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Upgrading from windows 98 se to xp

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by trinacham

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My organisation is currently running Windows 98 se, we have 55 PC's using Pentium 133s with 1.2 Gig hard drives, we have office 95 running also.the employees can access the internet, we do not have our own web site. what hardware and software requirements need to be upgraded, also what application would need to be upgraded for maximum benifit of the new OS. also what what reasons would we delay changing over to windows XP?

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by guruofdos

If you move to XP, you will need to replace every computer! XP needs a MINIMUM of 300MHz CPU, 128Mb ram and 4.3Gb hard disk. For reasonable performance, double those specs!

Windows XP is more web-oriented than 98SE, but despite what anyone tells you, there is very little that XP can do that 98 can't! In fact, nothing springs to mind! The only benefits of XP as far as I can tell from running both OS's on identical hardware is that XP uses the NTFS filing system...which is actually a DISADVANTAGE when things go wrong, and that XP can support memory better above 511Mb. XP is much slower on identical hardware, needs far more disk space and is a bugger to update. Installing a brand new shrink-wrapped copy of XP Service Pack 2 will still needover 35Mb of Windows Update Downloads to patch all the bugs. The biggest problem that most people have with XP is drivers for peripherals. My personal advice, though others may disagree with me, is if you have W98 and have kept it up to date...leavewell alone!!!

by rdunn

Windows XP utilizes a far better memory management system then Win98 could ever hope to have. While 98 has a special place in my heart, I'll have to say that I like XP far more.

GuruOfDos makes an excellent point about hardware requirements - I installed XP home on my home PC (it had a 10Gb hard drive on it at the time), and I found that I had about 3.5Gb free after the install. I was not a happy camper!

NTFS can be hard to work on, but being that XP is far more stable (and secure - which really is what NTFS is offering you), you won't find yourself troubleshooting file/disk issues as much. Also, if you have a backup policy that you enforce, you shouldn't really run into any situations that will require you to troubleshoot NTFS.

If you want to go to XP, you will need to scrap the old computers and move to newer PCs with no less than 20Gb drives and no less than 1Ghz processors.

Are you running any file servers (i.e. are you running a domain with a Primary Domain Controller)? If so, you will not want to get XP Home, but the Professional version - Home is really for a home consumer, while Pro will allow you do perform more advanced domain related tasks.

Good luck, and I hope that our advice has helped you!

Rob

by rdunn

Sorry GuruOfDos - (hmm, GOD for short?) - :)

I didn't read your post clearly enough.

I concur with you entirely.

Sorry about that -

Later!

by trinacham

Thanks a lot rdunn and GuruOfDos, for your response to my question, I appreciate your help.

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