Windows 2000

Overview of Windows 2000

Windows 2000 actually comes in more flavors than the standard three:

• Windows 2000 Professional
1. High-performance, secure-network client computer and corporate operating system.
2. Includes best features of Microsoft Windows 98
3. Extends manageability, reliability, security, and performance of Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0
4. Designed to be the main desktop operating system for businesses of all sizes.
5. Supports two CPUs and 4Gig of memory.
• Windows 2000 Server
1. Supports file, print, terminal, application, and Web servers
2. Contains all of the features of Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, plus many new server-specific functions
3. Ideal for small to medium-size enterprise application deployments, Web servers, workgroups, and branch offices
4. Supports four CPUs and 4Gig of memory.
• Windows 2000 Advanced Server
1. Powerful departmental and application server
2. Supports large physical memories, clustering, and load balancing
3. Supports eight CPUs and 8Gig of memory.
• Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
1. Most powerful and functional server OS in the Microsoft Windows 2000 family
2. Optimized for large data warehouses, econometric analysis, large-scale simulations in science and engineering, and server consolidation projects
3. Cannot be purchased separately; must be obtained through a resaler who bundles it with extremely large (and very expensive) servers.
4. Supports 64 CPUs and 64Gig of memory (Yowza!).

Info gleaned from several Microsoft books and webpages.

Windows 2000 has, apparently, been superseded by the spangly new Windows XP, which features (apprently) more ease of use, and an easier start.

However, for most purposes Windows 2000 Professional is a better OS than Windows XP Professional, with a comparable set of features. There are some compelling reasons to stick with 2k, such as:

• Windows 2000 uses considerably fewer system resources (memory, CPU) than XP. Fewer services are started by default, leading to decreased memory usage and less background processor usage. An upshot of this is that 2000 will run on much older PCs with little RAM. XP was slow as a dog on an old family PC with 128MB of RAM, even with most of the useless services disabled, whereas 2K was snappy and fast, if slightly less user friendly.
• 2000 comes with little of the "cruft" present on Windows XP. The user interface is fast and streamlined, Windows Media Player, Movie Maker, MSN Messenger et al are not installed by default (Internet Explorer, rather unsurprisingly, is). Windows 2000 is more of a "blank slate", allowing you to have more or less what you want on your PC, and have things your way.
• Because they share the same kernel, XP and 2000 have much the same hardware support (although not by default).
• I find that Windows 2000 doesn't like to irritate me as much as XP does. On your first boot of Windows XP, you are invited to:
  • Start a tour
  • Open a Passport
  • Use the Microsoft Network Setup Wizard (which tends to screw things up more often than not)
  • Sign up for MSN Internet Access
  ...and it continues doing this for a few boots afterwards. By comparison, 2000 says very little and basically keeps out of your way. No animated tours; no pestering you to make a Passport; nothing besides a simple MSN icon on the desktop.
• I personally like the 2000 default look, it's uncluttered (although this is subjective).
• Whatever runs on XP will most likely run on 2000, due to the similar underlying code bases; hell, even most games will. A lot of the graphical enhancements on XP (like alpha blending) are also present in 2000.
• On a purely economic basis, Win2K is much cheaper than XP. I've found copies of Windows 2000 Pro for £88, whereas XP Pro is £135. For families on a budget, this could be a godsend.
• 2000 seems to be much more stable than XP, and I've known it to run for weeks at a time.

Of course, there are some downsides:

• If you're a newbie, you may find 2000's lack of hand-holding gooeyness to be a little bit daunting at first.
• It doesn't come with a firewall, so you'd better have one on disk somewhere. Along with Service Pack 4.
• If you like your OS coming with a media player/IM client/movie maker/garish theme, Windows 2000 requires you to download all of these seperately, as they do not come with the OS.
• If you're an IE user (WHY!?) 2000 does not come with any of the security enhancements or popup blocker functionality that XP SP2 has.
• If you don't have network drivers on disk, and 2000 doesn't natively support your card, you're up shit creek without a paddle.

Basically, if you feel that you can tolerate the loss of some resources in favour of greater ease of use and compatibility out of the box, you're probably better off with XP. However, if you're one of those people who, on installing XP, disables everything in sight, runs XPLite and basically removes every new "innovation" in it, or you have few system resources available to you, it's probably better for you to go with Windows 2000.