Rating: 
Summary: Does it stink in here or is it just Win2000 pro?
Review: All I can say is BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. What is Microsoft thinking? They have managed to create an operating system that is compatible with NOTHING. Scanners, Printers, Cameras, Modems, you might as well throw them all out if you plan on using Win2000 pro. And if you think you can download an updated driver from Microsoft, think again. Especially if your modem is not supported by Win2000 pro. My computer is two months old! It amazes me how well Microsoft gave me the shaft. I didn't even see it coming. They better fix it!Peace. Word to the mother land.
Rating: 
Summary: You really should
Review: You should upgrade to Win2000 if your business needs the improved stability and security that Win2000 provides, and/or you're a developer who needs to keep up to date. Win2000 manages memory much better then Win95b -- I can run many more simultaneous instances of Visual C (or whatever) in my 192MB of RAM than I could before. Taskmanager is much improved. Dr. Watson is available to log crash dumps and the faulting asm code when an app bombs. Language support is better; I can now read Chinese html files using IE directly without having to launch Netscape and a CJK viewer such as MagicWin98. COM+ is available, etc. Above all, the new API function calls you've read about in books are available. The bottom line: if you're a power user, you really should upgrade. But there are also problems. My external SCSI RW CD drive wasn't recognized as writeable and wouldn't work until I'd installed the latest version of Adaptec's DirectCD driver. My UPS can no longer talk to the computer via COM2. I can no longer configure my AccelStar II card to get OpenGL graphics acceleration. Chessmaster6000 won't run, and AOL is busted (no internet access). In view of these problems, and the fact that the reasons for upgrading are overwhelming -- Win2000 is a great OS -- it would be very nice to be able to multiboot. The rest of this "review" describes installation and multibooting issues. First, to qualify for the [rebate] you must have the NT3.51 or 4.0 CD's (these OSes don't have to be actually installed on your machine, just insert the CD into the drive when prompted). As proof of purchase, MS will accept the title page of the NT User's Guide in lieu of the barcode strip from the bottom of the original box. If you're upgrading from Win9x, the OS must be installed -- the Win9x installation CD will not be accepted. The install program has two phases: booting from the CD with a DOS-like interface, then rebooting and continuing from the hard drive with a Windows interface. Although the second phase is foolproof, it's possible to go astray during the first phase due to lack of prompting. In my case, just before upgrading I'd added a new 30 GB Maxtor drive and slaved my old one (holding WinOld = Win95 OSR2) to it; this bumped up the drive letters on the slave drive, making the OS copy there stale (registry paths wrong). I then copied this to the new C: drive and booted from the Win2000 CD, selecting a clean install. It found WinOld on drive c: and chugged along, but for some reason didn't reboot properly. Instead, I got in a circle that repeated the installation. Instead of rebooting manually as I should have, I continued. This time, it couldn't find WinOld installed (because it had already been overwritten). So I inserted my WinOld installation CD, but it wouldn't accept it -- it wanted an NT CD, which fortunately I had. After inserting that, there was no prompt to replace it with the Win2000 CD, so I ended up spoiling the installation by overwriting some of the Win2000 files with NT ones. Perceiving my blunder, I inserted a boot floppy and rebooted manually, intending to start over. But the floppy never regained control-- instead the second phase of the installation took over. This proceeded uneventfully, but when I rebooted something amazing had happened! I had a dual-boot system without even having requested one. The install program had detected WinOld on the slave drive, put the start-up code in the master boot record (shared with Win2000) on drive c:, and then enabled booting WinOld from a slave drive! I tested it and it works. If you have two drives and only want to dual boot (you don't care about LINUX or other non-MS OSes), just install your old OS on both the master and slave drives, run the Win2000 install program, doing a clean install on drive c, and you're done. More commonly, though, you'll have just one drive and want more flexible multibooting. To be specific, suppose you want to boot LINUX and WinOld in addition to Win2000. In this case you'll need a good disk partitioning utility such as PartitionMagic (PM) from PowerQuest to create a second primary partition, plus an extended partition for LINUX (each Windows OS requires a primary partition in order to boot, but LINUX does not). Just make sure the three boot partitions start below the 8GB physical disk boundary, otherwise they won't be bootable. To install WinOld on the second primary partition, set it active using PM, reboot, and install. PM allows you to safely resize partitions without losing any data they contain, so you can keep your existing setup intact. To actually get the bootup OS menu, install BootMagic (bundled with PartitionMagic) in the WinOld directory and reboot. Note: to work under Win2000 you'll need PartitionMagic5.01 or later, and BootMagic itself must be installed under Win9X or NT3.51/4.0. This limitation will no doubt disappear with time. Two warnings. 1) Be wary of System Commander2000 from VCOM. I tried it before I became aware of PowerQuest's BootMagic feature. The OS Wizard crashed when trying to analyze my system and I had to cycle the power. There were also problems with the partitioning, which ultimately forced me to reformat my drive. System Commander is emphatically not recommended. 2) Unless you have no doubts about the reliability of your electric power company, consider getting a UPS. Some of the disk restructuring operations can take a long time, and if the power fails while they are in progress you'll be ruined (i.e., have to reformat the drive and start again from scratch).
Rating:
Summary: Could be just what you've been looking for...
Review: Stable, user friendly, robust, feature-rich, internet integration... you name it... they got it. BUT... there are very little games that can be played on this OS. Not that I'm a hardcore gamer or anything, but I did want to test it for a wider range of home uses, as I do work a lot from home. I came a across some very interesting details, such as the very improved plug and play engine and the far more extensive driver database. I'm using an ISDN adapter to connect to the internet with and I also use an LanPRO network adapter, these two adapters do NOT work well together on most systems, not without some serious tweaking... on Win2k they work better than they ever did. With no tweaking whatsoever. Security is far from being flawless, and as a web developer I tend to get a little paranoid with these issues. Yet I must say that after installing the 1st service pack that has been recently released, I sleep much better at night. :) Very recommended for non-to-little-gamers, very very recommended for every business of any kind. The stability and features are worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: All you NT 4.0 guys, go for 2000.
Review: All I can say is that, if you have some time and money, go for 2000 server. It is worth the money, with enhanced security and features.
Rating:
Summary: Good deal for 5-Client License!
Review: This is great deal for 5-Client License, go for it! Or maybe go with 2000 server or advanced server. Windows 2000 itself is like downgraded version of server versions.
Rating:
Summary: The most intuitive and smartest OS...
Review: This is the best, I mean it. There is no equal... the customizing, the features, the look, it's all there. You'll feel the difference.
Rating:
Summary: Get it, but make sure you have patches for your hardware.
Review: This is a good deal. It is the best Windows operating system for daily use. But one thing you have to be aware of is that it won't work with all the hardware you have. I bought it to upgrade my notebook (a Sony Vaio), and it didn't recognize the modem. I ended up getting the patch off of Sony's website. But before you purchase Win2K make sure you have latest patches for major hardware in your system (like Modem, CDROM, and Floppy) The harddrive is a little slower (crunching more stuff I guess), but other than that it is very stable. I use it everyday, and it doesn't crash. Watch out... it doesn't work with AOL 5.0 (you will have to wait for a new release from AOL).
Rating: 
Summary: A major improvement over NT
Review: Windows NT has not had a major upgrade in years, and was missing valuable features available on other operating systems like Windows 98. Windows 2000 absolutely gives the business Windows platform new life. For the business user it is loaded with practical features and ease-of-use enhancements. For the IT department, it's pretty hands-off. The addition of USB was welcome, and I'm starting to discover the practicality of USB for small, portable devices like ZIP drives and scanners. The hibernate feature is extremely practical since it gets you back to work within seconds of bootup. A few strange comments from others that I want to address. First, Linux is an excellent OS, but it is not the answer for every user any more than Win2000 is. There are more apps for Linux every day, but many of the apps that you already use are not available there. If you are unsure that Windows is the proper platform for you, investigate Linux (or Mac for that matter). Also, Windows 2000 is absolutely for business users. It works best on a business network, and some of the features are not appropriate for home use. For home, Windows98 or ME are good choices for the person who wants Windows. Finally, Mr. Small wrote another review where he shows that he knows not of what he speaks. No, Mitchell, Windows File Protection (WFP) is not at all related to Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in NT. The NT HAL is the interface between NT and your hardware. WFP tries to keep rogue apps from destroying important files. This has been a sore point with NT and Windows 9X for quite a long time. Some older programs may not work properly with Windows 2000 and may need upgrades. This is to be expected, and is intended to protect your computer from poorly written applications. In many cases, these applications could damage Windows NT, causing lockups and other unwanted behavior. Windows 2000 tries to prevent this.
Rating:
Summary: Not for home use, overpriced.
Review: This OS was released because NT was old and failing, it was a Server dependant shell. If you are in a big company with very secret data then WIN 2000 is a good choice. For home use stick with WIN98, without the added security it is much more flexible and user friendly. The poor rating is simply because it is way over priced, Linux is a far...far better operating system in all areas and it's free. Use Linux, you'll be so much happier.
Rating:
Summary: Good Operating System, But Make Sure You Need It!
Review: Windows 2000 is a definate improvement over NT 4.0, but unless you are using it in a "pure" Windows 2000 environment, you may not get all the features you've heard touted. Despite the increased reliace on Wizards to guide you through the steps, instalation of this OS is definately not for casual users. If you are a heavy computer game player, or have no reason to be dissatisfied with Windows 98, stay with your current operating system. If you are a real business user, or have a home network that involves more than a few shared files, go for it, you won't be dissappointed. Beware of hardware problems. I've lost the audio drivers on my Dell system at work. For me this is no big deal as the system is used in an open office environment where we have sound cards simply because our systems came with them. We really don't need any audio playback. My home systems, several brands are represented, are all functioning just fine. Some software can also be a problem. I had to switch from Norton AntiVirus 5.x (NAV 5) to AntiVirus 2000: Microsoft and Symantect both state NAV 5 will not work with Windows 2000... I didn't believe it, but they were right! I highly recommend that you run the Windows 2000 Evaluation Tool, available as a free download from Microsoft, before you attempt any Windows 2000 installation. One real annoyance is the Windows Protection File (WPF). This is analogous to the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) found on NT 4.0 Ostensibly, the WPF is there to protect your operating system from corruption. It can do the job almost too well. I was unable to use a bootable Windows 98 disk to perform a flash BIOS upgrade after Windows 2000 was installed. Luckily, this upgrade is not essential to the operation of my system, I was just wanting to keep it current. I have not been able to fully research this issue to see if there is a way around it or if this is an isoloated instance. Again, if you're in business, the features are worth while, especially in a pure Windows 2000 environment. On the other hand, if most of your computer time is used for surfing the Internet or game playing, you'll get more milage from Windows 98.
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