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Win 2000 vrs. ME

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by m trump 1 view

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I'm in charge of IT for a fairly middle-sized school system (about 1400-1600 computers located in 12 buildings) and am currently facing the dreaded 'time to upgrade.' One problem faces me.....what OS should I order on these new CPU's? I want the one that overall will give me the least amount of downtime (little crashing), is the most user-friendly (we're talking teachers here, some afraid to push the wrong button), and has the best features that will make it easiest for me to support.

I have been running both Windows 2000 and ME on my personal machines for some time and am inclined to purchase ME due to the fact that it is the most similiar to 95 and 98 and has had less crashes than 2000 (+ the system restore might come in handy.) Asan administrator/'power user' I love some of the features in 2000 but for end users??

What do the rest of you have to say who have been using/supporting these systems? Which is the best in your opinion? Why or why not? Any feedback I get willbe seriously looked at and appreciated!

Happy Teching.......

6 replies

by mbrevoort

I am by no mean an expert in system administration, but I would recommend win2k because of its administration and security options. You can also "lock down" functionality in win2k and restrict the amount of power a user has. I would think this would be very important in an environment with a lot of novice users that may maliciously or inadvertantly modify/corrupt/damage configurations.

my 2 cents ...

by m trump

OK, but aren't those lock down functions only available if they're logging into an NT server/domain? How about in a Novell environment? There's always Policy Editor but if 2000 can determine from a Client32 login the user and then set priviledges,that would be very good! Can it?

by mtudor

I believe that even when you're not logging into a server, NT/2000 and Linux/Unix systems still assign local rights that provide security to a system. WinME does not, regardless of having a server. You can lock down a Win9X machine using mandatoryprofiles if I'm not mistaken, but what a bother that would be. Also, WinME has some Internet features that are designed for home use rather than corporate use, that may make it harder to set (not sure on that one). Of course, Microsoft's always right, and they say ME=home and 2K=business, so what else is there to consider? (grin)

by l pieterse

I would definately go for Windows 2000 for the following reasons. Students have a tendency to play around with machines and alter system settings etc. With ME installed, system settings and installations will probably have to be restored frequently.With Windows 2000, users can be denied access to files and system settings, reducing the need to reconfigure and reinstall. Windows 2000 is also supposed to be more stable than ME.
In the end it basically comes down to funtion of the machines: Whatsoftware packages needs to run on them and what are the compattibility issues(if any) with the different Operating Systems.

by m trump

I'm running Fortress on all instructional machines so there's no problem when it come to students accessing files and settings on ME but what MAY be a problem is compatiblity. Although DOS programs are for the most part not used, there are some of those odd cases when a teacher (let's say keyboarding) finds an old 'drill and kill' program they want/like to use. That's where I don't know....will 2000 run true DOS? I know it has the command prompt but will there be comp. issues down the road?

by marshall

I was reading the other day that the dos in a Win 2k machine is actually running in a 3.1 emulator (virtual machine) on the system.

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