.... Windows 2000 also has a lot of bugs -- 63,000 at last count, according to Microsoft - and many, many incompatibilities with existing hardware and software... Especially zip drives.Actually it is not a problem of w2k but a iomega who refuses to write a support driver for w2k. I have installeda w2k yesterday on P3 600 ,20GB, matrox g400 3dfx,asustek p3bf computer. updated it with Poser 4.117 and : poser starts only in EXACTLY 50% of the time. It has a blue screen , no words, justa beautiful blue screen witha white line across. You may just ignore this message since nobody believes me in bug reporting.

I thought that would happen. In that case I am sticking to my Windows 95. How good re bugs are the current releases of Windows 98 now, compared to Windows 95? What new features is Windows 2000 supposed to have? How likely before all this mass of bugs is got out of its system?

According to a news story I saw, Win2K is meant as a replacement/upgrade for NT, not for the 95/98 desktop versions. That's supposed to be handled by winmillenium or some such nonsense. Kate (who hates win anything with a passion and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into putting it on her machine at all)

For those of us with a craving for stability, I'd recomend you wait until VW for linux comes out.

Dual boot win98/win2000 - Poser4 w/patch 4.02.117 Old P233 MMX - 196 Mb RAM - 2x 17 GB HD - Dual display with 2 old Matrox Millenium video cards External Iomega ZIP 100 SCSI (using win2K default drivers) No bugs to report with the new patch and Win2K... No problems with the Zip drive... Maybe you have to check for updated video drivers ????

Win2K with a P450 196mb dual display with a banshee and some horrible thing fished out the Computer shop bin (long story) and no problems here either.....Steve

I have been using Win2000 with G4Max and Poser, No problems at all...Nada runs better than I have ever seen it run. ARADTech

Win2k with a Celeron 500 overclocked to 600 (I know, I know, overclocking is a dirty word but my motherboard supports setting the fsb in 1 mhz increments so what the hey I did it),384 mb ram, ATI Rage Pro video card and 16 bit ISA sound card with a pci ethernet card and it is stable. The ide zip drive I had on the other hand was another story. It would not acknowledge that it even existed and I fought with it for 4 hours and finally gave up...oh well,I still have my cdr for backups. -Mike

I watch ZDTV while we fix dinner and last night they had the author of the new 2000 book who has worked with it for 2 years and took 5 months to write the book. He said about what all of you are saying--an upgrade for NT def. not 95/98. It DOES NOT support many peripherals because the reason it is stable is because there is a 'layer' that they must go through (I'm displaying my inadequacies as a 'geek' obviously LOL) which is not in 98. You sacrifice stability for flexibility with 98 (even with apps). Its also unlikely that there will be support for things like CD writers, DVDs and many others. Someone else gave the site where you can check what will work--he gave it also. I've seen enough info on 2000 to know its not meant for the consumer market. They also said the 'minimums' listed are false--it needs minimum of PII300 with 128 mg of RAM and if you run anything more than Word or some equivalent, then you need at least 192 mg RAM--esp. if you run Office. Diane B

Diane, you are mislead. The win2k OS is smooth as silk. I have been testing it here at Microsoft for the last year and a half. There is support for over 10,000 devices in the box, and any that aren't supported now, it is because the drivers come from the manufacturer of the hardware in most cases. There are a few onsite vendors that work hand in hand with MS to get the drivers working, and test those devices on a daily basis. If you have a device that doesn't have any win2k support, wait a few months, and keep checking with the manufacturer of the hardware, they will write a win2k driver I promise you. You are also mislead about the system requirements. I am running a Celeron 500, with 128MB, I can multitask between 6 or 7 different tier 1 applications, such as Outlook, Internet Explorer, MS Access, Photoshop, Poser, and 3D Studio MAX all at the same time, and I have Zero performance issues. The minimum is not 128MB, but the OS is "optimized" for that amount. You would notice a significant increase in system performance, between the two. It is meant to be a Professional workstation platform for any business app, but let me tell you it is a serious powerhouse of an OS. No more apps hanging your system, and having to reboot crap. If an app chokes, the kernel will kill the process, and "reclaim the system resources that were being used" Just because an app dies, doesn't affect the rest of the operating system. It is so stable. co(V)(V)union

Dunga, you are also mislead. There is a driver in the box for all iomega zip drive products. If it is a parallel port drive, you must enable it in the device manager. Right click on My computer, choose properties, choose the hardware tab, choose device manager, click on the "+" next to "Ports (COM & LPT) double click on the LPT port, Click on "Port settings" and put a check in "Enable Legacy Plug and Play detection" Hit "ok". Win2k should immediately see your parallel zip drive and install the drivers for it as if it were a USB device. This works every time. Hope this helps, co(V)(V)union

Also, Diane, I forgot to mention, Adaptec has a version of Easy CD creator that supports win2k, and also pretty much every CDburner out there on the market with the new ASPI layer it installs. I have it working fine on my machine at work. As for DVD, most all drives are supported in win2k, what aren't all supported are the hardware decoders that are used to decode the video stream. These will become more widely available from their respective manufacturers in the months ahead. co(V)(V)union

I read of 2 DVD decoders and a fix for the zip problem.........problem is I can't remember where, but I do remember it was either here or a link from here http://theUltimateOS.com heck if the info you need isn't there post a message someone there will know..........Steve

Also, the 63000 bugs number is totally generated by the media. Here is a message addressing this rumor by Product Manager Jim Alchin: http://www.microsoft.com/Windows2000/news/bulletins/response1.asp This is pure bogus information. I have worked on this for the last year and a half, and can tell you that there really aren't that many issues. co(V)(V)union

Communion, with all due respect, the Allchin letter was a masterful work of public relations double-speak. And some of that "bogus" reporting comes some from very respected sources. Now, I am encouraged by some of the reports I read here. However, based on Microsoft's past promises of stability (yes, I remember their promises for Windows 95 AND 98), I will wait this one out for a bit and let others wallow through it. I have talked to net-admins who have tested and trashed Win2000. To be fair, I have also talked to net-admins who openly state that it is the "... best Windows product yet..." I leave it to the those veteran Windows combatants out there to determine whether that is a compliment or not.

It's all good. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I am just saying that it is soooo much better than any past Microsoft release that you can't knock it until you've tried it and used it consistantly like I have for the last year and a half. Hopefully I don't come across as "too" biased, since I have been on the test team for that long as well. I am wallowing in my blissfully crash free, kick ass production environment. Hope you guys give win2k its day in court, and then you will understand. I will never go back to any previous release of windows. You would have to pry my system from my cold dead hands. co(V)(V)union

I don't want to get into a Battle but from a user point of view win2k is the best I've ever used (I've used 95 98 NT4) Oh! and heres a DVD software for win2k.....Steve www.cyberlink-usa.com

Well, I'm one of the dummies who got windows 2000 and thought it was great, I even noticed it was faster! Then I noticed two of the brand new games I got for Christmas wouldn't run on it. After checking my other programs, I found out about 35% of my games will not run on win 2000 and many of the older progs I use (and some newer) would give me a "not a valid win32 application" error! I even had to trace down the reason why I got a "Http error" when my anti virus tried to update over the net. It was a "security" setting I had to change in administrators tools! Definately not an easier OS to use than 98. However, I will say it is more stable than 95 or 98, and a bit faster. Also I had no problems with Poser with or without the patch(es). The trade off wasn't enough for me and I've re-installed Win98 so I can run all my older progs and games. What I don't understand is why microsoft don't tell you on the win2000 box that 1/3 of your new programs and games will not run with it (self answering)! If you use and like winNT, then its probably ok, If you have Win98, keep it and save yourself time and money. I wish I had.