600X on Windows2000 vs. XP

[alfio]

those of you who've run 600Xs, is there a significant speed / response variation between the two OSs? i'm running a relatively slimmed version of XP pro but i often wonder if the machine wouldn't be more responsive on Windows 2000 pro.

anyone tried both?

[Neil]

I have W2K on one 600X (256MB RAM), and an nlite XP installed on another 600X (576MB RAM). For what I use them for, light word processing and web browsing, I can't really tell much if any difference in response between the two. Sometimes I think the XP machine "feels" snappier, but I'm not sure. I've never done any actual tests with either one. I use both every day, and am satisfied with the performance of both.

[Bookworm]

I've been looking into this myself, (600E and 770Z) and while I don't have a copy of XP to try it with yet, it sounds like we would be better off avoiding service pack 3, not
XP itself.

[paul*robertson]

And get a fast HD. I went from the original 12GB one to a 7200 rpm 40GB and the difference is amazing. Still on win 2k.

[Temetka]

You should be fine SP3.

I have an old Micron Tranport Trek2 laptop.

It's got a 366MHz Pentium 2 and 512MB RAM.

Runs XP SP3, Office 2003, and firefox just fine.

I'm probably going to remove Office as I don't use it on that machine and I want to transfer the license to a different machine.

The point is that it works fine on my machine and the 600x is beefier than what I have in terms of hardware.

[pkiff]

I have W2K on one 600X (256MB RAM), and an nlite XP installed on another 600X (576MB RAM). [...] Sometimes I think the XP machine "feels" snappier, but I'm not sure.

I don't have a current W2K install on my 600X's any longer, but when I was comparing them a couple years ago, I found the opposite: sometimes I thought that W2K "felt" snappier than XPSP2, but I wasn't sure. Though to be fair, all my XP machines use ClearType, which probably slows down the display by a couple microseconds and uses a couple CPU cycles whenever something happens on the screen. But for me, that level of difference is inconsequential...and ClearType is worth having for the types of things I use my laptop for.

In addition to the recommendation to upgrade the hard drive, I would add that playing with your Services and installing and tweaking some screen reaction times via TweakUI can make a huge difference with XP. And if you can't get the response you want, you can also return to the classic start menu instead of the default XP one -- that makes a noticeable difference in the reaction speed of the interface I found. Neil is using an nlite install, and I have been using an XPLite install. I've also tweaked things considerably using BlackViper's recommendations for Services. The default XP install is a bit of a hog that will definitely be slower than W2K until you finish tweaking it/slimming it down.

I've not tried XP SP3 on any of my 600X's, only XP SP2.

Phil.