Well, after planning for months to upgrade to Windows XP (from Win 98), I decided to double check that there are drivers for all of my peripherals. As it turns out, there is NOT a driver for my Minolta film scanner - and when I called Minolta support about this, I was informed that there would never be an XP driver. To say I am speechless is an understatement. Their excuse is that they are going to be discontinuing that scanner soon. So, that means that the thousands of people that have bought this scanner don't need/want to upgrade? With this kind of support, I will never by a Minolta scanner again. But that's another thread...

So, I'm in a bit of a quandry. My system has been acting very strangely lately and I'm expecting it to crash and burn any day now. I've pretty much decided that I need to take a couple of days and to a clean install since the current state seems beyond any sort of system utilities. (I've done this once before - reinstalling W98 - and it did help the stability of my system.)

But, I thought if I was going to start from scratch, I might as well bring my system into the 21st century and install Win XP. However, since I don't have the $$ to buy a new scanner, I'm now wondering if I should just reinstall Win 98 or upgrade to Win 2000. I've heard good things about Win 2000, but since it's $200 to upgrade, I'm wondering if this will keep me happy for a few years - or is it already "old" technology?

Also, how do those of you running Win 2K find the stability of your systems?

And is anyone running PS7 on Win 2K?

Any advice/experience would be appreciated. This decision is driving me crazy and I'd love to just get the whole process over with!

Thanks, Jeanie

Jeanie,

Before you drop the idea of XP, you need to know that there is a "compatibly" setting that can fool XP into thinking it is compatible with the program in question. BUT I have not used it. I'll dig out a little information for you, then get back to you on this thread unless someone else gives you the info first.

Ed

Certainly sounds interesting Ed. I'd like to know more about it. (Actually, I already have a VERY thick book on XP - anticipating a little early I guess :( - so I'll do a little research too.) I'd want to be sure it works before I went to all the trouble to install everything only to find out it doesn't work though! -Jeanie

I've used it for some games but in reality it wasn't necessary. Things seem to run pretty well on XP for me without the compatibility feature. It's a tough call for you Jeanie. I thought Windows 2K was ok. As for Photoshop 7 it runs pretty good on XP but my son has 98 and is having troubles with it crashing on him repeatedly.
DJ

Originally posted by DJ Dubovsky
As for Photoshop 7 it runs pretty good on XP but my son has 98 and is having troubles with it crashing on him repeatedly.
DJ Hmmm - perhaps it's good that I haven't installed PS7 yet then - esp. with the state my system is in! :( I've had it sitting here in the box for as long as the rest of you have had yours. Can you believe I haven't even cracked the seal on the box yet?! :eek:

Jeanie

From what I understand, XP was built on the 2000 platform. So compatibility would probably not be an issue. (This coming from a guy who has a hard time finding the button to turn the computer on). :D

Ed

Originally posted by Ed_L
From what I understand, XP was built on the 2000 platform. So compatibility would probably not be an issue.
Ed I think that's true in THEORY - but not always in practice. (I've been reading e-mails in the film-scanner e-mail list which indicate that at least one of the Polaroid scanners does not work in XP with the 2K driver.) -Jeanie

Well, that shoots down *that* theory. :)

Ed

I'm running W2K with PS6, and I'm very happy with it. Another machine has WinXP on it, and I'm not a big fan. Nothing concrete, it's just ugly and (to me) seems more intrusive. It should be noted that W2K is not as user-friendly as XP is designed to be. A lot of the 'friendly' features are exactly what I don't like :)

But, W2K is not a current product, and so should be approached as plan B.

There is a compatibility checker for those interested in moving to XP on the Microsoft website. It's about 20 megs, but it will check your system and warn of possible incompatibilities. No guarantee it will have an opinion on your scanner, though.

You might also want to check on the scanner usenet group to see if any of them are successfully using your scanner with XP. There is a chance it will still work.

You could set up a dual boot type system with 98 and XP, using 98 for those peripherals which wont play nicely with XP and vice-versa......Tom

You can make XP look like the other Windows versions.
DJ

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I also got a few responses on the filmscanners list - including one from a guy who IS running the Scan Elite on XP! Yeah!! :)

However, there were a couple of people who mentioned like TG that I might want to run a dual boot system. It seems to me that this might be a good "insurance policy". Having never actually done this (and not being clear on how this works - like do I need to load my programs on both partitions - or make them a partition of their own), looks like I'll be researching for a bit longer to figure all of this out.

I hear you, Doug, about the "friendly" features getting in the way. As an old UNIX software developer, I prefer the quick & dirty to the user-friendly approach. ;) I'm hoping that I can turn off some of the "friendly" features, but may just have to live with them.

And, I had forgotten about the MS compatibility checker. I think I'll go check that out now. Someone on the filmscanners list also suggested that I might have problems with my SCSI card if it's too old. Grrrrrr.

Jeanie

do I need to load my programs on both partitions - or make them a partition of their own), looks like I'll be researching for a bit longer to figure all of this out.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that you have to load the programs on each operating system's own partition.
I'd definitely recommend doing a dual boot. right now I'm running a dual boot of WinXP and Linux, and it works great. I use linux for everything except major 3D games and things like Flash that I'm not able to run under Linux yet which I just boot into XP for, and I haven't had any problems running them both on the same computer.

- David :)

Late to the party... have been packing this morning, but needed a (in)sanity break.

I've been running W2K for over a year as a consumer. When I worked at MSFT, I used it for about a year before it was released to the public. Very rock solid OS.

In general W2K, which was in effect Windows NT 5.0 until it was "renamed," was primarily targeted to high-end users vs. traditional desktop users. It's little more spendy because of additional internal functionality, connectivity, security features that I'll never use; uses more more HD and RAM, but worth it in my view for the stability.

Although it's a couple years old, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means it's more 'mature' and has been more thoroughly debugged. I believe Service Pack 2 was released last summer. W2K is probably more mature from a drivers perspective too.

A close friend of mine who has worked with computers for 25 or so years, recently upgraded from Win98 to XP. He HATES XP because of the intrusiveness that was mentioned previously.

Anyway, good luck no matter what decision you make.

Back to packing!

~DannyR~

Doug and/or Danny, Can you give some examples of "intrusiveness"?
Thanks, Jeanie

Also, from the MS website, it appears that they still consider Win2K a separate product/stream from WinXP. Does that mean they will be doing updates to both OS's in the years to come - or is XP supposed to "take over" Win2K in the future?
Jeanie

J, I've been running 98 and XP dual boot for the thick end of 6 months now with no trouble. 98 sees all its own drives XP see's everything. I've no real complaints about XP I've tried to crash it many times but its always got back on its feet after a short while.

Though I'm very happy with W2K and how Photoshop (and other apps run on it), W2K wasn't really designed with graphics in mind. XP was. W2K takes up a pretty sizeable chuck of RAM to accomodate the extra services it runs, compared to XP.

Another possibility would be to spend the extra $200 you're considering for W2K in additional RAM instead.

FYI: XP came out after I left MSFT, but as I understand it, it uses some of the guts that are in W2K, but is still a distinct architecture. MSFT would love to someday have "one" Windows OS to build/sell/support/debug and that's been a corporate goal for a number of years. Wouldn't be surprised if they achieve it in the next 2-3 years.

W2K has been relatively slow to penetrate the corporate market (slower than MSFT would have liked), but is gaining steam. Since MSFT earns a lot of $$ from corporate accounts, my bet is MSFT support for W2K will be around for a long time.

(Packing almost complete!)

In case anyone is just dying to know the outcome of my decision... drum roll please... ;)

I've decided to go with Win2K. My thought process went like this:

1. My film scanner isn't "officially" supported on XP (though I did hear from one person who said it worked for him.) My film scanner does have Win2K drivers.

2. I would have to purchase the newest version of Easy CD Creator/DirectCD (no free upgrade to the XP version.)

3. In all of the people I asked for advice, not one person complained about Win2K, but it was a 50/50 split on recommending/hating XP.

4. Win2K may be "old", but it has stood the test of time very well and I'd rather be able to focus on my work rather than working through the (likely) idiosyncrasies of a new OS.

Unfortunately, the thing I hadn't planned on was my discovery two nights ago that the mainboard in my computer is bad. Specifically, I can't use memory slots 3 & 4. :bawling: This, of course, explains the "strange behavior" I've been experiencing lately. Since removing the memory cards in those slots, things have seemed a lot more stable - but I know some system files have been corrupted because of errors I'm getting during the boot process. (Once up, I seem to be OK - at least for such things as checking e-mail and surfing the web.)

Since I've got an older system and was hoping to wait another year before upgrading (so that I can spend my money on a printer in July), I had to quickly learn about mainboards and find a replacement. Luckily, my brother is a "guru" at reading technical specs and quickly brought me up to speed. And, I was able to find a suitable board on eBay. Now, I just have to hope that it really works once I install it. If not, I guess I'll be getting a new system (which I have to admit is awfully tempting, given that a "typical" system these days has a CPU twice as fast as mine, memory speeds twice as fast as mine, disk access times twice as fast as mine, etc!)

Sigh...

Jeanie

My only regret after moving to W2K was that I went with the fat32 hd formatting instead of NTFS. Without getting too technical, the NTFS is faster, safer, more secure, and has many other advantages. The only disadvantage is that if you have a lan with Win98 or older computers they won't be able to see the NTFS hd.

You can convert after-the-fact from fat32 to NTFS, but it's not recommended. Now I'd have to reformat my hd and reinstall everything, and it's not that big a regret :)

Originally posted by Doug Nelson
My only regret after moving to W2K was that I went with the fat32 hd formatting instead of NTFS.Thanks for that tip Doug. I had already planned on going with NTFS, but hadn't thought through that it would effect my husband (who's still running Win98). He very rarely needs files on my computer though. I guess if it's a problem for him, he can upgrade too. ;)
Jeanie