Re: Is it worth upgrading to XP Pro ?

From: Harry Ohrn (harry---_at_webtree.ca)
Date: 11/16/04 

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:01:52 -0600

"FACE" <AFaceInTheCrowd@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:q89kp0tff2d4l6glkmqkhcvudmfpscv3vs@4ax.com...
| On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 12:42:50 +0000 (UTC), "Kevin Lawton"
| <socks.kepla.shoes@btinternet.com> in microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics
| wrote:
|
| >I've been using Windows 2000 Pro for almost four years now and it is
'okay'.
| >Not perfect, by any means, but quite okay for general use.
| >My applications are just 'general use' - internet & e-mail, office apps
like
| >word & excel, SQL server 2000 database, photo editing, CD burning, etc.
| >Nothing very esoteric, just 'bread and butter' work.
| >Reliability and efficiency are what I like to see, fancy 'eye candy' like
| >animated icons and screen savers are of no interest and for the sake of
| >efficiency I'd rather be without them.
| >So, the question is: is it worth paying the cost and going to the trouble
of
| >upgrading to Windows XP Pro or should I just stick with Windows 2000 ?
What
| >do I stand to gain - or lose ?
| >TIA
| >Kevin.
| >
| I have a not dissimilar situation.
|
| I am currently running WIN 98 SE, which is just fine for needs except for
| one thing.
|
| That one thing is a ^&%$. I seem to run out of system resources daily.
|
| My understanding is that Windows product up until XP allocated two 64K
| segments for User/GDI resources. I am of the opinion that the glitzy,
| flashy, internet of today eats the SR ravenously and the result is a
machine
| lockup on GDI failure. My further understanding is that XP dynamically
| allocates further resource segments on an "as needed" basis.
|
| Of course I could run fewer programs at once and "shepherd" SR, but that
| seems to be an unnecessary move. A monitor shows my CPU basically idling
at
| 88-92% free but I am limited by the SR. I have the CDs for XP Pro -- and
| SP2 -- but honestly am a little loathe to install it. Computer "set-up"
has
| become a lot less fun and a lot more dreaded over the years.
|
|
| FACE
|
|

Have you thought of upgrading RAM on your Win98 setup. Personally I've found
256MB of RAM to be the sweet spot. Also limiting the size of the Internet
Cache and clearing out caches helps a lot. There are free programs that can
automate the process. Empty TempFolders is one
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp/index.html If you have any third
party apps installed that claim to free up RAM you may wish to get rid of
them as generally they are more problematic than they are useful.

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

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