If youve
never actually seen the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, its quite silly,
but no doubt about it, its as pirate-proof as its
gonna get. Previous Microsoft releases have had holograms, and
CD-Keys, and Windows 2000 is no different. Except this time around,
the entire CD is a friggin hologram. Yowza. A little overboard.
Okay,
so anyway, I decided to do a full reboot. Oddly enough, the OS
doesnt come with a boot disk (although the CD-ROM is bootable)
so I used the startup disk from Windows 98, which basically drops
you at a DOS prompt with CD-ROM access (and contains the Fdisk
and Format programs). I reformatted my hard drive using the FAT
32 file system instead of NTFS, because I wanted to allow the
Windows 9x machines on my network to access the Win 2k computers
hard drive. The other reason, is I figured that should I decide
to go with NTFS in the future, I can always just reformat. The
nice thing about doing regular backups of my important files is
that I have this luxury.
So, I
installed Windows 2000. The installation went off without a hitch,
and was problem free. If youve ever installed Windows 98
or Windows 98 Second Edition, youll recognize this setup
its pretty much the same thing. I was asked if I
wanted to convert my drive to NTFS, which is a nice feature for
those upgrading I suppose, but I decided to pass. If NTFS is really
more stable, Id rather do a clean reformat than risk conversion
errors. One nice thing is the network setup wizard
that runs during installation. Its sort of silly if you
know all about your network, but for end users who run a workstation
and arent that familiar with the inner-workings of their
network, Im sure its quite useful.
So, I
restarted, and began my full Windows 2000 experience. I installed
all my programs, and took a look at how well they ran. For the
most part, I had no problems. I use a few programs religiously
Macromedia Dreamweaver, Eudora Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and
Microsoft Word. Dreamweaver ran like a dream. I use the recently
released version 3, so no doubt it was checked for Win 2k compatibility
early in its development cycle. I use Photoshop 5.1, not 5.5 (what
can I say - I cant justify that upgrade price) and while
it ran comparably well, if not a little faster than Windows 98,
it did crash a couple of times on startup. I chalk this up to
using a slightly out of date version Im sure 5.5
works flawlessly. Eudora proved yet again that it is one of the
greatest programs around. Not only was I able to copy my Eudora
Pro directory from my backup files and start running it immediately
(read: no setup) but it had zero problems, and in fact ran much
better since it wasnt tying up my system resources (woo
hoo!). Microsoft Word, as expected, ran noticeably faster. This
was not exactly a surprise, as Excel was always one of the test
programs for NT 5, and no doubt a simultaneous release of Office
2000 with Win 2k was at one time in the cards at Microsoft. Other
miscellaneous programs that I use, like Winamp, LeapFTP and ICQ
all ran just peachy.
My first
problem came when I decided to connect to the Internet for the
first time. Windows 2000 had automatically detected my ISDN modem
on install, so I figured I was good to go. I set up my dial-up
networking just like I did in Windows 98, and proceeded to connect
to my ISP. No problem, easy connect. Life is good. I tested out
the Internet Connection Sharing feature of the OS, and was amazed
when it worked with literally just a single click. Unlike Windows
98 SE, which was a bit of a pain in the ass to install and configure,
Windows 2000 allows you to click a checkbox and share your internet
connection. It works really well, and for those with small networks,
I highly recommend it (although I also suggest looking into a
decent firewall program if youre going to go this route).