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A rchive Date
[ 10-06-2000 ]
Category
[ Information Technologies ]
sub-Categoy
[ Microsoft ]
      [http://www.zdnet.co.uk/itweek/reviews/2000/02/client/



      Microsoft's Windows 2000 Professional

      Windows 2000 Professional is a definite improvement over previous versions of Windows, but initial tests indicate that it will be a difficult transition for many businesses.

      Performance improved over Windows 95/98 and either increased or decreased compared with Windows NT 4. However, we found a number of niggling problems with installation and some compatibility problems, which are annoying but hardly unexpected in a major upgrade of Windows.

      In general, we found that Windows 2000 Professional has enough improvements to warrant upgrading more quickly than with the server versions of Windows 2000. It will be especially useful for companies that run both Windows NT and Windows 95/98, as it combines the best of both worlds. But we recommend that businesses take it slowly, because it will be a while before application vendors and driver developers catch up with Windows 2000 and squash remaining bugs.

      Unfortunately, there is no easy way to uninstall Windows 2000 and go back to Windows 95/98.

      On notebook systems, problems cropped up when a screen saver started. Required rebooting, disabling the saver and restarting the installation.
      The installation program is very hands-off. It asked a few questions at the beginning, such as whether to upgrade the systems or do a clean install, and scanned the system for incompatible or troublesome software. It then let us print out a report on possible problem software before continuing through a 90-minute installation without further intervention on our part.

      Troublesome applications
      • Problem applications included Symantec Norton Antivirus 5.0 and Powerquest's Partition Magic and recommended reinstalling some applications, such as Microsoft's Outlook 2000.
      • Other troublesome applications included those that act as printers, such as Adobe's Distiller and many desktop fax applications, because the driver format has changed.
      • The installation program did not catch all troublesome applications, missing Symantec's pcAnywhere, which acted very strangely when we tried to run it after Windows 2000 was installed.
      • There were some problems configuring the included Novell NetWare client for Windows 2000 as well: it did not pick up NetWare Directory Service (NDS) settings when we first installed, forcing reconfiguration of the client when logging on for the first time.
      • The Novell client did not properly log off users, forcing them to wait a while before logging on after restarting their systems.
      • The ATI Technologies 3D Rage Pro AGP 2X graphics card caused the user interface to crash whenever the My Computer folder, using its Web-like viewing mode was viewed. The 'classic' Windows modes worked fine.
      • Windows 2000 needs more resources than Windows 98. A desktop PC running Windows 98 had 900MB free on its hard drive before Windows 2000 and 559MB free afterwards ­ a big difference considering that the installation program deleted Windows 98 during the installation. We recommend a minimum of 64MB of memory, although 128MB would be better.
      • Compared with Windows 95/98 systems, assuming users have enough memory and a relatively recent processor, the performance improvement is very noticeable.
      • On Windows 2000 systems made much better use of background multi-tasking and multi-threading. When we logged in, Lotus Notes and our other large applications loaded and prompted us for our password even before our desktop environment was fully loaded. Notes loaded so quickly that it sometimes outpaced the NetWare login scripts (which meant that Notes did not have all the files it needed at launch).
      • The plug-and-play support in Windows 2000 appears to work well.
      • Switching between Ethernet and dial-up did not work properly even though the card worked fine on Windows NT and Windows 98.
      • The Windows 2000 Power Utility had a strange habit of shutting down our notebook instead of just suspending it.

      Interface changes
      • Several changes to the user interface are minor and will not require a lot of training.
      • The administration tools look quite different compared with those in Windows NT 4. They are based on the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) interface, which provides an Explorer-like expandable tree interface for all aspects of the system.
      • A feature that will be popular with mobile users is the ability to encrypt files automatically by dropping them into particular directories.
      • Convert any directory into one in which files are encrypted is done by right-clicking with the mouse and turning on encryption. The feature requires the NTFS file system, however.
      • Converting FAT- and FAT32-formatted hard drives to NTFS is the same as in NT 4. We had to use the Convert utility at the command line prompt.

      www.microsoft.com/windows2000/ ]


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