If you're a graphic designer or a web producer, this Epinion is for you. These are my first impressions of upgrading from Windows 98 Second Edition to Windows 2000 Professional, and will post more impressions and issues as they come up.

What I have
First, this is the hardware I have at my computer at work:
Dell Dimension XPS T450 (Pentium III 450Mhz) with a 12GB Hard Drive and 128MB RAM, and a 3Com Ethernet Card-- all stock from Dell. Only external peripherals are a Parallel Port Zip Drive and a Logitech Mouseman Wheel PS/2 Mouse. It came with Windows 98 Second Edition pre-installed and I run the following programs extensively:

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 / ImageReady 2.0, UltraEdit-32 7.20a, Internet Explorer 5, Netscape Communicator 4.5, Eudora Pro 4.0, Adobe Acrobat/Exchange 3.01, WS_FTP 95LE, Microsoft Office 2000 and Visio 2000, Macromedia Flash 4, Adobe Illustrator 8.0, ACDSee-32 v.2.4.2, WinAmp 2.666, WinZip 7.0, ThumbsPlus 4.0, MSN Messenger 3.0, PGP, Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition.

I made sure to make a backup copy of all my essential files, email files, and any setting files. I suggest you do this as a precautionary measure, although I will assure you that the upgrade only affects the Operating System files (mainly the stuff in your C:\Windows folder) and it will more or less leave all your other files alone. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

Next, let me run through my first impressions: The upgrade of the OS went pretty smoothly, albeit a little slow. The process took over an hour, as the installation programs goes through all your files and settings and tries to preserve as much of it as possible so that it carries over into Windows 2000. It also tries to figure out what hardware you have and if it'll work with Windows 2000, since they have some pretty strict requirements. My machine (about a 1.5 years old) passed this test.

After twiddling your thumbs for over an hour for this process to end, you get a nice "Windows 2000 Professional- Built on NT Technology" startup screen and you're almost ready to start working again... Now, remember that Windows 2000 Professional is, as the startup screen tells you, a logical upgrade from the old Windows NT 3/4. This is *not* a consumer version of Windows: it is the new version of NT, which is meant for corporate/network/server use. It uses NT technology of old, and incorporates new technology that supposedly is much more stable than the previous Windows NT. So the jump from Windows 98 (a consumer version of Windows) to 2000 is a big jump, and I was afraid I'd lose all my old programs and everything would fall apart.

But the opposite was true. Almost everything carried over quite well. From the start, you'll notice that all your start menu settings and desktop icons are all there. Even my custom icons for "My Computer" and my color "theme"/background picture are preserved! Great first impression to calm me down. The directory/file structure is all there. Whew!

Network
Okay, the network... Since this is an Operating System meant for servers, you have to log in even if you're not on a network and every user has their own settings/files. Automatically, the upgrade creates an "Administrator" username, and your old username (if you had one) also works, and that username is also granted all administration privileges (you can change all settings, install any programs, etc). So you pretty much log in as you used to do with the same username/password. All network (TCP/IP, NetBIOS, etc.) settings were preserved, so I could literally open up Internet Explorer and get on the web right away. But, my mapped network drives are no longer in "My Computer" so I have to remap them (i.e. assign them drive letter names for quick access). No big deal. "Network Neighborhood" has been replaced by "My Network Places" and double-clicking it doesn't list all the computers on your network by default. You have to take an extra step and click on "Computers Near Me" and you get your list of all computers in your workgroup. So far so good.

Programs: Photoshop, UltraEdit-32
I'm at work, and this upgrade happened in the morning and I needed to get to work right away in the afternoon, so there was no time to play around. I have to make sure all my critical applications run. Most importantly, Photoshop 5.5 and UltraEdit-32 7.20a (a super text editor for my hand-coded HTML). UltraEdit starts up without a flinch. I can save, write, save to the FTP server, and all settings and my custom macros are preserved. Photoshop 5.5: there is a slight glitch. I start the program and half-way through starting, it says I'm missing some DLL file. Call in the emergency team! I remove and re-install Photoshop, a 3 minute process. That cures the problem. But note: your custom color palettes, custom brushes, and custom duotone settings will not be loaded with the re-install. You have to simply find the old files and load them. Hopefully you have that backup copy of Photoshop files. Your custom Actions, however, are preserved, as are your window/palette positions. Overall, this is not a big deal: 10 minutes tops, and you're ready to start designing.

Printers, Adobe Acrobat
If you use Adobe Acrobat (I have version 3.01) to create PDFs, you'll have to remove/re-install this program. Not because the program doesn't start (it does), but because all the printers you have set up in your old OS are no longer there. Yes, the upgrade deletes all printers from your Printers folder and you have to install the drivers for them all over again. In my case, the main printer for our office is on a network. So I just clicked "Add Printer" and looked for the printer and added it. No problem printing to that printer. Now, as you know, Acrobat uses "virtual" printer drivers to create PDF files: namely, PDFWriter and Acrobat Distiller "printer" (and its required PostScript printer driver). These are deleted as well in the upgrade. That's why you need to re-install from the original Acrobat CD. This process could take 10-20 minutes. But I remembered from my last installation of Acrobat some of the tips regarding Distiller, so my time was lower. That tip, which may not apply to you, is that you need to have a PostScript printer added to your list of printers, even if it doesn't exist / you don't have a PostScript printer (you can choose anything, I just picked HP LaserJet 5P/5MP/PostScript). This is because you need a postscript driver installed in order for Distiller to create your PDF files. Detailed info here: www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/234ce.htm

MS Office 2000
Not surprisingly, Office 2000 Small Business Edition (Word, Excel, Outlook) and Visio 2000, are totally unaffected by the upgrade. Smooth as silk, you'll never the notice the difference. There are, however, some updates to these programs on the Microsoft sites that you have to visit often to keep your copy up-to-date and free from all those Microsoft security bugs... So I just took a stroll down to their update site and downloaded the latest updates. Most of these updates require the original CDs, so have them handy.

Peripherals: Iomega Zip Drive Parallel Port, Logitech MouseMan Wheel PS/2
My only two peripherals are the Zip drive and my mouse. I used to have the custom Logitech MouseWare software/driver installed under Windows 98, but the upgrade deleted that. The mouse works, but I don't have full functionality of all the customizable buttons on my mouse. The Logitech site warns users to uninstall the MouseWare driver/software BEFORE upgrading to Windows 2000, but I had no problems with keeping it there-- the upgrade just zapped it for me. You might not be that lucky, so heed Logitech's warning. Downloading and installing the newest MouseWare software from the Logitech site allowed me to use all 4 buttons and scroll on my mouse. No problem.

The Zip drive was not on my machine during install (it was being used in the office by co-workers for their backups), but I think the upgrade would have detected it and installed the drivers for it. I attached it after the upgrade, and by default, Windows 2000 did not recognize the drive. So a trip to the Iomega site and a quick download of their driver software solved the problem. All of this took 10 minutes.

My impression is that if you have external peripherals, you'll need to re-install their respective drivers. If you don't have the disks (which may be outdated anyways), you can usually download all drivers from that manufacturer's website.

Other programs
All other programs that I've been using for the past week seems to have handled the transition well. It literally just took Monday morning for the upgrade and re-installs, and I was up and running by that afternoon and non-stop for the rest of the week. Now I'm on my second week, and no other glitches. Look at my list of software above, and all of them (except the ones I talked about) run smoothly without any upgrades, re-installs, or bribery.

Except for one little thing: WinAmp 2.666 (the latest version): I just downloaded the latest version of WinAmp because, well, I wanted to hear that new exclusive U2 song and skin (great live version of "Velvet Dress," by the way!)... Ever since then, the program seems to like to crash on me every now and then. [update 11/27/00]: I upgraded to the latest version, WinAmp 2.7, and it is much more stable now.

UPDATE (11/30/00): I've tested these additional programs to work, with all settings preserved:
* Macromedia Dreamweaver 2.0
* Macromedia Fireworks 2.0
* NCSA Mosaic 3.0 for Windows
* Microsoft Word 97
* Tera Term Pro 2.3 with SSH add-on
* CuteFTP 4.0
* Netscape Navigator 3.01
* Netscape 6 (final version)

These programs required small adjustments or re-installs:
* Quicktime Pro 4.0.3 - requires you to re-enter your registration key.
* PGP Freeware - strange errors preventing connection to PGPNet: unintall/re-install with newest version. Old keys will be preserved.

These programs don't work at all:
* CDex 1.10 SR4 - CDex acknowledges trouble with Windows2000 on their website (http://www.cdex.n3.net/). Solution: download latest stable version (1.20): simple and worked for me.

Usability
In terms of little usability issues, let me address a few:
Unlike Windows NT, you don't have to hit "Ctrl-Alt-Del" to log in, which I thought was pretty counter-intuitive since most users associate those keys with a restart and not a log-in. This is good. You log in like you do in Windows 95/98.

But similar to Windows NT, when you hit those keys while you're in the OS, you don't simply get a Task Manager with the option to close a crashed program as you would in Windows 95/98: You get a little pop-up window that lets you look at "Processes" running on your machine, look at your CPU/Memory usage, lock your computer, or log off, as well as the familiar Task Manager. Windows NT users will feel right at home, Win 95/98 users will have to take the extra step to click on "Task Manager" to close any crashed programs.

Although the upgrade will preserve your folder view settings as close as possible to what they used to be (i.e. small icon view, big icon view, detailed list view...), some folders always default to a certain view. For example, "My Documents" always pops up in large icon view, no matter what you did with the view before. I find this annoying, since I have a lot of folders and files in there and I like to be able to scan them quickly in small icon view.

The Start Menu has added features which will delight computer geeks who like to have as much control and customization as possible. If you turn on "Personalized Views" and then in the "Advanced" tab of the Start Menu/Taskbar settings menu, you can choose to hide/show or expand different items such as Printers, Control Panels, Administrative Tools, Favorites, etc.

Also, the default font face for Windows 2000 (menus, dialogs, icon labels, Internet Explorer favorites list, etc.) is Tahoma, not Arial. Tahoma is a smaller, compact font which may be too small for your eyes. You'll have to change this yourself or load any custom desktop themes to change it to your liking.

The most annoying element / usability flaw, I find, is the way (by default) all menu items (such as right-clicking in Internet Explorer) and the start menu items fade in and out in delayed time. The first few times, you see me saying "Cool!" and then after about 2 minutes, you see me frantically searching for a way to turn off this "feature." Why is this a flaw? Because you have to wait 0.5 seconds for something to happen after you told the computer to do something. This is a noticeable lag in time and it negatively affects human-computer interaction (you expect a response immediately from the computer). It takes me longer to get to the start menu item I need, because I have to wait several times for this "cool" fade in and out to happen before even seeing the next level of the start menu! Even Windows 95/98 had a noticeable delay in the start menu, but with 2000, they made it worse. In contrast, the MacOS (version 8/9, not X) does the exact opposite and give you instant response to your commands: the menu items just pop up immediately when you go through the items in the Apple Menu.

Luckily, you can disable this "feature" by using this method: Right-click on your desktop, go to Properties--> click on the "Effects" tab and uncheck "Use Transition effects for menus and tooltips." That's the thing with Windows 2000: a lot of things are customizable, so you just have to play around with it. But most of us at work don't have that kind of time to "play around" with the OS. So I hope my little tip helped you. [ If you want this delay/fade to go away altogether (like in MacOS), then email me or post a comment and I'll show you how (requires editing your Registry). ]

General impressions on stability of Windows 2000 Pro
Overall, I'm very happy with Windows 2000 Professional. Before, applications on my Windows 98SE used to crash at least 3 times a day, particularly Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and UltraEdit-32. Basically, applications that are my lifeblood here at work. I haven't crashed once using these same programs under Windows 2000. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. I can actually get work done without having to hit that dreaded "reset" button my computer several times a day (Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't do it most of the time).

If your web design shop or graphic design firm is thinking about upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional, I can say that the transition will be smooth and fast and well worth it, especially if you're having stability problems right now with your current operating system. Make sure your machines meet the strict hardware requirements, though. And load up on all the RAM you can afford: prices right now are at their lowest (November, 2000). Brand-name machines under 2-3 years old in general should have no problems.



Recommended: Yes