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What desktop o/s to use?

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by ol' 55

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A small firm of 20 (growth to 30) has admin, clerical, engineering (who require access to a mapping application) and finance all require access to a database. The intention is to migrate to Win2K advanced server. Some desktops currently run win95. What are the main reasons for upgrading desktops to win2k professional rather than 9x, NT or XP?

This is one small part of an assignment I am currently studying.

TIA.

6 replies

by curlergirl

My advice is to migrate all workstations to XP Pro, unless there is a specific reason not to (i.e., your workstations are too old/slow to handle it and you can't afford to replace them at this time). XP Pro is proving to be very stable, even more so than Win2K Pro, and has a lot of diagnostic and admin-level tools built in that make it easier to administer at the desktop level. The second-best choice would be Win2K Pro, IMHO. Get rid of the Win95 workstations QUICK!! Once you migrate to a Win2K domain, you don't want to have to deal with these outmodede OS's that will hold your entire network back. Hope this helps.

by curlergirl

A third choice - which I think of as merely an interim solution if you can't afford to upgrade these old Win9x workstations right now - would be to beef up your server a bit or add a second server and run Win2K Terminal Services. This would allow your older Win9x machines to run the terminal client and be able to run apps that require Win2K. I only mention this because I'm seeing a lot of clients trying right now to minimize costs - you'd have to look at the comparison between the two cost-wise to see if it made sense for the number of users that you have. Hope this helps!

by nitro205

There are several reasons to eliminate 9x from the picture and focus on NT/XP and Win2K,
1. Security
2. Features (especialy in a domain enviroment)

I would also forget about NT4 as Win2k would integrate and allow use of more of Win2K server features then NT4, will and has plug and play support (a lot like Windows 98)

Know for the choice between XP and 2000, I love XP but if I had to recommend a OS for the desktops/Client machines I would choose Win2K because it has been around longer then XP and is supported better in a network enviroment with Windows 2K Server. One example for admins is that Exchange 2000 Admin tools won't run on XP,

I believe that if you are going to be using Win2K Server then at this time the best desktopclient is Windows 2000 Pro.

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