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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!
Well, Linux runs well on older hardware too. Infact, the older...the better!
Btw, Linux also runs on toasters, coffee machines, ipod's etc.
I'd think it impedes sales just about as much as making hardware that keeps working longer than six months.
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.
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
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.
"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."
A slashdot article that praises the durability of a microsoft product? Is the world coming to an end?
Well, you know, Unix folks are used to being able to recompile/reuse almost anything that was produced for the past 30+ years, but they take that for granted, so nobody talks about it.
And while I do appreciate that the Windows developers have been able to maintain binary compatibility with a majority of old software, nobody seems to be discussing (1) the speed impact those legacy portions of Windows OS on modern programs, (2) the poor speed of old programs run on modern Windows and (3) the security problems those legacy routines impose on modern Windows.
This said, kudos to the Windows developers who manage to maintain compatibility throughout the years, even with programs that do dirty tricks with the win32 API and, well, DOS programs. It's quite a feat, and it's probably a major reason for Windows users not ditching the hateful OS, since they don't want to lose their investment.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
.
"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!
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)
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?
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.
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!