Which OS for an old computer?

[zabathan]

Late last month I built a new computer that's designed to someday (in a few months) run Vista, but at the moment is running XP Media Center. I built this computer to replace a 6ish year old Dell laptop. Now the laptop was originally running Windows 2000 Professional (I bought it through my University). At one point though a couple of years ago I had to format the hard drive. When I did I installed a copy of XP home that my friend had lying around, so it's been running that for the last couple of years.

Now that I have the new computer, I will almost never use the laptop. That said, I do plan on keeping it, formatting the hard drive again, and just installing the OS and pretty much just Office on it. My plan was to install the copy of XP MCE that I got for my new computer once I'd changed it over to Vista, because I couldn't find the old Win 2000 re-installation disk that came with my old computer and thought I had lost it.

Just yesterday I miraculously found the Win 2000 disk hiding in a desk drawer. My initial thought was "Sweet! Now I can run the OS this system was originally intended for!" My next thought was "But XP is the newer OS, I know my laptop can handle it, and 2000 isn't officially supported by Microsoft anymore." My third thought was that I have never once contacted Microsoft for support of any kind. So I thought I'd ask here and see what kind of opinions I got. For informational purposes, the laptop has 256K RAM, a 10 GB hard drive, and an Intel Pentium (something) processor running in the neighborhood of 800 Mhz. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[hubbardt]

I would put Windows 2000 on your laptop. It will perform a lot better (than if you use XP) and you will have more free disk space.

Don't worry about Windows 2000 being old, I work for a London investment bank and they still use Windows 2000 :roll:

 

[Zoron]

Hell... the Bank of Nova Scotia still uses Windows 95... and support for that has long since been discontinued. Windows 2000 is still supported and will be supported for at least another year; maybe two. Microsoft's corporate products typically have a much longer support cycle than it's consumer products.

 

[hubbardt]

Hell... the Bank of Nova Scotia still uses Windows 95...

8O

 

[etomasula]

Windows 2000 is still supported by Microsoft. I agree with hubbart, 2000 will perform slightly better then XP. But then again, XP looks so much cooler and will definately work on you PC assuming you have at least 256mb of RAM. if is 256 or over I would go for XP b/c of the increased security and the bells and wistles that 2000 doesn't have. Otherwise 2000 will help performance if you have less than 256.

 

[danny616]

x p, without question. pro if you have it.

 

[hubbardt]

XP running on 256Mb RAM and 800MHZ CPU ..... shudders
Installing XP and Office would leave you a couple of Gig free disk space at most.

Do you have the drivers for the laptop (e.g. video card, modem ...) or can you access them via the Internet. You may get one or two unknown devices if you install a clean o/s.

 

[etomasula]

You and I are spoiled hubbardt! It will run none the less. I believe the min req for XP are 233Mhz proc and 64MB RAM. Although my personal recommendation for XP is at least 512MB of RAM, 256MB/800Mhz will be ample for office and internet. 10GB HDD should be enough for all your applications. If you run out of space on your HDD just get an external USB one, they are alot cheaper now-a-days.

 

[_path_finder]

I'd choose Win2000.