Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware

Daniel Iversen writes "Still 95% compatible with Windows XP, The Windows 2000 OS still runs very well on very old hardware - hardware with low specs it was never even meant to run on (tech setup guide - not a review). The broad question is, does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?"

I am not obsolete.....

[Daedala]

Planned obsolescence is not a virtue. Why is not buying new hardware a bad thing? That's what the question implies.

Sure.

[tyroney]

I'd think it impedes sales just about as much as making hardware that keeps working longer than six months.

Legacy Support

[Mad-Mage1]

The Compatibility w/ older HW/SW is a good thing from a marketing standpoint, but all of the older drivers and antiquated forms of data access to/from these legacy devices does put restrictions on what the OS can do TODAY. In short, the need to support such a wide, disparate spectrum of devices and technologies hampers the OS to be as fast and efficient as it COULD be, if support for these older devices and formats were removed.

Yes.

[Shadow Wrought]

does the fact that you can remain compatible with today's applications and data on hardware that is almost a decade old, impede PC sales?

Yes, it does impede sales. However, that's just part of the equation. PC hardware seems to walked into the Land of Diminishing Returns. The extra cost of new hardware doesn't seem justified when the systems that people have work fast enough them. If your computer does everything you want it to, why upgrade?

Yes, and? So does Windows XP.

[Zerbey]

The writer of this article is a little strange if he considers a P233 old hardware. Back when Windows 2000 came out (1999, kids) I was using a P233 as my primary machine.

He makes one excellent point at the end: memory. Memory is what Windows needs more than anything. Once you remove all the cuddly crap, Windows 2000 and XP runs perfectly well on a classic Pentium so long as it has 128Mb or more. Preferably 256 with XP.

I've never tried XP or 2000 on a 486, but I would be willing to bet it'd run fine (NT certainly did). Anyone else tested this?

2000? Not Surprising!

[atteSmythe]

Is it surprising that a 5-year-old operating system still runs 8-year-old hardware? That's the hardware for which the operating system was designed!

A more pertinent question, I think, would be whether 2000 still runs with full support for new hardware devices, and whether that forward-compatibility hampers new OS sales.

Ignorant article

[Helevius]

"DONT install an extra service pack (they can offer perfromance and reliability improvements on faster computers but on old computers with few tasks they are just a bloat). Make sure your Windows installation CD isn't already 'slipstreamed' with a service pack."

and

"How to use the computer on a daily basis...Don't apply O/S patches for security stability or other things."

This is advice from an idiot for other idiots. I'm sure the worms and other malware you invite onto this system will make great use of the "more than 10 MB RAM left for your applications."

Re:So what?

[m50d]

The point is that Win2K, unlike perhaps 98 or definitely 3.1, is compatible with almost all applications and things, so the bloat in XP is not merely unnecessary but serves no purpose whatsoever. It seems to have just been added on to sell new computers. <flamebait>Kinda like the whole Java language</flamebait>.

Re:What the heck?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

A slashdot article that praises the durability of a microsoft product? Is the world coming to an end?

Well, you know, Unix folks are used to being able to recompile/reuse almost anything that was produced for the past 30+ years, but they take that for granted, so nobody talks about it.

And while I do appreciate that the Windows developers have been able to maintain binary compatibility with a majority of old software, nobody seems to be discussing (1) the speed impact those legacy portions of Windows OS on modern programs, (2) the poor speed of old programs run on modern Windows and (3) the security problems those legacy routines impose on modern Windows.

This said, kudos to the Windows developers who manage to maintain compatibility throughout the years, even with programs that do dirty tricks with the win32 API and, well, DOS programs. It's quite a feat, and it's probably a major reason for Windows users not ditching the hateful OS, since they don't want to lose their investment.

Most people could use 10-year old computers...

[loggia]

...with a little technical TLC every now-and-then. Like the Times article about how people buy new PCs because of spyware, most consumers cannot figure out the insanity of Windows. They certainly can't figure out that their new computer does almost nothing more for them then their old computer -- the only difference is that the old one "stopped working."

Re:Duh

[rking]

My fastest machine is an AMD Athlon 800Mhz. I dont do the gaming thing very often, and I honestly feel like the machine performs quite sufficiently for me. I have the money to upgrade, but its simply not a priority for me.

Sure, but is it really reasonable to say that that is "impeding" sales?

You could say the same about old television sets continuing to function or old books still being readable or old doors still allowing, or restricting, access to buildings.

It just seems a weird way of looking at things to say that older stuff continuing to work is "impeding sales" of new stuff. Is a lack of earthquakes impeding sales of new homes? I guess you can say it does but... I wouldn't.

Re:Hardware, no. OS? Absolutely.

[Quarters]

What performance hit from Win98 -> XP were you expecting? Could you post the quantitative speed analysis numbers, please?

I find it odd that an IT department would willingly purchase a "sizable chunk" of OS licenses for an OS that hasn't been available for license as a retail product for 15.5 months.(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle /default.mspx [microsoft.com])

While it's only been 3.5 months since system builders could license it it is still, by Microsoft's documentation, an unlicensable product at this point in time.

Having used 98, NT4.x, 2K, and XP at work (digital content creation) and at home since about '97 I can say that I've not noticed any appreciable performance hit in XP compared to the previous versions. Certainly not enough to warrant buying a product that lost mainstream support six weeks ago. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh ;%5Bln%5D;LifeWin [microsoft.com])

Re:Duh

[epiphani]

I probably wont buy a new machine until the current one dies. How is that not impeding sales? It used to be that I needed to ugprade every two years, otherwise I couldnt run anything with any decency. I can play all my media, run everything except games and perform all my work just fine - multitasking all the way. I currently have two SSH windows open, winamp, gaim, two instances of mirc, firefox with six tabs, a few notepads for "scrap paper", bittorrent. I'm using a wireless network, and I've got ipod plugged in charging. I'm streaming MP3s from magnatune and boucing around doing all kinds of stuff. And my machine is NOT slow.

Why would I want to upgrade? Throw $2000 for what? Games? I can play games on playstation. I could not do this on a 500Mhz machine, but I definitely dont need a 4 GHz machine to do it.

Unrealistic

[crimoid]

The author of that howto claims that you should:

NOT install any service packs or patches
NOT use NTFS
NOT use a sound card
NOT use removable storage (CD, USB, etc)
NOT use windows networking
NOT use a parallel printer
NOT install many applications
NOT have more than 1 application open at a time
NOT work with big (1MB+) files

Well WTF good is that computer then? The title of the article is "Win2000 Still Performs on 8-year-old Hardware". How is this performance?

This is fucking news?

[DrHanser]

Are you kidding me? Of course Windows 2000 runs on 8 year old hardware, it's a 5yo OS. What good would it have been back in 2000 if it didn't run on hardware that was three years old back then? What's the big secret that it still runs today?

Frozen in time

[StreetFire.net]

In 1999 I bought a top of the line "Bad-MaMaJama" system with all the hot specs. Loaded it up with all the top of the line development software of the era from 3D Studio Max R3 ($3,500 back then) to Visual Studio.

Then in 2000 I moved out of the development world into the realm of management, sales, etc. So My old Work horse is a dinosaur now, and I still do some development on the side for fun. But seriously why do I need to upgrade from PhotoShop 7 to PhotoShop CS? They both push pixels with equal ease. The Tools for the casual user are not so much better today than they were 6 years ago to force an upgrade (how much has the hammer evolved in 6 years?).

All facts considered my 6 year old system is blazingly fast so long as I run Circa 1999 Software.... that is until I load up Office 2003, or even (gasp) Firefox. It amazes me that a Circa 2005 Browser like Firefox can bring my system to it's knees whereas a Crica 1999 Enterprise aplication like 3D Studio Max rips along without breaking a sweat. Oh well, time to upgrade so I can keep up with the browser wars....oh sorry, that was such a 1999 statement to make ;-)

Re:That's bullshit

[v01d]

I've got to point out that Windows 2000 is not 8 years old. It is only 2005 isn't it?

In business

[llamalicious]

The real question is: Do I care if I'm impeding PC sales?

Failing hardware aside, if what I've got now is already locked down, and the hardware performs perfectly under load, and I have room to add software features to my applications as necessary: Do I care if Dell wants to sell me a new multi-processor Xeon blade? Not really.

Expense without some sort of valid justification is wasted money. Put the dollars somewhere else.

If your old hardware is under-powered, and impeding business progress, of course you'll upgrade. But unless I'm under direct pressure from a vendor, I'm not going to waste money feeding the low-cost hardware boom.

However, if my vendor end-of-lifes a product, states it is no longer supported, warranted and spare parts are no longer going to be produced, or become exceedingly expensive - well, I might just get that new box after all.

For some minor applications, that old Windows 2000 server with 256MB of RAM might be just fine as-is, as long as its not a support liability. (No, having a machine that runs d.net or Seti@Home faster in your server room is probably *not* a real business reason for a faster server).

Re:First Prime Factorization Post

[LnxAddct]

not sure why i'm replying, but that is a prime number.
-Steve

No security - cripes, just run Win98!

[Dr. Manhattan]

He runs it on FAT, and disables all file security and so forth. In practical terms, this system is no better than Windows 98. For such purposes, load up Windows 98SE, and use Win98Lite [litepc.com] to use the (much less resource-intensive) Win95 shell on top of Win98.

Just as secure, and you can have more functionality (e.g. sound!).

Of course, better yet, you can use Linux. I've got a 32MB laptop that runs Debian (with XFCE). A bit slow, but I can actually surf the web and so forth, and even play a game or two. And do it with actual security.

Interesting routing on old machine and W2K Server

[Mortimer82]

Seeing as I am still working out Linux, and I know my Windows pretty darn well, I did this interesting thing.

The specs:
- Pentium II 233MHz
- Intel Desktop Board (isn't their slogan "built on reliability")
- 96MB RAM
- 3GB Hard Disk
- OS: Windows 2000 Server Standard

For readers to understand fully why I did this, until about a month ago, South Africa had only one decent ADSL account offering, a 3GB account. These 3GB accounts allow you to browse any site at full speed until you generate 3GB of traffic (that's g/bytes), and after the DSLAM kills your session (happens approximately every 24 hours) and you reconnect you get worse than 9600bps modem speeds when connecting to overseas servers/peers, but local speeds are still 100%. At the beginning of each month the counter is reset.

So, what I do is use OpenVPN (http://www.openvpn.org/ [openvpn.org]) to tunnel to my office for the international bandwidth which we get through a 2mbit/s leased line, however, I have managed to configure my box in such a way that local traffic goes straight over the ADSL.

Using Windows 2000 Routing and remote access on my machine at home, I create the tunnel, and also create a ppp connection using RAS PPPoE (http://www.raspppoe.com/ [raspppoe.com]) - seeing as Windows 2000 doesn't have it natively. I then set up NAT routing, make the OpenVPN TUN/TAP adapter and the ppp interface external interfaces, and the LAN card the internal interface.

Then for routes, I set my default route to go down the tunnel, and I natuarlly set up the IP address of the remote end of the tunnel to go down the ppp interface. Now, South Africa has relatively few ASNs, so I also manually added a whole lot of those blocks to my routing table to go down the ppp interface. The net result (excuse the pun) was that local traffic went straight over the ADSL, and international traffic via the tunnel.

This all runs perfectly on Windows 2000 Server on that old box. Unlike the author of the article, I don't ever "work" on the machine per se, so for security reason's it does all it's Windows Updates, while I installed no extra services like IIS, I haven't bothered to disable any default services, I have however turned off Active Desktop, sliding menus and the Activity Pane for Windows Explorer, I discovered a long time ago that turning these off was the simplest way to more than double the responsiveness of their systems. What I have also done is enabled Terminal Services in remote administration mode, so the machine needs no screen keyboard and mouse. I add that I am no security expert however, with the box fully patched and a strong password set, I have had NO security incidences, well, at least none that I am aware of, I also do not run any kind of firewall.

Now my routing works well and causes *almost* no problems, it does have issues nevertheless. Because my box has two external IP addresses, certain things have issues, the problem arises when an application registers on an international server, and other peers from South Africa try connecting to my tunnel interface IP address, this doesnt work because my Windows 2000 box ends up trying to send the packets back over the PPP inteface. I notice this the most with Source and Steam. I cannot connect to any local servers when my tunnel IP address is the one registered with the Steam server, it just keeps on asking for my Steam username and password. Top get around this, when I want to play, I merely end up doing a PPPoE direct from my desktop, and while it takes a while for Steam to sign in, it does work. While I know that I could manually setup the steam server IPs to route over the ppp, I just havent bothered, also this way when an update comes down, it always comes down the fastest.

I am experimenting with Linux, and especially along with Soekris (http://www.soekris.com/ [soekris.com]) boards, to replace this solution, just a little more time and I will have it worked out - but I am not rushed as my Windows 2000 Server solution works just as well - and is up and running already.

Mod parent insightful!

[bobcat7677]

Oh yeah. I recently bought a new laptop. It of course came with windows XP. After getting frusterated for a week with all the lame "wizards" for everything (discussion of how confusing XP wizards are saved for another thread), I decided to load windows 2000 on it. Within an hour or two I was able to find W2K drivers for all the hardware on the laptop and start loading. I was slightly surprised to find that some of the W2K drivers actually worked better and had more options then the XP version (was true for both the wireless card and processor speed control).

In use I found that the biggest difference was that I had to install 3rd party software on 2000 to do a few things like handle zip files and burn CDs. In all cases the 3rd party software is more powerful then the built-in XP stuff anyway. I am way more efficient in W2K with it's cleaner interface to administrative functions. All things considered, I view moving from XP to 2000 an "upgrade".

XP is to 2000 as ME is to 98SE. The former in each case being a product with more "widget" features, but less usability.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:So what?

[jilles]

You can actually disable the bloat in xp. I installed windows xp on a 1997 pentium II 233mhz with 64 MB once. Both cpu and memory were way below the official required spec. And of course the out of the box experience with everything on was nothing to write home about but it worked. If you strip it you are left with an improved version of windows 2000. The kernel is a mere minor version increment over windows 2000. The rest is just services which, mostly, you probably want turned on if your machine has enough memory. Since memory is dirt cheap, do youself a favour and quit trying to shave kbytes of the memory usage and install 512MB (or more).

I agree some services are probably not very useful and indeed ms windows has not been designed for computers that already shipped with an OS in the last century. Can't really blame them because there is no market for such OSes.

Now (i'll take the bait) the Java language is another thing. At a mere 15.54MB download (just checked), the jre packs a whole lot of functionality. Of course the development kit is somewhat bigger at 56.71 MB but still pretty ok if you consider that A) you don't need it unless you do development and B) it includes examples, the full jre, tools and source code for the libraries all in one package. And it will work on your favourite last century OS win2k of course. Hardly bloated in a time where broadband is cheap and widely available and pcs ship with 120GB or more of diskspace. I'd certainly would not want SUN to remove features to please a few whiners like you.

Anyway the idea of pcs is that they are cheap. It will run the software it came with just fine. Maybe if you spent some money it will live through a few software upgrades (say it came with windows me, you upgraded it to win2k: good for you). After that, be happy the thing still works and spend the money on a new PC if you want the latest and greatest. A 1000$ should keep you happy for another few years.

Re:What the heck?

[Stankatz]

I didn't think the point of the article was that Win2k supported old hardware or old software (I wouldn't be surprised if WinXP could do the same). I thought the point was that it was useable on slower hardware with very little memory. The implication being that WinXP, and probably Longhorn too, is a slow resource hog that forces people to upgrade their hardware. I kind of thought that MS was dumping Win2k a little too soon.