Advantages of Win2K server over Win98

[dll76]

Good day to everyone!
Our company uses Win98 SE and we have a client/server application running. I would like to propose an upgrade to Win2K server coz I believe its like to improved version of Win NT4. I would like to now the advantages I would have with shifting to Win2K server from Win98 SE, if its faster this, faster that, or something like that... I will need to prove that its a better setup.
Thanks in advance.

PS
Is Win2K server better than Red Hat Linux Server?

 

[markharr]

I deal with the last question first.

The question is not just whether brand A is better than brand B operating system. The first question is which operating system will my application run on, then start worrying about which operating system to use.

As for is Windows 2000 server better than Windows 98, that is a resounding yes. For one thing, flat file databases (like Access, dBase etc) use the operating system's network file redirector. In Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 before SP6, the redirector used the Nagling algorithm for TCP/IP traffic. Removing the use of this speeds up applications that use these flat file databases by an order of magnitude. I won't try and explain this here unless asked but it has to do with opportunistic locking for those of you that are.

If your application uses flat file databases, this is one excellent reason to go with Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0 SP6. I'm not sure how SAMBA (the UNIX/Linux equivalent of the Windows network file system) handles opportunistic locking so that is worth testing against.

Any move you make from using Windows 98 to another server operating system will have to be an improvement!