Which operating system is the best?

i think it is windows xp borg its not an offical but its paked with apps


Edit Note:
This post was modified by Fireware

XP Home

XP Pro. It rarely crashes, it runs on the server hosting this site, and its stable

You should either expand the list to include much, much more OSes or rename the poll to "What's the best Microsoft OS". Or do you think MS' OSes are the only ones available?Regarding the best MS OS, I go for Windows 2000.

What - you mean there's OSes around that aren't made by Microsoft? But Windows is the OS?! All PCs have Windows, and that's made by Microsoft, isn’t it? You mean some types of Windows are actually made by...someone else? Surely not?! I know at the moment not everyone uses Windows XP like I do, and there’s alternative OSes like Windows 2000 and Windows Vista, but as far as I know they are also made by Microsoft?

j/k

Windows XP Pro is the best Microsoft OS to date. (Vista won't be better). However, before XP I would have choose Windows 95. That was the OS that started the Start Menu, Windows Explorer and all that stuff that is in XP.

of course windows 2000!

Both XP Pro and Win2K Pro have been good to me, though I think I'll go XP Pro. Seems to be pretty stable, and pretty fast, and almost all my machines run it. Though I like XP MCE for its Media Centre.

I like my custom 2000 90mb disc I made for my laptop, and my custom 160mb XP cd I made for my desktop/faster laptop. Both of them have the basics I need to do the stuff I do, without all the stuff I don't need (I'd call it bloat, but its not really bloat, its just stuff that me personal won't use, but others probaby use)

Nothing from those you wrote, but from them 98SE.

I edited the post and the poll so that it looks better, plus I added WinMe and "Other Microsoft OS"




Windows XP is my favorite for desktops

Windows 2000 Advanced Server for servers

Windows NT4 or 98se for older PCs

Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 Server for servers

Windows 2000 for home use

ive managed to get win xp pro on an 800mhz comp i worked xp pro can work on pritty much everything

thanks for adding more i dont know all of them

I also got XP to work on 166MHz and 64MB of RAM, but it was a painful experience. Once I had upped the RAM to 192MB and installed a fast HD, it was not that bad, though. For "everyday" use, I never had XP on anything less than 600MHz and 512MB of RAM. It wasn't that bad...

Ive seen someone get XP on 8MB RAM and 12MHz CPU. Takes 45 mins to boot Required kernel hacking though as you can imagine.

If someone votes Me they should be allowed on the forum!

I only use Windows NT (TM) with Pentium M 2.13 GHz and 1 GB RAM. for older computers (- PIII) I prefer 98 SE and Windows NT (TM) dual boot.
For Pentium I Windows 3.11, NT 3.51 SP5 and Windows 98 SE

I'd not run an unmodified Win98 on a P1, that would be too slow. I ran 98FE and SE on a P60 and a P100, it was a nightmare in terms of speed, Win95 or a 98lited version of 98 was much better however.

I don't understand how people can say that they "managed" to get XP on a machine with an 800MHz processor

I'm currently running XP on 3 PII 366's with 128MB, 256MB, and 384MB. And they are laptops. I use these computers daily, and they perform fine for what they are. 2.5MB of video ram isn't enough I know, but I'm using the Luna Desktop on that laptop. The other 2 laptops have 4MB and 8MB respectively, and they both have the Luna desktop as well.

A PII 366 has a lot more power than a PI 166, but I've run XP on that too before. It wasn't very good, but it ran, had the Luna desktop, and it wasn't an nLited OS (my PII 366's are currently, but before that, I never even knew of nLite so they were stock installs and they still ran good.)

I have run XP on, PI 133's all the way up to PII 366's (apart from higher speed desktop computers, ie, AMD Athlon XP 1800+)

Anyway, I always find it funny when someone says that a PIII 800 or something doesn't have much power, and is better suited for 98SE/NT4. When it's true, a PIII 800 doesn't have much power by todays standards, it's still a relatively fast processor. Combined with 256MB+ Ram, it can be very speedy, add more ram, and you have yourself a very powerful machine that can easily handle XP Professional stock. Let alone an nLite version.

/rant

That being done, I like Windows ME, it's an OK OS, it doesn't lock up nearly as much as everyone would like you to beleive. I've used it on many of my computers, and its far superior to 98SE IMHO, but it still isn't nearly as stable as the NT core (2000/XP/2003 being the best).

@prx984
I completely agree. If a machine might not have enough power by today's standards, it still might have plenbty of power for other, non-demanding tasks. And XP will, as you've said, run fine on it. Heck, if you have enough RAM and a fast HD, XP will do good even on 300-400MHz CPUs.

Precisely, glad someone agrees with what I have been thinking for some time.


You should see my Inspiron 7000 boot up

Heres a movie of my laptop booting

Well, it's my opinion as well.
I usually don't decide the question on the OS based on the pure performance of the machine, but also on my personal preference. I remember I once had a Dual P2-350 with 256MB RAM running XP and an Athlon64 (2GHz) with 1024MB RAM running Win2k. You'd expect it to have been the other way round, normally, wouldn't you?
BTW, your laptop boots pretty fast, yes... But the fastest I have ever seen is XP booting in Parallels on my Intel Mac. That's so fast you don't even see the splash screen, or only for 1/2 seconds... And Win2k only takes 15secs to boot...

15 seconds to boot up is pretty damn fast.

My Latitude CPi boots much faster because the boot post is much short (less than a second, compared to the I7K which is about 30 seconds.)

I agree with prx984 XP runs well on very old hardware and I do run it on old hardware and use that PC everyday, though you can't play games with it

Just some friendly competition, here is my boot up time for my Toshiba Laptop (233Mhz, 64mb RAM, Windows XP Pro SP2 and all effects are on)

BIOS: 3 seconds
Boot Screen: 13 seconds
Welcome Screen/Desktop: 29 seconds
Total: 45 seconds

Lol, my Latitude CPi boots much faster than my Inspiron 7000, I'd put its boot time in the 30 seconds area. I should time it

With my Inspiron 7000, I can play a lot of games, thanks to the ATi Rage Pro 8MB AGP 3d Video card. I can play games such as Driver, Flight Simulator 98/2000 at full graphics and Midtown Madness 1/2. I haven't really put many other games on it because I'm not really a games person. I do like driving/flying simulators though.