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Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware
Daniel Iversen writes "Still 95% compatible with Windows XP, The Windows 2000 OS still runs very well on very old hardware - hardware with low specs it was never even meant to run on (tech setup guide - not a review). The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?"
No! I mean, Yes! Wait....No!
The two points learned from this article:
1) A previous version of Windows, with less bloat, runs better on hardware with less resources to accomodate the bloat of future versions.
2) If you turn off practically everything, it'll use up a whole lot less memory.
Well, anyone with even a shred of common sense regarding computers should already be aware of those facts...so what purpose does the article serve, other than the rather mediocre instructional value?
A slashdot article that praises the durability of a microsoft product? Is the world coming to an end?
*looks outside*
Four horsemen of the apocalypse... check! Carry on then...
Planned obsolescence is not a virtue. Why is not buying new hardware a bad thing? That's what the question implies.
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
Well, Linux runs well on older hardware too. Infact, the older...the better!
Btw, Linux also runs on toasters, coffee machines, ipod's etc.
Just because someone can drag themselves through a decathalon with a broken leg doesn't mean they're going to be fast, effective or ejoy doing so. I don't see Pentium scaling back their development teams because Win2k was a smooth OS that brought life to the unwieldly Win95-capable hardware.
I'd think it impedes sales just about as much as making hardware that keeps working longer than six months.
The Compatibility w/ older HW/SW is a good thing from a marketing standpoint, but all of the older drivers and antiquated forms of data access to/from these legacy devices does put restrictions on what the OS can do TODAY. In short, the need to support such a wide, disparate spectrum of devices and technologies hampers the OS to be as fast and efficient as it COULD be, if support for these older devices and formats were removed.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Whenever I need a little extra juice for a new fangled Win2k app I just hit my turbo button. I should get a few more good years out of this old PC...
No, but it does impede XP sales.
At work we just bought a rather sizable chunk of Win2K licenses so that we could upgrade older systems from Win98 without taking the performance hit that we were expecting from XP. Plus since I'm more familiar with Win2K than XP, managing the network is easier for me without having to re-learn where they hid all the settings AGAIN.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
I don't think today's typical applications would run too well on 8-year-old hardware. It may be possible, but I think it would be generally more cost-efficient to just upgrade just a little bit. It would be more efficient in time and power consumption, not to mention better at preserving your sanity.
Well I am impressed that it worked but I don't think it's going to imped PC sales at all. I get a new computer about once every year and a half. I still have my old computers, right back to the my frist one from 1993. I still use them all. It's amazing what you can do with old hardware. As long as technology keeps increasing I'll be buying new computers because to be honest, the current ones still don't run fast enough for me.
Nerds won't have to buy new PCs. People in the mainstream will have to throw their PCs away as they would rather upgrade than spend money on virus removal.
Also, expect some sort of "super-virus" to force everyone to upgrade to the next version of windows. The purpose behind this is to make sure that everyone has DRM enabled(i.e. crippled) computers.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Until the hard drive crashed last month I was running Win 2K on this old Fujitsu Lifebook D765X Pentium Laptop. My sig other took the "good" laptop to Nova Scotia, so I travelled to San Francisco with this one.
Although slow, the machine actually ran quite OK, even logging into wireless networks and surfing the 'net. Office '97 ran just dandy, as did everything else that I usually have installed.
Pentium 166, 48 megs RAM. Stable as a rock.
I doubt very much that XP would even install on this machine, but 2K was happy as a clam.
Three Squirrels
My employer thankfully just bought us new 3.2 GHz PCs to replace our 1 GHz machines with Win 2K from 2001.
Screw compatible, I need to get my work done today. Those old PCs were painfully slow running Win2K. Even just simple resizing of photos in Photoshop was asking a lot.
Combine that with the fact that the interface on XP is still inconsistent crap compared to OS X, and things still take too long to accomplish.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
Yes, it does impede sales. However, that's just part of the equation. PC hardware seems to walked into the Land of Diminishing Returns. The extra cost of new hardware doesn't seem justified when the systems that people have work fast enough them. If your computer does everything you want it to, why upgrade?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The writer of this article is a little strange if he considers a P233 old hardware. Back when Windows 2000 came out (1999, kids) I was using a P233 as my primary machine.
He makes one excellent point at the end: memory. Memory is what Windows needs more than anything. Once you remove all the cuddly crap, Windows 2000 and XP runs perfectly well on a classic Pentium so long as it has 128Mb or more. Preferably 256 with XP.
I've never tried XP or 2000 on a 486, but I would be willing to bet it'd run fine (NT certainly did). Anyone else tested this?
Is it surprising that a 5-year-old operating system still runs 8-year-old hardware? That's the hardware for which the operating system was designed!
A more pertinent question, I think, would be whether 2000 still runs with full support for new hardware devices, and whether that forward-compatibility hampers new OS sales.
Compatible with 95% of things.. so 1 in every 20 applications won't work.
Sounds like rather a lot to me.
I see no reason why, if you design your API correctly and extensibly in the first place, with good modularisation, your OS shouldn't be compatible with code in 50 or 100 years time, let alone 5. Backwards compatibility is useful. Especially in computing where projects are rarely maintained beyond the second or third stable release. I don't quite see why moving forward should necessarily leave old applications broken.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?
Sure it does. Are we looking for someone to blame? How about the hardware industry, for spending all that money to make speedy whizbang processors and huge warehouselike hard drives that hardly anybody needs?
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
Wow. Whoever modded this "Interesting" reeeeeeeeally thinks Microsoft is evil.
"Microsoft is encouraging people to throw away computers, huh? [stroking chin] Interesting... but how does this relate to their involvement in the JFK assassination? More research is needed..."
"DONT install an extra service pack (they can offer perfromance and reliability improvements on faster computers but on old computers with few tasks they are just a bloat). Make sure your Windows installation CD isn't already 'slipstreamed' with a service pack."
and
"How to use the computer on a daily basis...Don't apply O/S patches for security stability or other things."
This is advice from an idiot for other idiots. I'm sure the worms and other malware you invite onto this system will make great use of the "more than 10 MB RAM left for your applications."
...with a little technical TLC every now-and-then. Like the Times article about how people buy new PCs because of spyware, most consumers cannot figure out the insanity of Windows. They certainly can't figure out that their new computer does almost nothing more for them then their old computer -- the only difference is that the old one "stopped working."
Windows 2000 is amazing-- blazing fast and solid as a rock. I tried XP for a couple months and quickly switched back to 2000. Unfortunately, as Microsoft slowly discontinues updates, patches, and support for Windows 2000, you will eventually have to migrate to XP, 2k3, or Longhorn.
I installed Windows Server 2003 a year or two ago and haven't looked back. It has all of the stability and speed of 2000, except with the improved compatibility and features of XP. Subjectively, I can tell you that it doesn't "deteriorate" like XP does. (Your mileage may vary.) And did I mention it was blazing fast on my dated hardware?
It uses a newer kernel than XP, for the record. One of the major differences I've noticed is that windows redraw more smoothly with less flickering, especially in Explorer. It includes XP's WiFi connectivity features, too.
There's an excellent site dedicated to using Server 2003 as a workstation, including instructions on how to disable unnecessary services and processes.
Uhh.. yes?
My fastest machine is an AMD Athlon 800Mhz. I dont do the gaming thing very often, and I honestly feel like the machine performs quite sufficiently for me. I have the money to upgrade, but its simply not a priority for me.
The fact that I can do everything I need to (I dont do video editing or photoshop type stuff) without excessive latency makes that 800Mhz quite sufficient.
That being said, I've also avoided going to heavier OS's. I ran W2k for many years, and recently went to XP. Turn off all that eye candy and it performs just as fast.
Hate to say it, but if I were running linux, I'd probably want something with a little more beef, because the eye candy with some of the X.org window managers is accually functional eye candy, and I would make use of it. As it stands, I dont need it.
I'd like to point to Gates Law - which I think Longhorn is specifically designed to achieve: The speed of software halves every 18 months. We've got machines now quite capable of running most everyday purposes. The only way to get people to buy the newest and greatest is to introduce overhead in the OS. Under the guise of "perty!" and "search!" M$ is throwing massive amounts of unnessecary crap into OS overhead. Relational database for filesystem? Completely unnessecary.
.
My fastest machine is an AMD Athlon 800Mhz. I dont do the gaming thing very often, and I honestly feel like the machine performs quite sufficiently for me. I have the money to upgrade, but its simply not a priority for me.
Sure, but is it really reasonable to say that that is "impeding" sales?
You could say the same about old television sets continuing to function or old books still being readable or old doors still allowing, or restricting, access to buildings.
It just seems a weird way of looking at things to say that older stuff continuing to work is "impeding sales" of new stuff. Is a lack of earthquakes impeding sales of new homes? I guess you can say it does but... I wouldn't.
Sure, but what of the prime factors of 9,007,199,254,740,881?
I'd just say:
Nlite, nuff said.
But then you wouldn't see how this measures up to the article in question. So I'll say it like this:
Windows XP SP2 running on a Pentium 166 mhz with 32 meg RAM, only possible with Nlite.
I ran this along with Xampp to provide myself with a nice little development box that could still use Firefox/Thunderbird so roommates could read the web, play web games, and check their email.
I didn't hear any complaining except during playback of certain XviD and DivX files in BSplayer.
"Microsoft is encouraging people to throw away computers, huh? [stroking chin] Interesting... but how does this relate to their involvement in the JFK assassination? More research is needed..."
The Warren Commission had to get rid of many megabytes of data related to the investigation of the assassination for fear that future researchers using advanced artificial intelligence algorythms (cool, two root Arabic words in the same English sentence) would uncover the grand conspiracy.
They turned to a 'boy genius' 9-year-old computer whiz living in a middle-class suburb in Seattle. No one would believe that a boy would be able to accomplish this task, and so the deed went completely unnoticed. Twenty years later, huge government contracts went secretly to the now-grown-up whiz's little company (along with the services of the government's most advanvanced programmer's who were able to the boy's hopeless operating system into near working condition).
So there!
runs Office 2000 suite just fine, scanning/printing/fax, and turbotax. Still has regular security patches from microsoft. amazing how many commercial apps run on 95/98/nt
I find it odd that an IT department would willingly purchase a "sizable chunk" of OS licenses for an OS that hasn't been available for license as a retail product for 15.5 months.(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle /default.mspx)
While it's only been 3.5 months since system builders could license it it is still, by Microsoft's documentation, an unlicensable product at this point in time.
Having used 98, NT4.x, 2K, and XP at work (digital content creation) and at home since about '97 I can say that I've not noticed any appreciable performance hit in XP compared to the previous versions. Certainly not enough to warrant buying a product that lost mainstream support six weeks ago. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh ;%5Bln%5D;LifeWin)
windows XP on a 20 megahertz Pentium with 32 megabytes of RAM. http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm
I probably wont buy a new machine until the current one dies. How is that not impeding sales? It used to be that I needed to ugprade every two years, otherwise I couldnt run anything with any decency. I can play all my media, run everything except games and perform all my work just fine - multitasking all the way. I currently have two SSH windows open, winamp, gaim, two instances of mirc, firefox with six tabs, a few notepads for "scrap paper", bittorrent. I'm using a wireless network, and I've got ipod plugged in charging. I'm streaming MP3s from magnatune and boucing around doing all kinds of stuff. And my machine is NOT slow.
Why would I want to upgrade? Throw $2000 for what? Games? I can play games on playstation. I could not do this on a 500Mhz machine, but I definitely dont need a 4 GHz machine to do it.
.
The author of that howto claims that you should:
NOT install any service packs or patches
NOT use NTFS
NOT use a sound card
NOT use removable storage (CD, USB, etc)
NOT use windows networking
NOT use a parallel printer
NOT install many applications
NOT have more than 1 application open at a time
NOT work with big (1MB+) files
Well WTF good is that computer then? The title of the article is "Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware". How is this performance?
Are you kidding me? Of course Windows 2000 runs on 8 year old hardware, it's a 5yo OS. What good would it have been back in 2000 if it didn't run on hardware that was three years old back then? What's the big secret that it still runs today?
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
With that said, I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. It was on a really sweet Tyan board from 1997. It installed alright, but it ran like a slug through molasses on a cold January night. The boot alone took 10-15 minutes. This system had SCSI2 drives as well, so there really were no bottle necks. No weird interrupt problems to speak of, nothing odd. So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel for SMP and tweaked it with the realtime patches. I also customized the hell out of it by just installing the very minimum of RedHat, stripping what I didn't want and installing everything from source. The end result? A super secure, super efficient system that performs as well as a P4 running at 1 Ghz. It's been running like this going on three years now. Uptimes have been incredible compared to any desktop PC I've ever used before. It plays the role of internal DNS, NTP, Web, Mail and File servers. It's also the main application server for the house with centralized everything. The rest of my systems just act as thin clients that can easily attach to an IN PROGRESS desktop session using VNC. I never log out of my VNC desktop anymore, I just lock the screen. Same for my wife and two friends who use the system via OpenVPN over the internet.
The point to all this? I do things that you CAN'T do with Windows and this box is eight years old but feels like it's only 2 years old. Machines really should last closer to 10-15 years before having to buy a new one. The idea of the disposable machine is moronic.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
In 1999 I bought a top of the line "Bad-MaMaJama" system with all the hot specs. Loaded it up with all the top of the line development software of the era from 3D Studio Max R3 ($3,500 back then) to Visual Studio.
;-)
Then in 2000 I moved out of the development world into the realm of management, sales, etc. So My old Work horse is a dinosaur now, and I still do some development on the side for fun. But seriously why do I need to upgrade from PhotoShop 7 to PhotoShop CS? They both push pixels with equal ease. The Tools for the casual user are not so much better today than they were 6 years ago to force an upgrade (how much has the hammer evolved in 6 years?).
All facts considered my 6 year old system is blazingly fast so long as I run Circa 1999 Software.... that is until I load up Office 2003, or even (gasp) Firefox. It amazes me that a Circa 2005 Browser like Firefox can bring my system to it's knees whereas a Crica 1999 Enterprise aplication like 3D Studio Max rips along without breaking a sweat. Oh well, time to upgrade so I can keep up with the browser wars....oh sorry, that was such a 1999 statement to make
with old Windows hardware!
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
When this first appeared on OSNews 2 days ago a lot of us pointed out then that this entire article is ridiculous. They want you to install 2K and not update it and everything else, things which aren't possible. Then most of the "fixes" are disabling this or that service which is 4th grade hacking.
Considering a lot of code for 2000 came from systems being developed before the advent of the Pentium II it can be forced to work on slower machines with a few hardware hacks. First, we know that I/O is going to be slow in a Pentium I or II, so don't use NTFS and upgrade to dynamic disks. Even adding a second drive to use for the PAGEFILE and maybe even the TEMP will speed things up and keep the machine stable.
I've got a few machines (K6, Pentium II each with ~64 MB RAM) running 2000 smoothly with this setup: 2 Hard drives, with the system installed on the first primary partition (on the first disk). The system is on FAT32, formatted for 5.1 GB and just a "normal disk". Then I've got a large "Striped" partition, formatted FAT32 holding documents and programs. Then three small (1 GB) striped partitions all holding one of each of these: TEMP, SWAP and SYSTEM CATALOG.
These machines never crash (and are regularly defragmented every two days). I've debated on taking out the CD-ROM's (never use them) and using 4 hard disk drives but that makes me have to re-install and that requires a CD-ROM (or floppies which I don't have)
Get your Unix fortune now!
Perfect platform for stress testing multi-user apps because the platform sucks. If it works well there, it'll work anywhere (that supports Win32 code, that is).
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
The support issues are one thing, but go install XP on something with 32 MB of RAM if you want to talk speed. If you've noticed no difference between versions, it's probably because you haven't run 98 and XP on the same machine. See you in a week after it boots. Maybe. Even 128 is slow as hell, which 2K works fine with.
As for Windows 2000, yeah, thats great. I suppose you can get it to run on something old, but, why? What the author is suggesting is dumb. Why not just go and get a board and chip for $150, and build something, THEN put Windows 2000 on it. I don't see how running Windows on something like that will be useful. For a server, yeah. But I'd go with Linux or FreeBSD.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
News flash! MS-DOS still performs on 20-year-old hardware. Film at 11:00.
:-)
And hey, DOS is somewhat compatable with WinXP. DoomII will run on either system.
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber" -- Plato
I have some systems exactly like that. A dozen or so PIII-733 systems purchased 5 years ago, running W2K and MS Office. Aside from some increased use of browser based apps and Remote Desktop to a 2003 Server based app, the needs of the users has remained largely unchanged. So why should the hardware all of sudden become "obsolete". Elsewhere in the company where demands are higher, they were all upgraded to P4s throughout last year. Not every office worker needs Photoshop or cares if the lastest 3D game runs on it. They just want to get their job done.
"Build something idiot proof, and someone will build a better idiot" - Samuel Clemens
People like that would be far better off loading Fedora 4, or Umbutu or.....
They would have the same functionality, but with no worries about the BSA coming in with a search warrent and battering ram. More importantly, they wouldn't have to worry about 40,000 viruses making the system useless before they even started working on it.
The would also have a modern, supported operating system, and software to do things like word processing without the need to spend more than the current value of the machine on even more buggy software.
I actually did that last week. Got a machine that was being 'dumped' at the computer store on the corner, loaded FC4 onto it and delivered it to a native elder who doesn't have the money to buy a new machine for himself.
I even gave him an old inkjet printer and enough ink to last him a few years of refills. Now he can surf, write memoires, use email and not have to worry about being 'owned' -- and once he gets cheap broadband, I can even do remote support for him.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The real question is: Do I care if I'm impeding PC sales?
Failing hardware aside, if what I've got now is already locked down, and the hardware performs perfectly under load, and I have room to add software features to my applications as necessary: Do I care if Dell wants to sell me a new multi-processor Xeon blade? Not really.
Expense without some sort of valid justification is wasted money. Put the dollars somewhere else.
If your old hardware is under-powered, and impeding business progress, of course you'll upgrade. But unless I'm under direct pressure from a vendor, I'm not going to waste money feeding the low-cost hardware boom.
However, if my vendor end-of-lifes a product, states it is no longer supported, warranted and spare parts are no longer going to be produced, or become exceedingly expensive - well, I might just get that new box after all.
For some minor applications, that old Windows 2000 server with 256MB of RAM might be just fine as-is, as long as its not a support liability. (No, having a machine that runs d.net or Seti@Home faster in your server room is probably *not* a real business reason for a faster server).
That just seems silly. Now throwly RH 9 on there instead would make more sense, or even RH 7 if you're talking 8 years ago. They are starting to merge together for me so I don't remember which versions came out when.
At any rate, I don't see how any of this is really news. Win2k was fast for me even back when it was new, I beta tested it on a 486 100mhz box. It is fairly efficient and light when compared with XP which struggles on anything slower than 300mhz. Of course, XP is dramatically newer so I'm of the mind that is not so bad. In my mind Linux and Windows have led rather parallel lives in this regard.I hate to disagree, but this is nothing -- M$ knows their bread and butter is backward compatibility, so they can suck you in. Here's a better story -- In 1996, I installed and ran Windows NT 4.0 on an IBM PS/2 Model 80 that was build when Ronald Reagan was president -- 1987! It had a 1GB SCSI drive, 16MB of RAM (the maximum for that system), and a 386/25. Ran fine, only problem I had was I couldn't get it to recognize the XGA card I had as an XGA card, so I was stuck with setting it to be an 8514 -- 1024/768/16colors. This was my daily use computer through early '97, and I think I installed up to SP3 on it. Don't ask why I had such a crappy machine....
This is actually not true. The only time a Windows XP license is what is considered "downgradable" to a windows 2k license is if you are a software assurance customer.
I'm not saying this will NOT work, it should work, but it will not be legally licensed
I read
not sure why i'm replying, but that is a prime number.
-Steve
What performance hit from Win98 -> XP were you expecting? Could you post the quantitative speed analysis numbers, please?
/ evaluation/sysreqs/default.asp
/ sysreqs.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/professional
64MB RAM Minimum, 133MHz CPU Minimum.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation
128MB RAM Minimum (Though it'll install on 64) and 300MHz CPU.
So if 2000 needs less to function, that leaves more for the rest of our software. And stop with the Weasel Words.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
Just as secure, and you can have more functionality (e.g. sound!).
Of course, better yet, you can use Linux. I've got a 32MB laptop that runs Debian (with XFCE). A bit slow, but I can actually surf the web and so forth, and even play a game or two. And do it with actual security.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I look in
D:\pictures\2005\0510-vacation pics\
it is right after
D:\pictures\2005\0501-birthday pics\
you do not need a database to organize your digital stuff, just a little thought ahead of time.8^)
Science is the Real TRUTH!
I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. [...] The boot alone took 10-15 minutes.
I'm not sure what was going on there, but your numbers are crazy. I ran Win2k on a P II 350 laptop with 128 MB of RAM and it booted in something around 5 minutes, probably less. It also ran reasonably well, but I'll admit I didn't use it for a whole lot (it dual-booted Debian).
So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel for SMP and tweaked it with the realtime patches.
RedHat 9 supported SMP out of the box - it should've loaded an SMP kernel after installation (at least RedHat 8 and RHEL do). Tweaking it for realtime, sure.
Also, Win2k Pro supports SMP for dual processors, so I'm don't see how you can claim that's something "you can never do with Windows"
Basically, I don't disagree with your assertion that Linux can be happier and more usable on old systems. I used WindowMaker, and Debian allowed for a impressively small install image allowing me to dual boot on a 6GB drive.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Seeing as I am still working out Linux, and I know my Windows pretty darn well, I did this interesting thing.
The specs:
- Pentium II 233MHz
- Intel Desktop Board (isn't their slogan "built on reliability")
- 96MB RAM
- 3GB Hard Disk
- OS: Windows 2000 Server Standard
For readers to understand fully why I did this, until about a month ago, South Africa had only one decent ADSL account offering, a 3GB account. These 3GB accounts allow you to browse any site at full speed until you generate 3GB of traffic (that's g/bytes), and after the DSLAM kills your session (happens approximately every 24 hours) and you reconnect you get worse than 9600bps modem speeds when connecting to overseas servers/peers, but local speeds are still 100%. At the beginning of each month the counter is reset.
So, what I do is use OpenVPN (http://www.openvpn.org/) to tunnel to my office for the international bandwidth which we get through a 2mbit/s leased line, however, I have managed to configure my box in such a way that local traffic goes straight over the ADSL.
Using Windows 2000 Routing and remote access on my machine at home, I create the tunnel, and also create a ppp connection using RAS PPPoE (http://www.raspppoe.com/) - seeing as Windows 2000 doesn't have it natively. I then set up NAT routing, make the OpenVPN TUN/TAP adapter and the ppp interface external interfaces, and the LAN card the internal interface.
Then for routes, I set my default route to go down the tunnel, and I natuarlly set up the IP address of the remote end of the tunnel to go down the ppp interface. Now, South Africa has relatively few ASNs, so I also manually added a whole lot of those blocks to my routing table to go down the ppp interface. The net result (excuse the pun) was that local traffic went straight over the ADSL, and international traffic via the tunnel.
This all runs perfectly on Windows 2000 Server on that old box. Unlike the author of the article, I don't ever "work" on the machine per se, so for security reason's it does all it's Windows Updates, while I installed no extra services like IIS, I haven't bothered to disable any default services, I have however turned off Active Desktop, sliding menus and the Activity Pane for Windows Explorer, I discovered a long time ago that turning these off was the simplest way to more than double the responsiveness of their systems. What I have also done is enabled Terminal Services in remote administration mode, so the machine needs no screen keyboard and mouse. I add that I am no security expert however, with the box fully patched and a strong password set, I have had NO security incidences, well, at least none that I am aware of, I also do not run any kind of firewall.
Now my routing works well and causes *almost* no problems, it does have issues nevertheless. Because my box has two external IP addresses, certain things have issues, the problem arises when an application registers on an international server, and other peers from South Africa try connecting to my tunnel interface IP address, this doesnt work because my Windows 2000 box ends up trying to send the packets back over the PPP inteface. I notice this the most with Source and Steam. I cannot connect to any local servers when my tunnel IP address is the one registered with the Steam server, it just keeps on asking for my Steam username and password. Top get around this, when I want to play, I merely end up doing a PPPoE direct from my desktop, and while it takes a while for Steam to sign in, it does work. While I know that I could manually setup the steam server IPs to route over the ppp, I just havent bothered, also this way when an update comes down, it always comes down the fastest.
I am experimenting with Linux, and especially along with Soekris (http://www.soekris.com/) boards, to replace this solution, just a little more time and I will have it worked out - but I am not rushed as my Windows 2000 Server solution works just as well - and is up and running already.
We see a performance hit with XP until I turn off all the fancy garbage. My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance->Visua l Effects
Turning off most of that stuff will help. There are many other ways to speed it up significantly. Even if the number crunching speed does not improve, the interface speed-up is very noticible.
Another little known feature is the XP Compatibility mode. Right click on a program executable and choose the compatibility tab. You can emulate Win 95, 98/Me, NT, 2K. We use this to run older software and it works just fine.
Oh yeah. I recently bought a new laptop. It of course came with windows XP. After getting frusterated for a week with all the lame "wizards" for everything (discussion of how confusing XP wizards are saved for another thread), I decided to load windows 2000 on it. Within an hour or two I was able to find W2K drivers for all the hardware on the laptop and start loading. I was slightly surprised to find that some of the W2K drivers actually worked better and had more options then the XP version (was true for both the wireless card and processor speed control).
In use I found that the biggest difference was that I had to install 3rd party software on 2000 to do a few things like handle zip files and burn CDs. In all cases the 3rd party software is more powerful then the built-in XP stuff anyway. I am way more efficient in W2K with it's cleaner interface to administrative functions. All things considered, I view moving from XP to 2000 an "upgrade".
XP is to 2000 as ME is to 98SE. The former in each case being a product with more "widget" features, but less usability.
"Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware"
It sounds like a punchline to a bad Michael Jackson joke.
I give men fish.
With MS, you just buy a license for the latest OS - XP - and you may then use it to run any old version. Need to run NT somewhere? Just buy an XP license.
The good thing about this is that when you do throw away the old boxes with 2K or NT, you have the licenses to run XP on whatever you replace them with.
Remembering that Windows 2000 was released in 1999, this would put it at the same time as RedHat 6.0-ish, Mandrake 6.0-ish, Gnome 1.x and KDE 1.x. Also a 2.2 kernel as opposed to 2.6 now.
By all means make the comparison but it would only be fair to make those comparisons with Linux distributions of around the same time.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
First off why would you assume you need KDE? Run oh say ICEWM and stick the web browser, email, and office apps on the menu and it's good to go.
And second, yes, I've got hardware that old, and it runs KDE fairly well, with the animations and extraneous fluff turned off.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
sorry, but I run mandriva on hardware that win2K does not run as well on. Granted you need higher than crap level video hardware (Nvidia geforce 2 or better) but Gnome on mandriva limited edition 2005 is just as fast and snappy as windows 2000 on the same machine (my daughter's laptop, it dual boots.)
I strongly suggest you actually TRY linux on your machine (knoppix tells you alot about your hardware sans the nasty latency in the filesystem from running off a cd). No it will not be happy with 64meg of ram like win2k will, but I was able to upgrade her laptop to 512 meg from newegg for $17.00 (Laptop ram prices) by adding 1 256 meg sodimm.
a decent video card makes lots of the X eye candy run better under linux. Dont know why, but the 2D acceleration of the nvidia drivers seems to kick the crap out of the vesa and intel integrated chipset drivers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And, if my Linux friends want some software that Yum won't download, I can always login using an SSH private key and do the install for them. I don't even have to leave home.
Truth of the matter is that Linux comes with far more software builtin than most people know to load into Windows.... Games, starfield simulator, production quality image editor, office suite(s), typing exercisor, VOIP program, Kdict (a nice dictionary program).
If all of that's not enough for you, download the Knoppix Live DVD and try it out for yourself.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
BUT that faster bootup in XP?
Largely illusion - MS only kicks on PART of Windows networking beforehand is why, whereas Windows 2000 kicked it ALL on @ bootup... takes time!
(Yes, you can make XP/2003 like 2000 in that regard using gpedit.msc iirc somewhere in its tree of config items, but the point is the faster boot of XP/2003 is an "illusion" in a way of looking @ it).
It is NOT an illusion. The drivers load differently and self optimized to load concurrently as needed.
Yes the desktop does appear a 'bit' before the networking is fully initialized on WinXP, but this is so MINIMAL it isn't the reason XP Boots faster.
Additional, do you understand the Security Risks that Microsoft has had to work around because of Networking services coming online in Win2k before the Security controls for them?
Even in SP2, Microsoft delayed the Network load in XP specifically to allow UPPER level OSI security layers to fire before the network becomes live.
Bascially WindowsXP not only BOOTS faster, but truly is faster. We have test systems that are 200mhz 80mb Laptops from 1997, and even with Eye Candy turned on WindowsXP consistently benchmarks (RW Applications) 5-10% faster.
So once and for all, and for all the people sticking with Win2k because they think it is faster, let's dispell the myth and inform the world that WindowsXP IS faster than Windows2K. PERIOD.
If you want to know exactly whan and how this is possible, take a look at the optimization and kernel changes from Win2k to WinXP. Win2k was a major NT overhaul, WinXP was the Pretty and PERFORMANCE enhanced version.
Just like as the OS base code fork continues forward, you will find that even on a desktop Windows 2003 Server performs better than WindowsXP.
This is because of FURTHER optimiation of the core OS, kernel and services.
I however DO understand the users that STAY with Win2K to avoid paying the $100 upgrade cost of WinXP - that makes sense at least.
But to stay with Win2k Because you think it is faster is just silly and pure non-sense.
Oh also on the DRM rant... DRM is something that is enforce by content providers because they like the concept of 'closed box' technologies like a DVD player that hooks directly up to your TV, not a Computer or a device that has the ability to MANIPULATE the data.
This is like the HDCP specifications. Even if your new plasma screen doesn't have HDCP compliance (designed BY REQUEST by Intel in 1999) and written into Law in August of 2004, you won't be able to access any of this DRM or HD protect content no matter if you stay with Win2k, Linux, MacOSX, or ANY OTHER OS that DOES NOT SUPPORT THEM. PERIOD.
HDCP is a FCC regulated REQUIREMENT BY LAW, and just because Linux or Win2k has no mechanisms for it, doesn't mean they will get to play this content. PERIOD.
So you can pout, and blame Microsoft for DRM, but without DRM, the DRM content would not be playable on a COMPUTER. PERIOD.
And if you really want to 'complain' about companies and their DRM extremism, go look at Apple iTunes and their music store.
Apple has the MOST restrictive DRM technologies for their Music and also have EXCLUSIVE rights to it and its distribution.
At least Microsoft's DRM is something they provide to developers and companies as a CONVIENCE of Windows Media, and is not something MICROSOFT ITSELF REQUIRES. IF the content provider wants to use DRM, they can use the DRM built in Windows Media if they want, but they don't have to.
Apple on the other hand, to even play a iTune song or play it on anything BUT an iPod is deemed ILLEGAL by Apple.
Microsoft on the other hand has a fairly open DRM developement strategy and requires NO locks unless the content provider puts it in.
This is why you can download Music from 99% of all non-iTunes stores and play them on 100s of MP3 and WMA portable players.
Apple's iPod has an advantage with the 'coolness' of the iPod in the mark