
http://www.angrycake.com

I too use Win2K and it it sooooo much stabler. It is a little big but, hey, its a microsoft product so what you you expect

As for the boot and shutdown times, I haven''t noticed that they are any longer than Win98... although why would you be booting and shutting down your comp anyway? As long as it doesn''t crash I don''t have to worry about that.

The one problem I''ve been having is that if a program decides to hang I can''t always kill it will the task manager... for some reason Win2K thinks the program is being debugged when it is clearly not If anyone has any ideas to fix this I could increase my time between crashes/reboots from about a week (about how long it will run right now) to some even more incredible time span!

Definitely worth it! Especially if you can find a *cough*free*cough*verson*cough*from a*cough*frind or something*cough*... I mean... its definitly worth the price...

Check out the GPI project today!

I know one thing is for sure I'm definitely not going for Windows ME. I use NT at work and beat it to death and it keeps on trucking. 98? No way, I run half the processes and it gasps for air and crashes all the time.

Since 2K is based on the NT kernel I'd go for that, but as said above, your hardware has to support it. From what I have read, its pretty stable and my experience with NT has been positive. Besides the sooner we can kiss the 9x line goodbye the better.

Edited by - Sieggy on 4/20/00 8:44:00 AM

Is Win2k completely 32-bit? I know that Win95 and Win98 are both built upon a 16-bit DOS core, but what about Win2k?

And I replying to the post above, I think Win2k WILL support just as much hardware as Win98. I''ve somewhere before that they just took all the plug and play capabilities and moved them over. But beats me. I''m buying a copy soon for work anyway, so I''ll find out.

P.S. Anyone know how to build a large RAID server w/ hotswap abilities? I''ve been throwing together parts on an online store, but I''m not sure if they''ll work together. Thanks.


ColdfireV

I installed Win2K over my Win98 installation and everything worked pretty much okay (except my SBLive! card, it took some work to get that working, and even then not with all the functionality it had in Win98) Then something went wrong with my C: partition and I reinstalled Win2K from scratch. Everything stated up and worked fine, it was a beautifully running machine...except my surround sound speakers gave feed back with some Environmental Effects and Need For Speed 5 didn''t run at all, and there''s no way I''m not playing that. I didn''t even test any other games. I loved Win2K (relative to Win98), but I''m going to wait for a Service Pack or two before I reinstall. It''s nice (especially being able to kill a process), but it''s not quite there yet.

bcj