None of that anti-MS stuff please. Other OSes aren't a possibility.

I need to upgrade some developer machines and would like opinions on whether
to upgrade to XP Pro or stick with W2K Pro. I have XP Pro on my daughters
machine at home, but find the UI to be somewhat in the way. I hear that you
can twiddle the UI to be a little "less friendly" and provide more direct
access to some things, but I haven't looked into that seriously

The systems will be on an NT4 server network that will probably get upgraded
to W2K or Win2003 Server in the next few months.

--
Scott Nowell
ExoTech R&D, Inc.
2590 Trailridge Dr. E. - Suite 102
Lafayette, CO 80026

"Clark G. Smith" <clarkgsmith@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:lI-cnbu1FecRP5miXTWJiQ@comcast.com...
I think it comes down to a dollar and cents issue. Will XP support the
existing software? Has it been tested? Will you have to purchase another
XP/2000 license for the system? What is the cost of this upgrade? What about
man hours?

I have never been a fan of XP, but it's getting better, especially if using
the "not so friendly" options with the latest updates. Ultimately if you can
afford the change and it does not burden your staff I would upgrade.

Brett

"Alex Gibson" <alxx@ihug.com.au> wrote in message
news:be2kh3$7u7$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
Classic mode my a**.... If there is a global switch for classic mode please
let me know. There is a classic mode for the control panel, and then you
can go right click your butt off all over the place, looking for ways to
make it "classic", and you still wind up with a grossly invasive OS.
However, I know nothing about this tgtsoft thing of which you speak, and I
am interested in that..

Have had some compatibility probs with win2k and win95, and I would suspect
most any Win is going to have problems with certain DOS programs. And I
found out firsthand that you should never try to use the standard 8259
(IIRC) DMA controller while running under Windoze. As one might detect, I
am not a Windows fan at all, but the original poster asked to avoid MS
bashing, and just give an opinion. Given the option of W2K and XP, I would
definitely choose W2K.

Regards,
cgs

"Clark G. Smith" <clarkgsmith@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:_QidnZ4oV5WIbpmiXTWJjQ@comcast.com...
I never understood clear type. It annoyed me making text appear as different
colors. On my laptop it's standard only.

It's not so much a global switch, but a few settings that takes 5 minutes to
setup.
1- Enable Classic Mode for Control Panel
2- Task Bar and Start Menu Properties, under the start menu, will allow you
to select a classic start menu.
3- Using Display properties set the theme to Windows Classic.

There is probably a tool which does all of this and more out there.

PIC (8259) Hardware Is Slow
The PIC interrupt controller has a built-in hardware priority scheme that is
not appropriate for machines running operating systems based on Windows NT
Technology. To address this problem, a different hardware priority scheme is
used by the operating system.

Sounds to me that it's just crappy hardware. Since DOS is a virtual machine
on Windows NT, it's safer, but does not allow direct access to hardware.
Finally most if not all windows compatibility issues are caused by poor
assumptions by developers (or developer laziness) which can often be
corrected by tricking the software in to making the "right" assumptions
(which is what XP does in compatibility mode iirc).

David Brown wrote:
....
IMO, win2k was the height of performance with non-invasiveness from M$.
From there, it's all down hill. I switched to Debian linux.

"David Brown" <david@no.westcontrol.spam.com> wrote in message
news:be388e$fnc$1@news.netpower.no...
And so far Microsoft has bent over backwards to uphold my OEM license which
says I can only install it the first system it was installed on. I have
installed it (without pirating) on about 5 or 6 different systems at
different times and while they do warn me, they do allow me to keep using
XP. This is completely in line with their EULA.

To install updates. It can be disabled or customized to warn, etc. It is not
enabled by default.

This provides consumers with a benefit so they don't have to worry about
keeping their system up to date.

Microsoft does this by embracing and extending, not "disabling" software.

BTW, SP4 is out and they toned down the language.

Brett

"David Brown" <david@no.westcontrol.spam.com> wrote in message
news:be388e$fnc$1@news.netpower.no...

You go boy.... !!!! roflmao...

Have you noticed how, you no longer get the blue screen of death, you get a
"please report to Microsoft" with a send or don't send button? They don't
have enough people on their fucking staff to respond to that line... i
suspect it is just a way to suck some more personal information from your
computer, to use it in one of their anti-trust ways.... ;-)

SP4 is out.

"Qwest" <someonenot@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:HwDNa.6$Hz.21412@news.uswest.net...

"Scott Nowell" <scott@exotech.com> wrote in message news:<o51Na.46$hO4.90305@news.uswest.net>...
Hi Scott,

Not that I disagree with most of the Pro-2K/Anti-XP comments thus far,
but if this is for commercial use you have the issue of support and
compatability. Microsoft is very upgrade-pushy. As much as we all
don't like it, if you go Windows its very painful to stubbornly stay
with what Microsoft sees as "old" versions.

For example, the official roadmap says most Win2K licenseing schemes
(including retail) will end 3/31/2004. That's not too far away!

See more information here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycleconsumer.mspx

Good luck,
Ryan

"Alex Gibson" <alxx@ihug.com.au> wrote in message news:<be2kh3$7u7$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>...
Would that include using the parallel port or is the hardware still
protected from big bad developers and their BDM cables?

Yaakov

Yaakov <H_shemisone@yahoo.com> wrote:
For parallel ports, the solution has been GIVEIO.SYS (or similar) ever
since the days of NT 3.
--
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.

Brett <custserv@forums.ws> wrote:
No. The customisation allow you to enable or disable automatic update
checking. The EULA provision is specific designed to allow Microsoft to
install updates via Windows Update which are hidden along side the updates
that they have listed.

The stated reason for this is for "DRM" purposes or for "Security" purposes
on the basis that Microsoft does not subscribed to the accepted wisdom in
the security community that "Full Disclosure" is the best policy.

It's not a case of trusting Microsoft or not any change to the machine could
prevent a key piece of software from working, if this happens and costs your
company substantial amounts of money in lost time in the process then
Microsoft have absolutely no libability. In the vast majority of cases such
incidents would be unintentional side effects of change to a subsystem which
is completely unrelated to the customer's piece of software.

This fact alone should give any manager specificing Microsoft operating
systems pause for thought.

No. Where they can get away with it they take an industry standard and
pervert it so only the Microsoft version will work with their tools. They've
done it with HTML, Javascript, C++, Kerberos, the list is very long. They
attempted to do it with Java but SUN took them to court. They also attempted
to do it with the IP protocol but were blocked by the IETF.

This incidently is one of the reasons that Java has never been ISO
standardized. Microsoft sits on one of the relevent committies and would
block or delay any attempt.

-p
--
"What goes up must come down, ask any system administrator
--------------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, 3 Jul 2003 20:23:04 -0700, "Clark G. Smith"
<clarkgsmith@comcast.net> wrote:

No single global switch, but you get most of it in 3 steps you can do
in 30 seconds. Open the control panel and do the following:

1) select "Windows Classic" theme in Display Properties.
2) select "Classic Start Menu" in Taskbar/Start Menu Options.
3) select "Use Windows Classic Folders" in Folder Options.

The XP GUI is instantly back to Win98 with Active Desktop semantics.
You can turn off almost all of the Active Desktop crap using the
advanced options for the Start Menu and Folders. Some of the visual
effects are now in the Advanced performance section in the System
options.

Getting a nice, basic, NT4 style desktop takes about 5 minutes of
twiddling the advanced options.

George