Should I upgrade to XP from W 2000

[sblanche]

I work for an organization with about 10,000 computers (running Win 2000). Replacement computers have XP installed. In some offices, when a computer needs to be reimaged (because of unfixable problems) they are changing to XP. Should I do the same thing? Is there a good reason to go to XP.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Slb

 

[franklin97355]

If 2000 does what you want it to there is no reason to spend the money to upgrade as long as you keep up with the patches.

 

[edi4me]

I agree with franklin97355.

 

[bcastner]

In the Life Cycle, mainstream support for Win2k Professional expires on 30-Jun-2005

And new licenses are no longer available.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];LifeWin

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

In the past these decisions were application driver. Now they are also security driven. XP is a more secure OS, and will be supported with this concern paramount in its design and upgrades until Longhorn appears in 2006.

 

[jfp23]

In contrast to the opinion above XP is not more secure than 2000 is, both OS's typically have the same security flaws in them. That being said, your decision to upgrade or not should be based on cost. You should determine the cost of upgrading 10000pc's, not just the licensing cost, but also the cost of creating a stable XP image for your organization, testing all of the apps that your organization uses on that image, and the cost of a rollout which can get quite expensive. You may decide its more cost effective to wait until the next version of Windows to upgrade.

 

[xwb]

It depends on what applications they are running. If it is just Outlook, Excel, Word, Explorer and Media Player, it is not worth upgrading.

 

[aquias]

jfp,

I'm going to strongly disagree with you, XP has taken several steps towards making itself a much more secure.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/whyupgrade/featurecomp.mspx

More on XP compared to 2000

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/whyupgrade/default.mspx

XP's big push has been security, that is where MS has placed it's focus since so many people claimed they were unsecure.

Not only that, it's a faster OS

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/whyupgrade/performance.mspx

In addition, as Bill stated, as of June only security bugs will receive any hotfixes. This means you lose gaining any additional functionality, problem resolution, as well as any large updates to help OS functionality.

Now, does all that mean to upgrade immediately? No, but I would advise looking to move to XP or moving to Longhorn when it finally arrives to the marketplace.

 

[tazuk]

sblanche --

From your post I gather we are talking about your personal pc(s) rather than organisational. I'm in a similar situation to you in that I run Win2K (fully patched) at home but work for an organisation who only go with XP / Server 2003.
From this perspective, I intend to stay with Win2K on my laptop and desktop until one (or more) of the following happens:
1. System failure requiring rebuild.
2. Hardware replacement requiring rebuild
3. Longhorn is released
If 1 / 2 happens I intend to move to XP unless the laptop is involved, which (due to age) I shall probably move to a dual-boot Win2K and Knoppix / similar.

Granted that XP is inherently more secure and more feature rich, however I run third party software on my desktop to complement the standard security setup and treat my laptop as disposable (ie the data on it is non-personal and regularly backed up).
HTH

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998

 

[tazuk]

Just re-read the post and realised that sblanche is of course referring to pcs within his office.

Please ignore my last post - I'll just go and sit quietly in the corner then lol (having one of those weeks).

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998