Hello all I have been told time and again that I should be running win200 pro or NT now what I want to know is will Poser and Bryce work on the Platforms mentioned above...I am thinking of getting Lightwave and Maya but they will only work on NT/2000 Pro and I really dont want to do a dual boot if I dont have to...Its taken me 8 months to save money and I dont want to make a big mistake considering I love useing Poser and Bryce together....anyone know?I have the 98se operating system now

Can't say for sure about Bryce, though.

Duh should have read the box...anyways which is the better operating system to go with...NT or Win2000 Pro?now remember I want to get Lightwave

poser runs smooooth on w2k :o) bryce also. in fact everything runs better on w2k then on w98.

Thanks all now if I can just find out about lightwave over at the forum then I have it made cuz Poser and Bryce togther is an awesome combination and I would like to keep it that way...THANKS again

Poser, Poser Pro Pack, Bryce, i have these 3 software (+ Carrara) and Windows 2000. i have no problem (and it work better than Win98)

Make sure your modem software works in win2k!!!! I was offline for four days until I could purchase a new modem :(

I have also been using Poser on 2k for well over a year now.

Xena I had the same problem with the modem... I was lucky though I had one that wouldn't work under Win 98 properly. I had to re-install it at each boot up, so I bought a new one.. When the new one wouldn't work in Win 2000 I tried the one that wouldn't work under Win 98 and bingo wrks like a charm... Same brands as well... Such is the joy of owning a puter.

Win2K Pro is NT5. It's an upgrade to NT, rather than an upgrade to 98, so it's pointless to buy NT. (WinMe is on upgrade to 98, but is worthless.) When I say upgrade I mean "the next in that product line"... you can install the 2K Pro upgrade over 98 and the upgrade is (shockingly) smooth. Bryce 4 and 5 run fine on 2000. So does Poser. I was suprised to find not a single one of my apps rejected it. :) I expected an upgrade nightmare, but it was a breeze. Phoenix

I have been using Poser and Bryce 4/5 on win2k pro AND server and they run just fine. I have recently installed Windows XP and both work just fine in that too. I really love XP a lot!

You want to ignore Windows NT because that was dumped in favor of Windows 2000. If you don't have Windows 2000 Pro you're better off waiting for Windows XP, since that is due shortly. You would benefit from the stability and compatability of Windows XP...Which is more compatable, and better in many ways that Windows 2000. Most of us will do fine with Windows XP Home Edition which costs $100 less than the XP Pro Version... that has some stuff like dual processor support that most of us don't need. I ran Windows XP Pro Release Candidates 1 & 2 (The last testing stage before the final released Commercial product). I used them for a few weeks, and never had a single problem with Poser or any of my other software. I took it off my computer eventually because it was "time-limited," in that it would eventually expire. I figured I can hold out till we can afford to buy Windows XP Home Edition. Then I will wipe my hard drives, and install everything from scratch. That seems to always be the best way to make sure your new operating system gets a fresh start. There were some concerns about Windows 2000 hardware compatability. I think those with "off-brand" hardware had the most problems (I have a Jaton/Cirrus Logic CLM modem which doesn't work...) But even then, Windows 2000 was much better at application and hardware compatability that Windows NT. I think we'll have less compatability concerns with Windows XP. However, I think you'd be better off if you are sure your hardware is "mainstream," and not brands that might have already been discontinued by the manufacturer, or from a company that has gone bankrupt. I went to the jaton web site (www.jaton.com), and they seem to have died....Can't load any pages, even though the company is referred to in many computer sites. You're better off with a Soundblaster Live card (unfortunately, not the AWE line of SB cards...They seem to have been dumped), a "brand name" modem such as US Robotics/3Com. If you buy the cheap hardware, or orphaned hardware, you're in for more and more frustration. In summary: If you're thinking of a new operating system, forget about Windows 2000... Go to Windows XP when it's available. The Home Edition is likely best for most of us, and $100 cheaper than the Pro version.

Oh, by the way, don't believe anyone who says Windows ME is crap. The people who say that are usually people who already had some sort of computer problems, whether it be software or hardware. People often think their problems will all disappear by installing the newest operating system. No they don't. You need to fix your problems first. And too often people forget to go to Windows Update and find any new updates or bugfixes. Too often people fail to seek the latest drivers for their hardware, or any updates to their software. You need to invest some time and energy to keep things working correctly.

WinME sucks hairy donkey balls...its too slow, and i installed it on my laptop and compared it to the exact same setup i had with win2k, and it took up too much room...

As for my comment on WinME being worthless, I don't run it, never have, and have never had any hardware problems to make me think ill of it. In fact I don't think ill of it. I just don't think it's worth spending money on. Calling it worthless means exactly that. I don't think it's worth spending anything on as an upgrade to 98. Calling it crap implies something is wrong with it. If I mean crap, I'll say crap. ;) Phoenix

I have had no hardware problems with win2k, been on it since it was released. So far I have WinME on my laptop, but will be updating that to XP, but no problems so far with poser on that system either. Marque

Oh man! The crack about the donkey parts still has me laughing. But that is the general belief in the tech world regarding WinME (they don't use that term, though).

Excuse me, but I've worked as a Technical Support Engineer for a major ISP who just happens to be closely related to Microsoft. None of the technicians I worked with had any such negative feedback about Windows ME. Sometimes we seem to "generalize," and often we are wrong.

I agree wholeheartedly, Ron. And your last message is a brilliant example of its own accuracy.

I dont understand how many differant topics I will see about Poser/Bryce on Win2000Pro/WinXP. As of now Win2000 is overall better in profromance for Poser, in render. Hey I learned it was true last weekend when i went from Win98SE to Win2000Pro.

I have ME, came with the machine and I never bothered to change it. But I will tell you one thing, I know from experiance. ME stands for Memory Eater. It uses twice the RAM 98 does to do the same functions. I feel bad for the poor sap who doesn't know any better and buys a WinME machine with only 64 or even 128 megs of RAM.

WELL it seems that we cant make up our minds so I will do it for me and that is win2K PRO I USE 98SE now and I have been running with no problems yet I have a cable modem from AT&T so if any one has had issues with the att modem let me know thanks folks for the feedback

Look it is this easy. If you are looking to upgrade to a differant operating system, it only makes sense to hang on and get Windows XP. Anything else will be old news in a few days. As for the alleged problems with Windows ME: Those who know their stuff won't make such claims.

I have used WinME on several machines, both desktop and laptop with no problem. Didn't notice the memory usage part, but had 256MB on the KDS laptop, and at least that on the desktops. I have been using W2K since spring and like it a lot. It seems to perform better than WinME. I did start it up one day and was asked to run chkdsk. The request was at a DOS prompt type screen. Chkdsk reported errors and asked if I wanted to save changes. I said yes. W2K instructed me to insert a floppy which I did. After 2 hours chkdsk was only 26% done and asked for a second floppy. I inserted one. The percent done bar went from 26% to 100% instantly and said the process was done. I rebooted but no operating system was found. Then, when I inserted the floppy to undo changes I was instructed to insert the last floppy. When I did, nothing was found. I tried EVERY undelete program and rescue program but found nothing usable on the drive. I never wrote to the drive again, and over months tried them all. No luck. NEVER LET A MICROSOFT PRODUCT FIX YOUR DRIVE! Every other product I used tried to write the saved into to another drive. If chkdsk would have done the same, I could have saved much work. Other than that, W2K is the way to go. One last gripe about W2K is that it will not run without virtual memory (a swap file) no matter how much RAM you have. I have 1.3GB of SDRAM and when I disable virtual memory I get a message saying that some was automatically created for the current session, and that I should add some. I don't know why. When I run with 256MB on my laptop and have 512MB of virtual everything is fine. That equals 512MB less then actual on my desktop. Who knows why? Sorry this is so long!

well I went and talked to my computer guy and he keeps trying to get me to buy XP he says that it is the bomb...but I also have been told to wait until they get all the bugs out and shoot that could take years so fo one final time as a Graphics artist what OS would you upgrade too and why....your choices are NT,2KPRO,XP....Now dont be shy lets all get into this

It sounds like you had some major problem. It is hard to diagnose after the fact. You could have had a virus, or a dead hard drive. I've been close, and in my case it was due to a JavaException Enabler trojan virus that got through to my computer....It wiped out some vital stuff in the registry pertaining to virtual memory, and I just never recovered. I was in over my league with Windows 2000 Pro. I am temporarily out of the job loop, and there are not too many people I could go to for advice. If you have Windows 2000 Pro, it is assumed you are one of the PRos, and that you don't need a lot of help. If you're not that advanced, stay with Windows 98, ME or XP.

I will make it simple. Go with Windows XP. I got a good example how responsive they are to problems. I was using PowerDesk Pro (my favorite file manager) to unzip hundreds of files. It kept crashing for a day or so. Windows XP offered to submit a bug report, and did so countless times. Then one day the crashes stopped happening. Someone got the message and fixed the problem.

I use ME at home, compared to my experience with Windows 98, it is heaven. At least I don't have my pc freezing up every two or 3 hours like I did with 98. I work for a college IT department, we use Windows 98 over ME because of many noted networking issues with ME. Personally for what I do, XP looks like the way to go though I have some reservation about it, if the licensing issues I've heard about are true.

Well one thing I've resigned myself to: If we get the money to buy Windows XP, it will only be installed on one of our networked computers. That is unless Microsoft gives us a really good deal on a license or whatever would be necessary to have XP installed on both computers. We are networked here at home, and have no problems with Windows ME. In fact it set up all our network stuff for us when we installed ME from scratch on both computers. Windows XP did the same.

Ive been able to get Poser (& Pro Pack) running on Win98, Win2kPro, and Win2kServer. And heard of it running okay on WinME. That goes the same for Bryce.

I've been running Poser 4 and Pro on 2000 for quite some time, with much better performance than I EVER got on 98 or ME