posted
Ok so I'm getting itchy to upgradge one of my computers to xp. Why u might ask? well feeling as if it is the wave of the future and I am using an OS 5 years old now, I was just thinking of maybe moving on the next level.
Ok so I have windows 98SE on 4 systems. 1 home unit, 2 office units, and a laptop. They range from a PIII 500 mhz, a PIII 700MHZ, a PIII 733mhz, and a PIII 1 gigmhz.
-will this slow me down?
-Is it compatible with 98se if I dont upgrade them all at once?
-Does Corel 9 work with XP?
-Is it even worth it?
The reason I didn't want "search" info was I want current today type info. How is XP working for you at this point and time?
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I love XP. Its the most stable OS I have ever used. And I love the features that allow me to burn and view CD's on the fly.
I use Photoshop 5 and Painter with it mainly.
No crashes in over 6 months.
Gotta love that!
-dan
-------------------- Dan Sawatzky Imagination Corporation Yarrow, British Columbia dan@imaginationcorporation.com http://www.imaginationcorporation.com
Being a grampa is one of the the most wonderful things in the world!!! Posts: 8771 | From: Yarrow, B.C. Canada | Registered: Nov 1998
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I only use it at home, i.e. no sign programs. BUT I have Office 97, and a dozen games and High-speed IE, and as Dan said, I haven't had any crashes. XP didn't like the software that shipped with my old dial-up ISP, but the high-speed is made for XP.
The games and utilitites all ran fine with the exception of the comments I made in Amy's post.
I may be wrong, but I THINK the Pro version is a lot more adaptable to networks...
drivers for some of your OLD programs may be a nusiance, but any relatively new app or device should be upgradeable.
-------------------- Steve Burke Cascades Inc NS Canada
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you Posts: 359 | From: NS Canada | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I have XP on a 3 month old laptop only. I am not one to give credit easily to these people but it is a very good OS. Anything that gets attached to it is automatically reconized with very few cases of even needing any installation cds. Corel 9, photopaint, Signlab, Photoshop , all work great.
Installing new operating systems can be tricky and is always better to get a new Os when you buy a new computer. Never install on top of a previous os.
Your systems seem fine for speed as long as you have plenty of memory, 256 minimum.
-------------------- Wright Signs Wyandotte, Michigan Posts: 2787 | From: Wyandotte, MI USA | Registered: Jan 1999
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I, like Dave, have XP on a new laptop. I originally installed Corel 10 on it...worked fine. No crashes so far. Corel 11 works fine, the Roland drivers for my cutter work 100%, unlike using them on Win 2000 where they crash the system regularly. (Same exact driver BTW).
After 3 weeks with this OS I am quite happy. As Dave also mentions....extra RAM will help with speed. I have 512 on the laptop, with a 1.1 gig processor.
I'm like you Bob, I was always happy with Win 98SE but sooner or later one has to consider upgrading to a current operating system. That's why none of us still use win 3.0 etc.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
posted
From my experience with XP Pro so far on three small networks ranging from 2-8 machines.
One network comprises a 450mHz Win 98SE machine usinf FAT32 1.2gHz Notebook using Win ME on FAT32 1.2gHz internet gateway computer using XP Home on NTFS 1.7gHz file server running XP Pro using NTFS. No problems getting all machines to see each other on the network once we tweaked the Norton Firewall settings. The 450mHz machine runs a tad slow but probably nothing that wouldnt be fixed by upgrading the RAM from 64mb. Winfax Pro v10 didnt want to run properly on the file server until it was upgraded to whatever the current version is, I wasnt there to try and rectify the problem so it might have been a compatability issue that could have been overcome without upgrading. I had to assign IP's to all machines except the firewall machine in order to most easily configure Norton's firewall software. Finding peripherals on the XP machines was done automatically, on the 98 machines it was the usual process to find the printer/drive etc on the network and load it/map it etc.
The larger network comprises 7 standalone computers and one file server/fax server/internet gateway all running XP Pro on NTFS. We upgraded the hard drives to 20gb in each machine and the RAM to 256, otherwise they retained the 450mhz celerons on Intel mainboards. The entire process was a no-brainer... upgrade the hardware, install the XP Pro, create a network disk and copy it around to each machine. The only issues we encountered were on 2 machines after loading office 2000, the registration process had to be done in safe mode logged on as administrator, and XP refused to find one of the modems on the file server. Once I replaced the modem - problem solved. I've built several systems for customers over the last few months and loaded XP Home on them, the only callback has been to walk them through a couple of processes that look different in XP. Loading it has been a breeze on every machine so far (touch wood). Put the CD in the drive, hit enter a couple of times, then go have a cup of coffee for between 15-20 minutes before coming back to enter the locality specifics. The only comment I could make about it is that the difference in appearance using the default settings can make novice users a little disoriented until they get used to it. One machine I am currently working on has a satellite internet hookup using DirectPC software and is causing some headaches, if you use satellite you might want to look into your ips's support for XP first. HTH, David
-------------------- David Fisher D.A. & P.M. Fisher Services Brisbane Australia da_pmf@yahoo.com Trying out a new tag: "Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth Peter Ustinov Posts: 1450 | From: Brisbane Queensland Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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Without a computer science degree, I can't tell if David already said this, or disagrees with it, but although my only experience with XP was the pre-installed "home" version (that I am bypassing with my W98 that I had to load on a partition to run my antiquated sign software) both the network consultants that helped me get my home & office computers networked, said to get XP Pro, or not bother with XP at all. The G.U.I. may be cooler looking in XP home, but not enough real improvement over W98 for my purposes.
posted
My understanding is that XP verifies the OS license. Meaning that you can't buy one copy and upgrade 4 networked machines. This might be a reason to stick with Win98. I'm going to, since my expensive dongle protected software won't work on XP or Win2000.
At least I won't be sending all my money to microsoft.
-------------------- Balch Signs 1045 Raymond Rd Malta, NY 12020 518 885-9899 signs@balchsigns.com http://www.balchsigns.com Posts: 1727 | From: MaltaNY | Registered: Jan 2000
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Hi Bob, Those networks I described aren't mine, they're customers of mine. The larger network upgrade I described was fairly costly, mainly in software. The hardware for each machine only cost in the vicinity of AU$230.00 but XP Pro and Office 2k was around AU$900.00 They were previously using NT4 SP6 and were constantly having problems, since upgrading I have only had to drop by there and tweak a couple of minor settings. XP Pro in their case has solved the problems they were experiencing. One of the things I wanted to point out was that even though the CPU is relatively low spec on some of these machines, XP runs quite acceptably. One of the main benefits seems to be that locking up and blue screens of death are all but eliminated. HTH, David
-------------------- David Fisher D.A. & P.M. Fisher Services Brisbane Australia da_pmf@yahoo.com Trying out a new tag: "Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth Peter Ustinov Posts: 1450 | From: Brisbane Queensland Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
well I'm up and running on XP as of now, took quite a while to get the whole program loaded, seems as if it didn't like my cd rom 3/4 of the way through, even though it was on thier compatibility list. I had to copy the cd contents to the c: drive just to get it fully loaded.
But none the less, so foar so good, I really like the interface:)
[ September 15, 2002, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: Bob Rochon ]
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Bob, Interesting that you had trouble with your CDROM during the installation, I had that occur on one of the machines on the larger netowrk I described but I put it down to Murphy's Law - older equipment giving out at the least opportune moment. More precisely on the first restart after the initial load of XP. Maybe there is a common thread or maybe not but I'll be paying more attention in future, David
-------------------- David Fisher D.A. & P.M. Fisher Services Brisbane Australia da_pmf@yahoo.com Trying out a new tag: "Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth Peter Ustinov Posts: 1450 | From: Brisbane Queensland Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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I'm curious- when I re-formatted my winXP because of the dial-up program messing it up, it gave me the option of converting my HD to NTFS from FAT32. Not knowing anything about this, I went ahead and said "yes", being a typical guy!! Damn the torpedoes!
I haven't noticed any difference in my PC's performance, but can anyone tell me what the diff is?
-------------------- Steve Burke Cascades Inc NS Canada
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you Posts: 359 | From: NS Canada | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
NTFS= more secured, more efficient allocation. FAT32= faster caching, compatible with other operating systems
You likely won't notice any difference with either. The main benefit of NTFS is it allows you to specify file permitions to users on your network. If you're not running a large network, or if you're using the "home" version of XP (where all users on the network get administrative access) this benefit is pretty much useless for you.
There's a nice little FAQHere, or just search google for NTFS vs. Fat32
For the most part, XP is just a prettier Win2K, with a couple of extra features. It, like 2000 is extremely stable since it doesn't fragment memory like 98/95 do. I've run both OS's for 5 or 6 months at a time without rebooting and even then it's voluntarily. The worst part of XP is, unless you're running the Corporate edition, it ties itself to your hardware, so you can only install it on one computer at a time.
Doug - I'm not sure why they're pushing the pro version versus home for you. Unless you're planning on doing some advanced things like running IIS, or running a remote desktop, the home version should be fine.This site outlines differences between the two.
-------------------- Roger Hoeft Hyatts Buffalo, NY Posts: 27 | From: Buffalo, NY | Registered: Mar 2002
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Bob- I re-loaded my Windows because my ISP's dial-up program wasn't XP-compatible. I was taking approximately 25 minutes (yes, minutes!) to download ONE e-mail text message. I estimate 25 minutes because after 3 minutes only someone who is a masochist will keep waiting...and regular website pages were worse. Hence, I was told that most programs that affect your modem settings actually write themselves into the core programs, so just un-installing the software or trying to use windows wizard wouldn't solve the problem. After I re-installed windows, only one game wasn't hooked up (windows recognized the folders in explorer, but not in the program menu ( ). Other than that...it's been A-1.
-------------------- Steve Burke Cascades Inc NS Canada
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you Posts: 359 | From: NS Canada | Registered: Jan 2002
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Thanks Roger, I'll read that later, but yes I am running a remote connection on my home (W98) computer to access my office (XP) computer. I am using PC Anywhere & had to change my DSL connection to a static IP address account to do this. I had been looking at VPN routers originally & during all these efforts the XP opinions came up.
What also came up was that since I have a website that serves my purposes without requiring or getting much traffic, I could actually host it myself now that I have a static IP address. I don't know that I would do this, but find it interesting to know that I could. For just an extra $100 I think I would choose the Pro version. When you say that the corporate version will better allow sneaking it onto another computer (well, you didn't say that...)is that the same as Pro version or another completely different version.
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). Other than that...it's been A-1.
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