blip

Still running Windows98 on my desktop PC, think I need to upgrade the OS soon before I get completely left behind. Is it worth it though? All I ever read about are XP problems?

Is XP Pro better/more stable than XP Home? Or would I be better off with Windows 2000?

Either way would I have to upgrade all my apps/fonts/etc as well?

IanW

I've run XP Pro since the day it was released and have not had any problems with it and running anything on it.

Ducati 996

Depending on your PC you might end off worse.... XP needs more resources (shock), so if your PC is running 98 fine, expect XP to work just fine, but probably a bit slower.

IMOH 98 is pretty good, it'll do everything you need it to for home use, XP will add a new GUI and have the latest drivers and patches etc, and be all shiny and new, but in real terms you'd be better spending the cash on say a newer version of office etc.

Let us know what PC you have, spec etc, and what you want it to do

ozzy

XP Pro is better than W2K IMHO.

There was some reluctance here @ work to move up to XP, but when I had the oppertunity to buy some new PC's I jumped at the chance to try out XP (ran it @ home since it was released).

Like W2K, you need a decent spec PC to run it. It struggled on our Dell P3 667MHZ/128MB RAM workstations. Extra memory obviously helps and you'll need at least 256MB if your running Office on top of it IMHO.

I do get the occasional application crash in IE 6, but Windows 98 was a whole lot worse when I used to run that.

Our new PC's are P4 2.4GHZ/1GB RAM jobs, so it's bound to fly.

I did try Office XP, but that was very bloated, noticeably slower than Office 2000 and I didn't see much benefit over Word and Excel 2000 (for me anyway).

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 1/27/2003 11:39:15 AM]

Mark Underwood

I echo the sentiments of ozzy (stefan). My son runs XP pro on his laptop w2ith a PIII @500Mhx and 128Mb ram. He refused to accept that 98SE or ME would be better in terms of resource usage. Anyway, the thing works but its slow.

My recommendation would be to upgrade your machine first with a decent MB, processor and at least 256 or better still 512Mb DDR...then it will fly.

Upgrade PC first then splash out on XP.

I have run since it was released and never suffered a problem, nor did I when running W2K and NT4 before that.

GaryK

blip,

all depends what you use it for. I still run Win2K and only moved to that in 2001 from NT4. Write software for a living so *have* to get the platform as stable as. Heard mixed views about XP, all I can tell it looks nicer but so what!

Xp removes some of the problems with installing software with different versions of DLLs but I avoid that anyway.

cheers

Gary

jfrf

dont bother. its just a waste of time and money
i upgraded from 98 and the difference is not noticeable
98 is fine

blip

Thanks for the advice. I'm running a Mesh 700GDR (Athlon AMD 700mhz - 756mb RAM) which is now about 2.5 yrs old.

I'm a web designer so run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, ImageReady, browsers, etc, and have been finding that when I have several of these apps running at the same time (which I need to do) my system resources get progressively eaten up and even if I quit certain apps I never recover all the resources. Everything grinds to a halt, gets unstable and starts crashing. Drives me nuts - happens all the time!

I was told that this is an inherent problem with the legacy 16bit memory heap (? or something like that) which apparently XP/W2K don't suffer from, hence me wanting to upgrade.

I am thinking of upgrading my hardware at the same time as upgrading the OS.

Andrewza

I'm not even sure win98 can use 768MB ram? I seem to recall some limit where it wouldn't use anymore and it certainly because less effective at managing memeory the more you added.

Then again it's been a while since I've used it, I used Win2k from when it went gold and switched to XP shortly after it was released (when everything I had got drivers)

Found something:

blip

Cheers Andrewza, hadn't heard that. I'll do some research into it, see if it helps the stability probs I'm getting.

InvisibleMan

im still waiting to use it

Fatman

blip - I'd say do it. You've got plenty of RAM, although your CPU could do with a bit more horsepower (back to that in a minute).

WinXP is a very stable platform, especially in comparison with Win98 (in fact any of that series: 95/98/98SE/ME). If you're having stability issues, and don't have reason to suspect the hardware is faulty - then XP will give you definite improvements. XP has considerably better memory management than 98, btw.

Here's a comprehensive MS guide to "Why should I upgrade?" Worth a look at. With regards to Home vs Professional versions - read this page. XP Home and XP Pro are built on the same code-base, and there's nothing in it with regards to the stability of one relative to the other. The difference is in the features offered.

TBH - the reasons listed on that page for choosing Pro over Home probably don't count for a home-worker (making assumptions here!). Those reasons...
- Access your PC remotely
- Join a domain (i.e. corporate) network
- Encrypted file system
- Enhanced system restore tools (i.e. when everything goes t!ts-up and you need to rescue the system)
- IIS for hosting web sites (probably not an issue - you probably use Apache, right?)
- Multiple CPUs (2 for XP Pro)
...these are all abilities of Pro over Home. Not a problem for 99% of home users. Get XP home - at ~ £70 it's a good upgrade.

No, I don't work for M$...!

Ken E

I have just replaced the hard disk in my laptop, gone from a 6gb to a 30gb, and installed XP Home on it, it had windows 98 on before.

It is a Celeron 433mhz chip with 288mb memory and since moving to XP it is noticeably quicker booting up and uses less power so the fan comes on less and the battery lasts longer. It detected all my hardware no problem and I have had no driver issues at all. I thought this was pretty good because I bought the laptop in 1999 so it's not exactly up to date. I did upgrade the bios last year though, installed Win2000 and it needed the ACPI upgrading, didn't use it for very long because it was very slow compared to Win98 and took forever to boot.

I expect some of the speed improvement has come about because the new disk is probably quicker access time than the old one, but overal it is quicker. I have set XP to run for maximum performance though, which switches off all the new style desktop except for the start menu, and makes it look like Win98.

Fatman

Before SNet was taken off-line, I was going to add it's probably not possible to upgrade your CPU, blip. I'm guessing it's a Slot-A design, right? You'll probably need a full CPU/mobo/RAM upgrade at some point - be let's see how well your current setup runs XP first.

blip

Thanks Fatman! I'm not sure whether my CPU is a slot-A design or not. I'm fairly new to PC's as I was weaned on Macs as a designer. However I now prefer PC's and only my Mac for testing cross-platform compatibility.

I think if I upgrade to XP I'll do it at the same time as upgrading my hardware, so I'll just buy a new PC pre-installed with XP Pro or XP Home (I'm still going through the comparison chart).

The only thing I'm unsure about is that currently I run dual monitors showing an extended desktop, and I have read that this isn't possible on XP - that XP only allows desktop mirroring rather than extension. So I just need to check this out before I commit.

Thanks a lot for the really helpful links and advice.

Fatman

Yes XP does support multiple monitors (up to 10, in fact). I've only seen it done so far on one PC. That was using a GeForce-4 card, and its drivers have more multi-monitor features then XP does alone. So, I can't say with all certainty which features were due to XP and which to the drivers.