$64k question - upgrade from W2K to XP????

[sktn77a]

I have the opportunity to upgrade my Thinkpad notebook
from W2Kpro to Win XPpro. I don't play games on it so I
wondered if there is any good reason to upgrade from a
stability/security standpoint. The downside to the
upgrade is that my hardware DVD decoder card doesn't work
with XP and the computer is too slow (with XP) to use a
software decoder. So to offset the loss of DVD playback
functionality, I wanted a good reason to go through the
upgrade.

All opinions appreciated!

Keith

 

[Dan Seur]

Traffic in these W2k newsgroups indicates to me that there
are no compelling technical reasons to move to XP, and many
people don't like the XP Presentation Manager - the new
"feel" of the system. I have no experience with XP myself,
however, and of course there's little but problem- and
angst-report traffic in the NGs...people tend not to report
that they're overjoyed about something.

 

[Darrell]

I've worked with XP a lot and most of my clients are
moving in that direction. Granted there may be something
that isn't compatible yet but the stability with less
overhead was reason for me. All my systems are running
XP, even an old PII 400 that used to run Win98. It now
runs faster with no problems at all compared to the
problems from 98. You can easily change the feel to the
classic view if you want to keep it looking like the older
versions. But with the plug-n-play that comes with XP I
would never want to go back to pre-XP days. Hope this
helps.

 

[Dan Seur]

Hi Darrell - I was speaking strictly from the perspective of a move from
W2k to XP. The move to XP from W9x or Win3 would be a huge tech
improvement in reliability etc.; after all, XP is an NT-class system.
W2k is a PnP system, and I'll admit I moved to it from NT4 for that
reason (device & driver support). I'll also admit the first thing I did
was set the W2k Presentation Manager stuff (desktop, explorer) to look
exactly like NT4, only with W2k's much better explorer view of all
drives, local and networked. ;-)

 

[sktn77a]

Thanks everyone. Just for my information, does XP consume
less resources ("les overhead") that W2k? I think that
might be an important performance issue for me in the
future.

Keith