Moving to Win2K

[SitFlyer]

"Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q253912

[Gurm]

Originally posted by SitFlyer
XP
2k

In what way? XP _is_ Win2k. Anyone that says otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or is purposely misleading you.

If you don't like the interface, turn it off. For me, XP looks just like 2K - only the drivers are better, it's faster, and more stable.

- Gurm

[Gurm]

Re: Re: Re: Moving to Win2K

Originally posted by Ribbit
Hang on, let me get this clear:

As I understand it, there's not really such a thing as a game/program which 'uses SMP' - there are programs and games which run as two or more threads, and on an SMP OS, those threads (can) run on different processors simultaneously. Programs do not explicitly say "This runs on CPU0, this runs on CPU1", they have no knowledge about this. This is the picture I get from my Unix/Linux-centric worldview, perhaps Windows is a bit different.

So what you're saying is, if I have an SMP system with SMP-safe but not SMP-compliant drivers, I shouldn't expect to run a multithreaded game (e.g. iL-2, Falcon 4, Q3 engine-based) without risking a crash. Or is it something else, like there's only a problem if more than one thread tries to draw graphics at a time?

Umm, no. Ok, here's how it works in Windows.

Windows will automatically load-balance. It will put tasks on one CPU or another.

HOWEVER, all the threads of a given program will (generally) remain on one CPU unless that program is written for multiple CPU's.

Photoshop, for example, is written to specifically work on multiple CPU's.

HOWEVER, in the case of SMP-enabled games (the Quake engine is the only engine that absolutely supports SMP, and even then only in certain iterations - RTCW doesn't support SMP at all, for example) the DRIVERS have to be specifically written to support multiple CPU's, because different frames arrive at different times in the graphics queue. Theoretically, they could have written the game so that the graphics all run on one chip and the AI on another, for example... but they didn't.

Partly this is because John Carmack doesn't really know structured programming. He's a brilliant coder, but not book-taught. Self-taught coders tend to shy away from structured programming "best practices".

- Gurm

[Pace]

Gurm: The problem with turning off the extras in XP is that you lose some of the Win2k features. I preferred the Win2k web view in folders, but I like the ID3 tag support in XP folder views.

A couple of others things I didn't like, although I preferred that WinXP can be tweaked more than 2000, to use less memory (didn't do much performance testing, suppose it will be better by a few percent here and there ).

P.

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by Guru

Originally posted by SitFlyer
XP
2k

Originally posted by Ribbit
Fair enough, but (1) I happen to have a Win2K licence that's going unused, so why waste £170 or so on XP?, (2) I used XP for myself for the first time yesterday, and all I can say is "yuck", and (3) the activation stuff really doesn't agree with me.

If you got the win2k license use it, switching to XP would mean throwing away £170.

[Ribbit]

Thanks for clearing that up Gurm, I think I understand now.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by KeiFront

If you got the win2k license use it, switching to XP would mean throwing away £170. [/QUOTE]

better: sell the win2k license and use the money to buy win xp pro (stay _away_ from Home ). then use your ms appointed right to use win2k instead of win xp pro. when xp gets stable enough, use your normal license + SP's.

win2k is worlds apart from win98 in terms of stability, security, etc, but it's lacking badly in multimedia. win xp pro is really what win2k should have been. just give them time to fix the bugs...(I agree the interface sucks majorly, but you can tweak it the way you want).

[BTW, 2000 identifies as NT 5 and XP as NT 5.1 ]

[Technoid]

Okay Gurm, if XP is more stable why do it bluescreen like w2k never does?

[Guru]

Plus xp comes wit IE6 and vhere the hell is mediaplayer 6.4?

[WyWyWyWy]

Okay Gurm, if XP is more stable why do it bluescreen like w2k never does?

Bloated. Disable some unused stuff...

Plus xp comes wit IE6 and vhere the hell is mediaplayer 6.4?

Same place actually

better: sell the win2k license and use the money to buy win xp pro (stay _away_ from Home ). then use your ms appointed right to use win2k instead of win xp pro. when xp gets stable enough, use your normal license + SP's.

If it is OEM or corp licence you are not allowed to sell it theoractically anyway.

[Novdid]

Gurm, where did you get that "faster and more stable" from???

I would like to know, as I personally have found out that it's the other way around.

I know we have argued this before and it always ends up being only you that prefer XP.

[KeiFront]

Kurt, I believe that you only have the right to downgrade XP when you had purchased an OEM copy of it that is preinstalled on the PC. If you have a volume licensing you can use a prior version of windows without a problem (execpt Windows ME and XP Home I believe), altough I expect that there will be some restrictions as usual with Microsoft's licensing schemes.

But I could be wrong offcourse the windows licensing scheme is so transparent .

[Liquid Snake]

I worked with XP Pro for a while when I put my friend's new PC together. My main gripe with XP was the interface. The first time I used XP was on another friend's machine. He was too dumb/lazy to disable all the extra stuff. After I disabled all of it and switched it to the Win2K interface, it was actually quite acceptable. I can't compare performance or stability since I didn't try Win2K on his machine. Bootup time seems pretty fast though; it's probably a few seconds faster than Win2K.

Personally though, Win2K works very well for me. Except for old DOS games and some Win95 games, I've never had any problems with games. It's perfectly stable on my machine except when I mess up (like overclocking too far). I don't see any compelling reason to upgrade to XP Pro. Win98 -> XP wouldn't be a bad upgrade though, as long as your system isn't too old.

[Admiral]

XP- you can configure it to look just like the older versions (so there's no excuse on not liking the interface), faster booting, ability to run older progs in compatibility mode, better game compatibility (questionable), maybe more stable... and faster if you have enough ram for it, but in the end it's just not worth the price.

2k- takes its time to boot, stable, faster than XP with 256 ram in my case, good enough for gaming, more price appealing, still not worth the price.

If you already have 2k just install it and see how it behaves on your rig

[WyWyWyWy]

You didn't mention XP has more entertainment in it :O
True independent dual head... multi-user log on... I'm sure there is more but I can't think of any atm coz haven't used 2k (productively) for 2 months already.

But no, not worth the price.