Windows 2000 has, apparently, been superseded by the new Windows XP, which features (apparently) more ease of use, and an easier start.

However, for most purposes Windows 2000 Professional is a better OS than Windows XP Professional, with a comparable set of features. There are some compelling reasons to stick with 2k, such as:

• Windows 2000 uses considerably fewer system resources (memory, CPU) than XP. Fewer services are started by default, leading to decreased memory usage and less background processor usage. An upshot of this is that 2000 will run on much older PCs with little RAM. XP was slow on an old family PC with 128MB of RAM, even with most of the useless services disabled, whereas 2K was snappy and fast, if slightly less user friendly.

• 2000 comes with little of the "cruft" present on Windows XP. The user interface is fast and streamlined, Windows Media Player, Movie Maker, MSN Messenger are not installed by. Windows 2000 is more of a "blank slate", allowing you to have more or less what you want on your PC, and have things your way.

• Because they share the same kernel, XP and 2000 have much the same hardware support (although not by default).

• Whatever runs on XP will most likely run on 2000, due to the similar underlying code bases.

A lot of the graphical enhancements on XP (like alpha blending) are also present in 2000.

• On a purely economic basis, Win2K is much cheaper than XP

• 2000 seems to be much more stable than XP, and I've known it to run for months at a time.

Performance Benchmarks of Windows 200 and XP:

(Link: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc...29tcwinxp.html)

Above tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows XP and Windows 2000 demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows 2000 significantly outperformed Windows XP. Our tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows XP and Windows 2000 demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows 2000 significantly outperformed Windows XP. In the most extreme scenario, our Windows XP system took nearly twice as long to complete a workload as did the Windows 2000 client.

As it often happens with Microsoft, Windows 2000 is another mystery. It was released after one disaster (Windows ME) and before another one (XP).
True, it's not as multimedia-friendly as XP. But 2000 is true to its goal - successor to Windows NT. It's stable as no other Windows OS, much more multimedia-friendly than NT ever was and doesn't require devices made yesterday - it flawlessly supports all devices I currently have.

Haimadan
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