Windows XP - Is It Worth It?

Okay, I will be buying a new computer mid-March. Right now I'm looking at an Athlon XP 1800, or something along those lines. I mostly use my computer for games (RPGs and strategy games), internet, and some design (now that I've moved up to management at work, I find I do a lot less design that I used to, but I still like to play around with Photoshop and stuff every now and again).

Now, here's my question: Should I get XP or Win2000 installed on my machine? I use 2000 at work, and love its stability.

As for XP, I've heard both good things and bad things about it. I'm just wondering what kind of experience people here have had with XP.

Thanks!

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Personally, I prefer Win2k over WinXP where stability and getting things done is concerned.

At least for me, most of the new features in XP just aren't worth it. In fact, the only big plus I can think that it has is being a little more 'skinning' friendly, which is good because Luna sucks rocks, IMNSHO. A lot of people find XP to be rock solid but after installing it on two personal systems I found it to be otherwise - certainly better than Win9xjtfolden but I think it needs a service pack or two before it beats the latest versions of Win2k. Chances are good, however, that on brand new hardware it could very well be just as stable as it's predecessor.

Note: My opinions of XP are also probably colored by the fact that I've been using Mac OS X as my primary system for about 11 months now. Which, IMO, has a beautiful no-nonsense UI and hasn't crashed on me in about 9 or 10 months.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I recently bought a new machine with xp preinstalled (much to my dismay), stability on xp is o.k. but like all new versions of windows it has problems still being ironed out. *** If you have all your programs running in 2000 you probably won't have any problems since xp is built on the same architecture. However, and this is very important. . . if your games are running on dos through Win ME, you will have to retain either a partition or seperate hard drive with that os still installed in order for them to work. The compatibility wizard can only do so much.

The way I got around this is, by having 3 partitions: 1)running 98 se, 2)running XP, and 3) running Mandrake.
I can do just about anything with this set up.

I would put off getting XP for at least another year, unless your buying all new equipment, because alot of not so old hardware isn't supported under XP.

Cheers.

Successfully updated karma reason!

DavidK

Join Date 03/2001

I have XP on my notebook (which is my 'work' machine) and I love the visual enhancements. If you're going to use it on an LCD screen then Cleartype alone is worth the upgrade. I like the new start panel too but ObjectBar will give you that in 2k. So far, the only major difference I've noticed is quicker start-up and shutdown plus a lot of nice eye-candy.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Sign Up or Login and this ad disappears!
There are many great features available to you once you register. Sign Up for a free account and browse the forums without ads.

Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1845

For me, XP is the first OS that has proved stable...and that includes Win2K.
P111\500 1 gig PC133 running at 100, BX6 mo-bo....a slot-one system isn't all that new...but XP runs fine....I had probs with a virus proggy that would blue-screen XP on shut-down...but once I worked out the culprit, I could remove the proggy and all is well.

If you 'need' to run Dos games, then XP is happy to co-exist with 98 and you can use the latter...

Successfully updated karma reason!

Jafo: did you have XP installed first or Win98?

For quite a while I had a good thing going with Win98SE on primary, Win2K on secondary and Mandrake Linux 8.1 on tertiary. My experience led me to believe that at all costs, Win98 had to be installed first before anything else; however, my surf on the Web shows people putting XP on first and doing funky stuff to be able to install Win98 afterwards.

Now, after a complete wipe, I have just finished Win98 and have nearly installed XP in the next partition. However, the analysis file I printed out says that Win98 and all backups will be removed. Can you please tell me what is going on here?

If you would rather not answer in detail here or via private message, please just point me to a kick-ass FAQ or help website. Thx

Successfully updated karma reason!