Rating: 
Summary: Why only for Windows NT platforms?
Review: I was very interested in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Upgrade until your advertisement stated that it required a Windows NT platform. I am trying to upgrade from Windows 98 Second Edition. Other reviewers said they upgraded from Windows 98. That is very confusing. Do I have to upgrade to Windows NT, then upgrade to Win 2000? Is there an upgrade available that will allow me to upgrade from Win 98?
Rating: 
Summary: What an improvement ...
Review: Having used Windows 2000 for 6 months at work (upgraded from Windows NT) and at home for about 4 months (upgraded from Windows 98, 1st edition), the first real system crash has not happened yet. No blue screens, no dr Watson messages. The Borland developer tools work perfectly on this OS, and in spite of the numerous programming mistakes I make, I never had to restart! Multitasking works flawlessly, as good as Windows NT, but without the arcane feeling. No comparison with Windows 98. I love the GUI's. I am not a Microsoft fan, but I will recommend this OS to any serious software developer. The best part: most sophisticated games are not compatible with Windows 2000, so I don't have to fight with my kids over the computer that much anymore. Warning: expect to spend some time loading new drivers etc. to get all hardware working again. Most software needs to be reloaded and re-registered as well. I still did not get my scanner to work.
Rating: 
Summary: be forewarned!
Review: I have learned "the hard way" that the upgrade version cannot be used with Windows ME. I haven't read this anywhere in the documentation. It did work beautifully on my Win98 machine and,for the most part, I find it far better than '98 and far far far better than Me.
Rating:
Summary: Trouble with keyword
Review: Windows 2000 is a fine operating system that I have used for a long time. It almost never crashes. On this upgrade, when I started to install, I found the keyword invalid. With luck, I found in the first group that two letters that were 8's should be B's. I am surprised at this error. Without luck, the upgrade would have been useless.
Rating:
Summary: Comparing Windows 2000
Review: I tried upgrading my home system to Windows 2000 last weekend, but I ultimately decided to back out. Part of that was because there was a conflict between my Partition Magic program and Windows 2000. The other part was that when the Windows 2000 installer analyzed my system, I was informed many of the devices, such as the Conexant 56k modem and 1.5 megabit DSL modem, the nVidia graphics card, and several multimedia drivers, would all need to be upgraded with newer ones from the manufacturer to make sure they would work. At that point I decided to leave my system as Windows ME. It's possible they would have actually worked; the installer program was just saying that they might not without the upgrades. Not having any of them at the time, I didn't want to risk it, so I backed out.However, I did want to say that I have been using Windows NT and Windows 2000 at work and they are definitely much more stable than Windows 98. The main thing is if an application crashes on my NT Workstation computer, I can close that window and the rest of the programs, and the machine itself, continues to run okay. This isn't always the case with 98. And my Windows ME system, which I upgraded to last week at home, is noticeably more unstable than the former Windows 98 Second Edition. I get more inexplicable lockups now than before, but it's liveable for me because the system boots about 4 times faster and shuts down about 8 times faster than Windows 98 did. Most of that is due to the last remnants of DOS finally being eliminated. Another advantage to having ME is the extra multimedia support and getting Explorer 5.5, but I don't really need most of the features it offers. Anyway, getting back to Windows 2000. It is very stable but you may need more memory, a faster processor, and more hard disk space to run it, depending on your system. Also, it won't do all the multi-media and graphics and game-type stuff that '98 will. But if you want extra reliability and don't care about the lack of the other whizzy-bang features, this OS might be for you.
Rating:
Summary: You'll Never Go Back...
Review: I've used Windows 95 and 98 for the past 5 years. Both crashed relatively frequently - of course, I thought ALL operating systems did that. Until now. I bought Windows 2000 Advanced Server and installed it. Differences were immediately apparent - quick, painless startups, much better memory allocation, more virtual memory, and much more. But I didn't understand how good Win2K is until, about 2 weeks later, I realized that the computer hadn't frozen at all during those weeks! Whenever I use Windows 98 now, I'm amazed that I managed to get anything done. I've had less crashes using Windows 2000 in a month than I used to have in a day of Windows 98.
Rating:
Summary: The best OS nowadays
Review: I couldn't imagine a Microsoft OS to be stable and running without problems but that's exactly what Win2000 is. Some people were anxious about the fact that it doesn't run on older systems. Nowadays the minimum systems sold fit exactly the parameters that Win2000 needs. What I suggest: don't try it unless you have at least a Celeron 333 Mhz with 64 MB RAM (With this configuration it will run perfectly). Why is Win200 so good? It's a robust OS and has many applications that are easy to use and manage and it is user friendly with the Win98 interface. Do I sound like a MS ad? Yes I do but this time the ads were right. Hardware support isn't a problem now as all hardware have their Win2000 drivers, there are only few exceptions (sadly one of these was my modem). Installation is easy and the installer asks as few questions as possible, installing an ISDN-card or a network card is easy and is done during the installation process. The installation lasts about 30-45 minutes depending on the speed of your system. You can install the upgrade on a computer that doesn't contain an OS, because the installer demands the installation CD of the older OS so you can upgrade your system without tricks (that's what you had to do by Win98, it was tricky to get a new system from the Upgrade CD). Anyway you may keep your old system parameters as well when you are uprgrading. Yet better: when ou're upgrading from Win98 you may keep your programs too, and don't have to reinstall them again. Internet Connection Wizard is the same as in Win98 SE. It's not hard to connect to the internet. Creating a dual-boot system is much easier than in NT and Win98. You may have Linux, Win98 and Win2000 on one hard disk, in this case use the Linux Loader to boot your system, if you have only two Microsoft products on your hard disk, Win2000 recognises them and you may start it with the Win2000 loader. Win2000 is NT 5.0 so it is a multi-user system with an Administrator and Administrator configured users. You can give some administrative privileges for some users. Win2000 comes with NTFS 5, a new file system that is much better than NTFS 4 used in NT 4.0. Win2000 also supports FAT16 and FAT32. This means that you can drag your files created in the other OS to Win2000 without having any problems. There are many administrative tools in Win2000 and their use is really easy. Help is OK, it contains a lot of information and the processes can be understood by anyone. So you've got the feeling of Win98 but this OS is much better. I haven't had any crashes since I've been using it (9 months). This is a record. Of course Win2000 has some failures as well. For example it doesn't work well with Office2000, I had many problems with these two. Office2000 just won't start many times and installing Publisher from the upgrade CD is impossible (anyway this is a failure of Office2000 but the installer used in Office2000 and Win2000 is the same one). You should consider that if you plan to play with your machine, Win2000 isn't your choice. It supports many devices and has many drivers for them, but games aren't written for this OS. About 60-70 % of my games just won't run under this OS. This isn't a big problem for me as I use my machine for working purposes and if I want to play, I boot Win98. The best choice is to maintain a dual-boot system where you can choose what to do. Comparing Win2000 with former Microsoft OS-s, this is the best OS I've met by far and it is the best choice for anyone who doesn't want to learn Linux but wants to have a stable and working OS.
Rating:
Summary: w2k is great on my thinkpad 600
Review: I upgraded from windows 98 to w2k on my IBM thinkpad 600e (300mhz/18GB/96MB) and it works great. Suspend and hibernate never worked before, and now they work fine. I only hibernate now, never even shutdown. My wireless cisco aironet adapter works perfectly, and w2k cleverly re-negotiates a DHCP address each time I resume! Installation from CD took about 1.5 hours, but I did not have to keep answering stupid questions. I did have to upgrade the BIOS on the thinkpad before installing, which was clearly documented on the IBM site. All my software works great (visio,opera,securecrt,eudora,winamp,remedy,etc.) I'm no Microsoft fan, but this software is good.
Rating:
Summary: Microsoft + Stable = A real live Dream
Review: Go ahead and pinch yourself. I said it, Stable and Microsoft together. Until I started using Windows 2000, I didn't think that there was such a thing. Well, the next NT product is. Buyers beware though, it is very tough to find drivers for a lot of todays hardware. Also, this isn't a product for most consumers. It is a lot more difficult to navigate too. Once you get the hang of it though, it is pretty awesome. I particularly had trouble with getting my computer to view things on my lan and getting on the internet. But after a little tweaking and a lot of crossing my fingers, it is working quite flawlessly. Some changes that I appreciated are a hardware wizard and in the Add/Remove Programs it tells you how often a program is used. On the other hand, I didn't like the way that the Network and Network Properties pages are setup. Also, Dual Booting is quite easy to do now and the installation is pretty smooth also. Novices beware, but advanced user will enjoy it after they get all their hardware/drivers working.
Rating: 
Summary: should have upgraded to NT instead
Review: I upgraded to get all the benefits of Windows NT, plus preparing for a Win2000-centric future. First I used the upgrade utility which checks to see which installed software will not be compatable (available on MS's Web site). No problem, armed with this info I got a new Canon printer driver from Canon's Web site; however, the utility didn't warn me about Oracle Lite and Microsoft Magic School Bus games failing! Most of the software and game demos I try to install now get an error message. In retaliation my wife confiscated our older PC and won't let me near it. Now I can't work on my PC and can't play new games, either. So I guess I'll surf newsgroups and write reviews on Amazon.com instead! Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.
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