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by agoldstein7

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Running Ms ME on 4 yr old machine with PII 350mhz 196meg Ram. 8gig hard drive, about 2 gig free.
Epson printer, Microtech scanner, Yamaha CDR, web cam. Lots of software. Going to upgrade to new OS. Need to learn Win 2000 for A+ exam. Any big advantages of XP over 2000 professional? System not currently networked but might be in the future.

7 replies

by timthetoolman

Hi,

Yes, Windows XP is faster and more stable. It has better compatibility with older programs and is generally easier to use.

Also, the obvious one... Its the latest and so you wont need to upgrade again for a greater amount of time.

Now for the downpoints... Its possible that some drivers for older hardware wont have been re-written for XP and the Microsoft supplied drivers wont work or at least may be missing some functionality as they tend to be more generic.

This is unlikely, though. I've had no problems myself but it would be worth checking out before you decide.

If you're planning to network in the future, then go for WindowsXP Professional. WindowsXP Home has more limited network capability. It was designed that way.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Tim.

by mdelyea

Your PII 350 is a bit on the low end for XP. The president of Microsoft Canada said if you don't have at least a PIII 700 leave your old operating system on. For the record, I have run XP on a PII 450 and an overclocked (to 450) Celeron. And I'veseen it on a PIII 600 and its a bit slow but certainly usable. You can run the compatiblity test for XP to test your machine.

by thechas

While I agree with the other respondents that XP is the way to go, I have 1 caveot for you.

How soon will you be upgrading / replacing your system.
If you expect to upgrade within the next 6 months, I would hold off on XP until you upgrade.
That way, you won't run into any product activation issues.

Changing the Motherboard will definetly trigger a product activation change.

One advantage to using MS's newest OS is that it will have the longest support life.

Chas

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