Win2K is completely 32-bit. In Win9x, all calls (including Win32 calls) get thunked down to 16-bit. Win16 calls go straight through.

With Win2K, Win32 calls get passed right through, Win16 calls are translated into 32-bit calls.

No 16-bit code in Win32 (well, a little for boot-up in real mode.)

To clarify a point that''s been brought up: any driver written for the Win98 driver model will work in Win2K. This is not to say that any driver that works in Win98 will work in Win2K though, because Win95 drivers will work in Win98, but may not work in Win2K.

I have Win2k, and I was going to install it on the PC I just put together, but for some reason, it wouldn''t recognize my harddrive, and thus wouldn''t install. I have no idea why. As it turns out though, my DSL modem doesn''t have Win2k compatible drivers yet, so I guess I''m glad it wouldn''t install.

Overall, though, based on what I''ve been told by developers all over, I''d definitely recommend Win2K for your development machine. I''ve talked to developers who have had their Win2k box running for weeks, doing active development, without having to reboot.

Dave

I have to chime in to agree here.

I''ve been using Windows 2000 as my primary development system since beta release 2. Even back then it was worlds more stable than Windows 98, or even NT4.0.

Until you''ve used it, you have no idea how nice it is to have a DirectDraw fullscreen/exclusive app crash hard and be able to kill its process off and keep going without a reboot.

Windows 2000 *IS* bigger than 98, but not too much bigger. If you just want to use it as a development station, get Windows 2000 Professional. When installing, choose only the components you need...There''s a lot of shit on the cd that is installed by default but is of no relevence to a stand-alone development workstation (assuming you aren''t hooked to an office network and need ActiveDirectory and such) and by not installing it you can reduce the size of your hard-disk install.

The fact that W2K takes longer to boot and shutdown is somewhat irrelevent as you have to boot up far less often. My Windows 2000 box has been running for 5 weeks straight under heavy development. Since the final release came out, I''ve only ever shut it down to install hardware.

The one issue is that older (generally poorly written) games might have Windows 2000 issues. So if you already own a copy of 98 you might want to set up a dual-boot system. Any new game, and even most old games that are well written, will run fine under 2000 though, since it has full DirectX7/DX8beta support..Unlike NT4 which was stuck at DX3 forever.

Hardware drivers can also be an issue. In my experience, nearly any modem, network card and any major video card (3dfx/nvidia/s3/matrox based, for example) will already have workable drivers. Soundcards are slightly less certain, but all the majors (vortex-based, SoundBlaster family, SBLive, etc) have at least beta drivers that work well. The biggest disappointment in the driver department for me has been joysticks and such, which is slightly disappointing for doing DirectInput development/testing under Windows 2000....

Fortunately Gravis recently released beta 2000 drivers that work well for the Xterminator...And of course all of Microsoft''s joystick products are supported...Now I''m just waiting for the HammerHeadFX dual analog driver (you listening, InterAct? Nice gamepad, but it would be a shame if your joystick had shoddy support in new games because developers can''t test it on their W2K development systems!)

...And then there''s the issue of machines with more than one processor. If
you''ve got one of these, then you''ve wasted your money if you''re running
95/98 because it doesn''t use it to its full advantage. 2K will...
probably.

There was a rumour going around at one point that Win2K wouldn''t SMP dual
Celeron machines. It''d run, but would just do what 9x does (ignore the
other processor). Note that this is only with multiple Celeron systems:
other SMP systems should work fine. Can anyone confirm this? (I''ve got
such a machine and want to know if there''s any point in upgrading)


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