I've got three computers with Win2K Pro on them. They work find but the
booting is very slow. It seems the OS is huge and cumbersome. I have an XP
laptop which boots in no time.

My Dell workstation is 4 years old. When I bought it, it was state of the
art.. I want to buy a new one, state of the art. I checked with DELL. They
do not offer Win2K as an operating system anymore. Only XP. One has to buy
it separately from them, I guess. It is $299.00. Thus I have to either order
a PC with XP and then load the Win2K on it or call them and see if they
would do it for me. I have the following questions, since I am not very
knowledgeable in this.

(1) Is Win2K still supported by Microsoft?

(2) Is it more reliable OS as compared to XP? I would guess it is more
secure since not too many users are out there and perhaps not too many
hackers would be familiar with its internals.

(3) What is the future of Win2K? I mean 4 years from now. Would it still be
around?

(4) If I buy a CD with Win2K from Dell would it have all the security
patches and current updates? How about SP2 and others? I remember I had to
reformat my hard disks three or four times over the past 4 years and every
time on my three computers because of viruses and other disasters and every
time I had to bring the OS up to date and it took days because the original
CDs were so old.

(5) Should I go for an XP instead? I want high security and reliability. Is
XP secure? I do go many places on Internet. I roam. I do not get into
controversial places but every time I check I have a few spies or viruses on
hard disks.

(6) Is it reasonable to have two operating system XP and Win2K on one
computer and boot them depending on circumstances? What would be the
advantage of such setup?

(7) I can afford 2 processors. I have never had two on any computer. I am
wondering if anyone has any experience with that? What advantage can it give
me? I do software development. Can I use the second processor
programmatically or it is beyond my control? If it is beyond my control,
will the operating system use it? Will it give me additional speed of
execution? I do have computation intensive tasks. I need superior speed.

(8) I am thinking about buying a PC with Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz with 1MB L2 Cash
and 800MHz FSB. Will it make a difference if I go for 3.4 GHz instead? In
terms of speed? I would mean additional $600.00 or so.

I would greatly appreciate any comments.

Thanks.

alexV wrote:
I have set up many systems with both W2K Pro and XP on them and
W2K *always* boots up faster. I suspect your XP laptop might
simply have more RAM and a faster CPU than your W2K systems.

Yes.
It is a matter or opinion. I think it is a toss-up.

W2K and XP have two huge gaping security holes that can't be removed.
One is called IE and the other is called OE. I don't you have security
problems with either OS provided that:
1.) Don't use crapware like IE, OE, and WMP.
2.) Use a firewall.
3.) Use a good AV program and keep it up to date.
4.) Regularly check - at least twice per week - for security fixes from MS.
Save an image or your boot and system partitions before installing
*anything* from MS.

There is a very large existing base of W2K machines - if they
haven't switched to XP or W2K3 Server by now they probably
never will. MicroSoft will be continue to provide fixes for
security problems for a few more years but that is about it.

You would have to ask Dell.

Personally I wouldn't bother. It sounds like you already have at
least one copy W2K Pro on a CD. If you buy machines with XP Pro,
those XP Pro licenses and your W2K Pro CD are all you need. Your
XP Pro license allows you to "downgrade" to W2K Pro or NT Workstation.
(An XP Home license allows you to downgrade to Win9x or WinMe.)

Just download SP4 and all of the post-SP4 hotfixes, put them on
a CD, and then install W2K, SP4, the hotfixes, and your AV and
firewall software *before* connecting to the internet.

Sounds like you are not doing a good job of keeping your
AV program up to date and you are not keeping the OS up
to date. Even if those are up to date, it is still easy
to get infected if you are careless when opening e-mail
attachments, particularly if you use crapware like OE,
or when installing software you have downloaded. Even
things like audio/video clips (particularly wmv files) and
images (particularly png files) embedded in web pages can be
malware.


It is called "multi-booting" in general, and "dual-booting"
in that specific case. Many people do it. The advantages
include backup OSes to use if one fails and being able to test
software and web pages with various OSes.

Lot of us have. :-)

Dualies beat singles in most software development benchmarks.
And dual Opterons leave dual Xeons in the dust.

Write a proper multi-threaded application and the OS will
allocate the threads amongst the processors.

Usually, but not always.

Some tasks simply aren't suited to SMP while others are.
The quality of the programming makes a huge difference -
poor multithreading is usually no better and sometimes worse
than having a single thread. However, a second processor will
virtually always help if you have several heavy tasks running
simultaneously.

Its cache, not cash. It is often mispronounced as "cash" -
which leads to a lot of misspellings by people who try to
spell phonetically. The proper pronounciation is about halfway
between "cach" and "cash".

Take a look at all the P4 vs Athlon64/AthlonFX benchmarks
on the review sites, as well as the Xeon vs Opteron
benchmarks. The P4/Xeon generally win the audio and video
encoding benchmarks, and the Athlon64/AthlonFX/Opteron
win just about everything else. Most of those same
AMD vs Intel reviews will also show you the differences between
various P4s and Xeons.

MANY THANKS. I will have to study some of it. Still more questions inside:

"Rob Stow" <rob.stow@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:uDNHYCj2EHA.1452@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
I am surprised. It is the other way around for me. It may be a good news,
though. I think the reason that I have this problem is that I have
carelessly downloaded huge applications over the years that I barely use.
They are all in the registers and the system may be spending time sorting
them out. My XP laptop is actually my wife's laptop and she does not need
anything but very few things. I am too greedy.

What do you mean? What shall I use instead of IE and OE?

What is WMP? I am ignorant.

I do have routers. It is supposed to be a hardware solution to a firewall. I
have Linksys and Netgears. I especially like Netgear.
One problem for me is that I do a lot of application development with a
passion. I am always pressed for time. It is all for my internal needs, for
my office. I hardly have time left for security, even to understand how I
can use router resources and tune it up for better security.

Shall I buy a software firewall in addition to that?

I Norton AV Pro good?


It is now done automatically. A popup comes up and says that I have to
download a new upgrade.

OK, how can I use it practically at a later date if something goes wrong?
Sometimes you realize that there is a problem weeks after you downloaded
something. Since then you've downloaded a dozen other things. What is the
practical approach to that?

Perhaps I should buy a machine with W2K3 Server?

This is a correct observation. I know I am guilty of that.

What can I use instead of OE? I am planning to write my own browser
eventually. It might take a few months though. I have other priorities.

Most of my programming now is done in visual dBase which is an object
oriented language but it does not have multithreading. They have been
talking about introducing it last time I checked which was a year ago. I
should inquire again. I know about multithreading. I was wondering if the
Win2K would somehow take advantage of the existence of the second processor
on its own. It does not seem to be the case from what you've said.

Thanks, I will.