Honest question--not a troll. For the average desktop user, is there any reason at all to go with win2k? Assuming you've maintained your machine such that windows 98 or NT works alright, why go with such bloatware? For that matter, what tasks WOULD drive someone to "need" win2k? Someone want to educate me here? (I know you want to...)<P>I've just not yet seen what win2k's selling point is. I don't see how much of a benefit "faster" or stabler performance is if it reqires twice as much machine just to run it.<P>If win2k somehow becomes the forced-obsolescence standard, I think it'll finally drive me to go Linux as my primary OS--to hell with my gaming smack-habit. %)<BR>
why go win2k?
- Thread starter Unforgiven
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Because, why use an OS that's going to swallow up damn near all my resources just sitting there looking self-satisfied (my box is a Cel333/80mb) if there aren't true, tangible benefits to upgrading? Win98 obviously isn't all that stable, but it almost never crashes on me, either (I "maintenance reboot" about once a week or so--keeps the gremlins happy...). Thus, my major complaints about Windows are 1) low-level, yet chronic shittiness of the OS, and 2) general fartknocking going on in Redmond. I don't have much faith in win2k's ability to solve either.<P>So the question, IMO, still stands: what "killer feature" is win2k going to have, that makes it worth a few hundred dollars' worth of upgrades and five bucks for a CD-R? Yes, I'm cheap. %)<BR>
1.) Stability of Windows NT<BR>2.) DirectX 7.0a<BR>3.) Better PnP support than even Windows98SE<BR>4.) SMP support<BR>5.) Support for more RAM<BR>6.) Can fix itself<P>And last but not least, it is not the MacOS (that one was just for you Dejjon)
Pros of Win2K over 9x:<P><ul><BR><LI>Rock solid for software development, much better than Win9x<BR><LI>Same excellent software support, development tools and API documentation<BR><LI>Easier to administer and troubleshoot, does PnP better<BR><LI>Security, far better networking, terminal services<BR><LI>Multiprocessor support<BR></ul><P>Cons of Win2K with respect to 9x:<BR><ul><BR><LI>Buggy drivers<BR><LI>Doesn't play as many games yet<BR><LI>Buggy drivers<BR><LI>Needs more RAM, faster processor<BR><LI>No sound or VESA support for DOS games<BR><LI>Buggy drivers<BR></ul><P>Of these, all except DOS support (who cares anyway) and hardware requirements will go away as W2K matures.<P>Edit: hmm, looks like EM got here first. 
<P>[This message has been edited by IMarshal (edited December 25, 1999).]
<P>[This message has been edited by IMarshal (edited December 25, 1999).]Unforgiven:<P>Why is Windows 2000 'bloatware'?<P>Linux *might* take up less space...<P>... if it wasn't for the fact that it's generally handy to keep many Mb of source code on my hard drive as well. I'm sure I could live without it, but it is more convenient not to; it's easier (for me) to keep a compressed copy of the kernel source and patch it every now and then than it is to just download a new package of the whole kernel whenever I have to.<P>Perhaps I'm missing something, though. I mean, I keep the source code compressed (e2compr) which makes it take up less room, but there's still quite a lot of it. It all adds up.<P>As for other OSes: OS X apparently takes up more space, Win98 takes up less space, but does less (and Win2K's per-folder compression rectifies that anyway), BeOS takes up less space, but does less, *BSD seems to suffer the same problems as I have with Linux, DOS takes up less space but does less, MacOS takes up less space (tho' I've no idea how much in total it takes up) but does less.<P>Your system specs are well above the minimum required for Win2K to run, and run well. It'll take a little longer to boot than Win9x, but who needs to boot that often?<P>Win2K enables playing of many previously Win98-only games in an NT-type environment. This is a Good Thing. Whilst I have no problems with Win9x's stability, I generally have to reboot every week or two (depending on which machine and what I'm doing). This isn't the case with NT or Win2K. If an app bombs out, no problems, just start it again.<P>Other things that I like about NT/Win2K: it has lots to play with. IIS and NTSFU are two things I'm playing with ATM, one of them seriously (writing database-driven ASP sites), the other less so (NTSFU -- a *nix-alike environment on an OS that's actually does the things I need an OS to do).<P>Win2K can dedicate marginally more of the processor time to a task than Win9x can.<P>Win2K is snappier to use. Win9x doesn't, IME, multitask all that badly (much better than MacOS, RiscOS, Win3.x, and others), but Win2K is that bit snappier.<BR>
The only reasons I'm upgrading to Windows 2000 is so that:<P>a) I can use USB peripherals again<BR>b) I'll be able to play Half-Life again<BR>c) It'll make it that much easier for me to manage the other computers when they're running 2000 and not 98<P>Can't stand 98...NT annoys me enough. Hopefully Windows 2000 will resolve some of my qualms with NT, but I never tried any of the pre-release versions and I'm not going to believe one bit of Micro$oft's hype. It also annoys me that I'm going to have to upgrade the other machines here to make 2000 happy...if I had my way I wouldn't upgrade, but I feel it's probably necessary.<P>By the way, the "killer feature" of Windows 2000 is the fact that NT's finally got gradient titlebars. View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif
ack .... i had to kill ye olde gradient titlebar on 98 within a day of installation ... it was nice at first but got old quick
Better plug and play support than Win9x....yea I seen that up there ^^^<BR>Who paid that person to state that ?<P>Jeezus...Win2k sux on my box...beta3,RC2,RC3,and the final all blow big horking snot wads.<P>Try to get Win2k to run on a ata/66 controller.<BR>Try to get it to even see a isdn accelerating serial port card.<BR>See how long it takes to get that OpenGL or DX7 game to run...how much tweaking is really involved???<P>It sux...take it back and start re-doing it M$.<BR>Get it right this time.....ok?<P>T
Without collecting any money from Microsoft, I can safely affirm that for devices that it has drivers for, Win2K is a lot better at PnP than Win98.
Thorax<P>Um this is coming to you from a Windows2000 system running a ATA/66 card, with 3 34 gig Ultra66 drives in it.<P>Not only that, all my current DirectX games, and OpenGL work just fine, hell not only that it works better than my Windows NT box...<P>I don't know what you are doing but you must be doing something wrong...
So Thorax, you are having driver problems on a New / Beta OS? No shit really. Wow. What's next? Pigs on the wing?<P>PnP support is definitely better than any 9x I've seen. Hell, you can hot plug and play some devices too (cdrom drives, harddrives, some PCI cards).<P>As far as it being bloatware, how many other OS's have the features and capabilities of Win2k?<P>As far as to why to use Win2k, it seems pretty simple to me. How many people dual boot between NT and 9x just for game support or that one app that just doesn't run under NT? And then there are the mobile users. They should really like the W2k. And, it is the support basis of comming technologies as well. Don't miss out, evolve.<P>It is the Uber-OS. Period.<P>.<BR>
This might be a little off topic. Will Win 2k have the ICS features of 98SE? Or would it be better just to use something like sygate,wheter 2k has it or not?
It has it and works just swell (all versions too, to my knowledge).<P>Supposedly, sygate works with socks5. Sygate does however, have more configuration options. So, its probably like "Use the built in defragger, or get the full version of Diskeeper?"
Overclocking Geekboy,<P>Yes it has ICS from Windows 98SE, but it has been enhanced a bit more.
Unforgiven,<P>I'll be upgrading from 98 to 2K on my home box soon, primarily for the rock-solid stability (my Win2K RC2 box at work hasn't crashed in over two months), the multiprocessor support and DirectX7 support. For your system it would probably be overkill - you'd probably need to get more RAM, but your processor is fine.<P>IMarshall,<P>The "buggy drivers" you refer to have been well-documented (although I personally haven't run into any). But it is up to the individual hardware manufacturers to get the Win2K drivers up to speed.
Laner:<P>I know that it's the IHV's fault that a lot of devices aren't supported or are only half supported. But it <I>is</I> the current W2K problem that bothers me the most; for example, my Live! doesn't support four speakers or digital output in W2K, and all I can get for my TNT2 to support DirectX is leaked beta drivers that BSOD when exercised.<P>In two months this will be an academic point, but right now it should make people tread carefully when planning upgrades to W2K on their personal machines.
Win98 and WinNT 4.0 into one... View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<P>It is nice to have dual support and direct X 7.0 into one and play some crazy fragging with Quake3... View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<P>neo
What about Millenium?<P>I've got a box running Win98SE and I was wondering if I should wait for Millenium or just go to Win2K. I mainly use my PC for gaming, but I'm planning on doing some video editing and media creation on it later on. If Win2K is supposed to be the best of Win9x and NT in one, why is Microsoft working on another 9x version of Windows?
PeterB said:<BR>"Why is Windows 2000 'bloatware'?<BR>Linux *might* take up less space..."<P>Here we have conflicting definitions of "bloatware". In my book, whether a piece of software is "bloated" or not has very little to do with how much disk space it takes up, and far more with its hunger for RAM and CPU cycles. Sure, if you install many many many software packages on a Linux system, as most do, you'll end up using a lot of disk space. And then there's source code... But that doesn't make it bloated. It would be possible to deploy a whole ranch of perfectly modern linux workstations on, say PII 233s with 64MB of RAM. Not exactly luxurious, but most certainly adequate. And they could have disks as small as 4 or 6 gigs. Now if you put Win2K on those same hypothetical 233MHz/64MB/6GB systems, how would you fare? First, i'd wager the OS plus Office2K would barely fit on that little disk. Next, I imagine that little RAM and CPU would make using the system rather painful, much like Win95 on a 486 or super-slow Pentium.<P>Anyway, to answer the original question, I don't think there IS a "killer feature" of Win2K to compel a home user. But that doesn't mean people won't buy into it. At the time of its release, Win95 had no killer feature over Win31. And Win98 certainly has jack shit on 95 (which is why I still use 95). And this lack of compelling features is not restricted just to software. My mother's PC is a P166MMX/32MB/3.5GB, and she uses MS Works 2.0a to do nearly all of her work. This is super-ancient software (circa 1990), and relatively old hardware, yet it works fine for "home use". But the ignorant masses will still head over to Gateway or Dell or whoever and shell out like $2000 for a P3 with lots of RAM and lots of disk and lots of lame software and blah blah blah and it won't make a lick of difference cuz they'll still have a dial-up 'net connection and they'll wonder why is this fancy-ass expensive computer so damn slow? it's cuz yer an IDIOT! There, now that that's said View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif.<P>Anyway, if Win2K is as slow and resource-hungry as I've heard / seen in benchmarks, I'll pass on it till I round up an Athlon and another 128MB of RAM...<P>MoNsTeR
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>First, i'd wager the OS plus Office2K would barely fit on that little disk. Next, I imagine that little RAM and CPU would make using the system rather painful, much like Win95 on a 486 or super-slow Pentium<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Well, you'd be wrong. It's that simple. Oh, it might take a minute or two to boot, but once that was done, it'd be fine. A 6 Gb hard disk is plenty. 64 Mb RAM is OK for non-Server usage. Any PPro-class processor is fine.
Actually, Win2k is perfectly snappy and useful with only 64mb, as long as its Professional and not Server. Just make sure you're using an UltraDMA harddrive, as NTs paging architecture will page no matter what (You read the Ars-NT-Pagefile-Tweaking article, didn't you?) And Win2k Pro along with an Office2000 full install will only take about 1gb, not 4gb or 6gb. Trust me, I've already check. Besides, Office is only 1 or 2 cds, and we know the OS is only 1 cd, so there's no way they could every take up that much space with so few cds to begin with!
Oh yea, and to that guy that was bitching about DirectX gaming issues, and driver problems. I've tweaked with this stuff on many betas, and it comes down to this: Win2k is a beta OS. You cannot use Win9x drivers on an NT system. Only NT drivers. NT4 didn't have Direct3D, and only DirectX up to 3.0. Thus, no stock NT4 video card drivers have Direct3D support. You can still install them, but you will only do glide and opengl, and either no D3D or extremely slow D3D. Also, some games are chickenshit games. The biggies like Quake2 and 3 and Halflife work flawlessly. The ones that are cheap and flat out written for DirectX might have trouble running. An example is Final Fantasy 7. It works fine until you hop into a battle. Then it crashes. I'm concluding that FF7 has a shitty DrectX implementation because 1) It was ported from a PS, so it wasn't natively D3D 2) Eidos never released any patches whatsoever, even tho people bitched about it. And yet other games will protect you, the unwitting user, from trying to install a higher level DX game on an NT system. Thus, the uninstaller pops up "You must install this game on Windows 95 or 98". There's nothing MS can do about that, there hundreds of ways, from a developers standpoint, to determine whether or not the system is NT or 9x. And then they stop you. Just wait until it hits the shelves (Feb17) and everybody like 3dfx and nvidia starts putting out drivers.
Windows 2000 is a better OS than win 98. It's more slick and has much more features (settings). I would not use it as a pure server though, but as a gaming station it is pretty cool. (Only tried UT though). It is much more expensive, but it looks like that does not metter for many Windows people.<BR>Regarding its resource usage, I couldn't say much, as machine I am running it on has 512 Megs and P3 550.<BR>"Telnet Server" is very lame. I could not change any setting remotely.Best remote administration tool for Windows still is a car. I was expecting more web-based control (anything like linuxconf available?).<P>PS.<BR>Does anyone know of a "su" command for W2K, its sucks having to relog everytime I want to change a setting.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Best remote administration tool for Windows still is a car. I was expecting more web-based control (anything like linuxconf available?).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Giggle. Running a command prompt remotely on NT lets you change many things, doesn't it? Can't imagine why it wouldn't. Running 3rd party telnet servers on Win9x (including BackOrifice) allows certain bits of remote admin; I'd only expect the abilities of NT to be greater (because it has CLI kill commands and things like that).<P>The various IIS components have web-based controls. So does exchange (tho' they might be for using rather than administration). And you can always write your own, perhaps as an HTA.
airfabio:<P>There is a "RunAs" service incorporated in Win2K that allows you to run particular apps as a different user. I forget what client bit enables this functionality, but if you poke around you might find it.
PeterB: the sad fact is, you can barely do jack shit in telnet. You get the exact same functionality as you would in a DOS prompt under NT. This is the price to pay for Microsoft's "gooey-ification" of the aspects of server administration. You can however, remotely dink around with pretty much everything that is an MMC snapin, but both boxes will need to be Win2k.<P>Arfabio: yes, there is a new "Run As" checkbox for the run command, that lets you do it as another user.<BR>Problem is, for some reason, its not there all the time for me, and the only times I notice it is when i'm administrator. Well, i always run as the administrator in NT, and always as root in Linux. I'm smart enough not to accidently format a partition or unmark the executable bit on my entire filesystem.<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>you can barely do jack shit in telnet<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Oh, I don't know about that. You just have to collect the right tools. tlist, kill, etc. And the net command is pretty powerful.<P>In any case, W2K has two features for remote admin that are far better than telnet, however: terminal services and mmc.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>PeterB: the sad fact is, you can barely do jack shit in telnet. You get the exact same functionality as you would in a DOS prompt under NT.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>So, off the top of my head, you can start and stop services, start and kill tasks, change file access rights, do sundry file manipulation tasks, create/delete user accounts (I think...), all sorts of other things. What can't you do from a command prompt?<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>This is the price to pay for Microsoft's "gooey-ification" of the aspects of server administration. You can however, remotely dink around with pretty much everything that is an MMC snapin, but both boxes will need to be Win2k.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I didn't think they both needed to be Win2K; I thought they just both needed MMC. Or you can use Terminal Server. Or you can use VNC. Or, like I said, the web front-ends for the components that have them. No problem.<P>To say that you can't remotely administer an NT box is to be wrong.
PeterB: It's a matter of "getting what you expect" When you start off with Linux, you expect all your administration to be done from the command line. That is why Linuxconf is such a strange thing to most Linux users. Same thing with NT. When I first started playing with it, I automaticly assumed that the only things I could do with cmd.exe is list and move files. Therefore statements like "The best administration tool for NT is a car" come around. This might be in part Microsoft's fault, they don't seem to give good documentation on all command line features. They also for some reason that makes no sense to me do not enable tab completion by default, or include a command line reboot/shutdown ps/kill utilities. (Easily downloadable of course) But fact of the matter is, like you stated, you can do a LOT from the command line. Add/remove users, file shares, permissions, reboot, shutdown, start/stop/restart services, run applications, etc etc. If you like more power you can grab the MKS toolkit and/or Cygwin plus numerous other command line utilities. Heck with the MKS toolkit you have nearly as many tools as you would find in your average Linux box. The trick for people is to see past your preconcieved view of how the OS should be administered View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif Here's my question actually. You mentioned the idea that if both systems ran MMC then you could use the MMC console to administer a Win2k machine. Is there a MMC console for Windows 98? (So you could administer a win2k box via mmc from a 98 one)
I don't know if there's an MMC for Win9x. I doubt there is.<P>I don't know if it'd be possible, however, to life the MMC executable and run it on Win98; it might make unsupported calls into (say) shell32.dll or whatever, but it might just need (say) mmc.exe and mmc.dll (I don't know if those files exist; I'm just trying to put forward the concept).<P>If there's a copy of MMC that works on Win98, it should work -- I'd guess that you'd need MMC and the sundry .mmc files for the various bits you want to administer; then you ought to be able to just connect to the remote server.<P>I'm sure it'll never work, though....<P>I guess that's why MS have the web interfaces for IIS admin.<P>I'd also speculate that it's possible to write an HTA to mimic MMC's actions, so that you can control MMC through a web browser. But I haven't the expertise to find out. HTAs look like they can do a fair bit, like the spiffy web interfaces for Platinum.
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