Windows XP bombs

[Warren Togami]

I agree entirely.  I would highly recommend for those in educational or
business settings to avoid Windows XP and use Windows 2000 Professional for
the following reasons:

* Windows 2000 is just as stable as Windows XP.
* Windows 2000 costs less than Windows XP.
* Windows 2000 is faster than Windows XP.
* Windows 2000 requires less RAM than Windows XP.
* Windows 2000 requires far less hard drive space than Windows XP.
* Windows 2000 will not harass you to use Passport services.
* In Windows XP, it is very difficult to remove "Windows Messenger" and
other tools that constantly bug you to sign-up and use Passport services.
* If you read carefully in the Windows XP and Windows Media Player EULA,
Microsoft reserves the right to modify or destroy software or data on your
computer if they *think* you are doing something that they don't like.  They
have the facilities to do so through updates that you are forced to install
periodically.
* Yes, you are harassed and forced to upgrade stuff by Windows XP.  This
might be a good thing for some deployments, but many places rather test
patches and deploy manually because Microsoft has been known to release
security patches that horribly break things.  Remember Windows NT 4.0 SP6?
They pulled it very quickly after it broke installations, and quickly
released SP6a soon after.  The same thing happened recently with a Windows
2000 Terminal Server security patch.
* For mass deployments, you don't have the hassle of Product Activation with
Windows 2000.  Imaging hard drives for easy restoration is thus greatly
simplified.  (Yes, I know this isn't the case with XP Enterprise edition,
but you're locked into the horribly expensive forced upgrade cycle if you
take that route.)

At least for the next few years, you will save lots of money and hassle by
using Windows 2000 instead of Windows XP in mass deployments.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Mings" <jeffm at lava.net>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 1:11 PM
Subject: [luau] Windows XP bombs


>     Since many of us work with Windoze professionally (e.g., Warren, the
> Linux uber-nerd, is fighting Win2K bugs overwriting his boot sector),
> this Infoworld article is very good reading:
> http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/10/29/011029tcwinxp.xml .
>     Basically, Windows XP is much more bloated than Win2K, and was
> tested at 11-68% slower.
>
>     Get the word out to your clients and customers - WinXP is NOT a
> performance upgrade, and should be avoided for now.
>
> -Jeff Mings
>