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FrankB42

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Hi all, is anybody using Windows 2000 and running Photoshop CS2 and Nikon Capture? I have done some research and CS2 will work on '2000 with Service Pack 4. I have had people tell me that they either love or hate 'XP, and, the latter said I should use '2000 instead. I need to upgrade my computer from ME and 512 MB RAM. Also, any suggestions as to how much processor speed, hard drive, and RAM is required to run PS CS2 and store my photos? I have just acquired a Nikon D70 w/ kit lens and "have much to learn". Thanks

Frank
 
I can not comment on Nikon and its software ~ Canon guy here.

But to answer the OS question.

My system is a dual boot Win98se and Win2000Pro SP4 - multi drive, multi partitioned with 1GB of RAM Intel P4 2.26Ghz.

It may not be the fastest PC now but it troops along nicely. I chose W2K at the time because I did not like XP (this co-incided with the early days of XP - I am sure XP is a lot better now?) I run CS2 and have left CS on as well.

Oh, I also use this setup for NLE (video editing).

HTH :)
--
Living life a slice at a time



http://www.villagevisits.co.uk
 
I use both XP and 2000 all the time (though I don't use CS). Both are fine. 2000 is less resource intensive, so for slower computer with less than 512.Meg RAM, 2000 would perform better, unless you shut off a number of added features in XP. If you have a decent processor and a decent amount of RAM, there should be little performance difference.

In XP, I change a lot of the annoying default user interface settings, so it becomes very similar to 2000.

If you already have 2000, then there is no reason to upgrade, but if you are upgrading your system, and have to buy a new OS, I would buy XP, since the latest drivers and things will always support XP (at least until the next Microsoft Desktop OS comes out, which should be this year), but a few might not support 2000.

--
 
In a way there is all the reason to upgrade.

Microsoft has already retired mainstream support for Windows 2000. I am not saying you have to upgrade or should upgrade, but I have already come across problems as a result of this. I have faced Win 2000 systems that crashed with Windows 2000 updates in the past few months where same rollup was fine with XP, and I have faced hardware and software issues where some vendors said they are not providing a fix due to Microsoft having the product out of mainstream support.

One strategy is to look to see if people are having problems with Win updates, and of course have a good plan for backups and disaster recovery. OTOH most upgrades will be $1-200 and maybe 1/2 to same for a memory upgrade.

People can say XP is no good or not better, but I have no customer site or customer or personal scenario where that seems to be the case.

Where I do not want to upgrade a system I find restaging to a Linux distribution is often a best bet.

If there's anything not so fun here it's knowing that we're supposed to have the next version of Windows within a year. At this point I find the upgrade if not done insurance for system availability - maybe not something needed on a personal system, but something to consider on a professional or highly valued system.

An XP upgrade will also allow some toys and tidbits good for photography such as the enhanced color control panel, and some Microsoft "power toys" geared for photographers.

I hope this makes sense, and it's not intended as flaming one environment or trolling. I support technology for a living, have to watch a lot of issues, and have single through 400+ user sites where XP does better. I personally use a number of operating systems, and my success with Apple and Microsoft is my budgeting and planning to keep things rather current whether I like it or not.

Microsoft has a round of events in Feb geared toward decision makers and tech staff where one will get a good look at the near future, and likely be able to know more about the Vista upgrade path.

Good luck!
 
FrankB42 said:
Hi all, is anybody using Windows 2000 and running Photoshop CS2 and
Nikon Capture? I have done some research and CS2 will work on
'2000 with Service Pack 4. I have had people tell me that they
either love or hate 'XP, and, the latter said I should use '2000
instead. I need to upgrade my computer from ME and 512 MB RAM.
Also, any suggestions as to how much processor speed, hard drive,
and RAM is required to run PS CS2 and store my photos? I have just
acquired a Nikon D70 w/ kit lens and "have much to learn". Thanks
Click to expand...
I use CS2 on an old (850MH, 500MB) laptop under W2000. Latest service pack, all security updates installed. 30GB disc in the laptop, 250GB disc which I use for my images via USB 2.0 PC Card.

It hasn't got good performance (no surprise!) but it works (for me) without errors.

(I also tried Nikon Capture on trial, just to see what it was like. It worked, but was dreadfully slow on this laptop. I use ACR 3.3 beta).
 
The GUI is fine. Among other things, I set the Start Menu back to the normal Win2K start menu style, and I turn off task bar item grouping.

In both, I change many settings, including turning off all graphics effects (fading menus and such), showing file extensions and hidden files, Displaying Logoff and Administrative Tools on the Start menu. Turn off hiding of unused Start Menu items. Setting the default Explorer (Not IE) open method to "Explore" so you can see the folder list, Turning off "Web content in folders" for Explorer, and setting the display default for folders to Detail view, with sort by filename or date. Adding NotePad and WordPad to the Sent To menu for All Users. Adding "Command Prompt Here" right-click option to Explorer. And lots of other things.

--
 
one of the things that drove me to xp instead of win2k was that win2k was (still is?) limited to 4gig filesizes. not partition, but file sizes.

for video editing, that's a big problem. the old style 'segmented' video files are annoying - I want a whole video capture in a SINGLE file even if that single file takes up a whole 30gig drive.

xp can do that. last time I looked, win2k could not.

but other than that, there are driver issues. on an intel mobo I had, the sata raid was ONLY supported on xp - they (intel) had no plans to release a win2k driver. you want that chip to work? gotta run xp.

--
bryan ( http://www.grateful.net ) pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works ,
(sample fz30 raw files: http://www.netstuff.org ) ~
 
Win2K never had a 4.Gig file limit. I regularly work with files larger than 4.Gig in Win2K. I even work with > 4.Gig files in the ancient Windows NT operating system, which is want Win2K and XP are based on.

Maybe you're thinking of the FAT32 file system, which does have a limit, but the NTFS file system has no problems with larger files, regardless of OS.

--
 
Eric Carlson said:
Win2K never had a 4.Gig file limit. I regularly work with files
larger than 4.Gig in Win2K. I even work with > 4.Gig files in the
ancient Windows NT operating system, which is want Win2K and XP are
based on.

Maybe you're thinking of the FAT32 file system, which does have a
limit, but the NTFS file system has no problems with larger files,
regardless of OS.
Click to expand...
I thought that if you did NTFS, you'd do the same level as XP does, today. maybe there are 2 rev's of ntfs? I think there might be - and win2k, unless somehow patched, stays at the old style of ntfs.

I do remember quite well that for video editing, win2k would cutoff files at 4.5 gig segments. I don't think this was a fat32 fs, either; I was running ntfs for win2k, I'm pretty sure.

there was also discussion on various websites that xp had fixed the 'multimedia problems' that old NT had. for a while, win98 was preferred over win2k (interrupt sharing? I'm not sure of the details.) but when xp came out, xp was preferred over win2k for audio and video capture (less buffer underruns, better realtime processing, etc).

I did want to stay at win2k for as long as I could, but there seemed to be compelling arguments to move to xp. the filesize limit (for video capture/edit) was a primary one for me.

--
bryan ( http://www.grateful.net ) pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works ,
(sample fz30 raw files: http://www.netstuff.org ) ~
 
Maybe there is some problem with doing video files over 4.Gig in Win2K, but I have no problems with other types of files over 4.Gig in Win2K.
--
 
I did a little research, and the video problem could be related to the limitation of each individual paging file in Win2K being limited to 4.Gig, but you can have multiple paging files, whether on multiple drives, or with a simple reg hack, in multiple folders on one drive. I don't know if having multiple paging files would help the video size limit problem or not.

Though, there is no 4.Gig file size limit per-se for the NTFS file system, and I regulary use > 15.Gig database and other files in Win2K and WinNT (and, of course, WinXP and Win 2003).

--
 
Eric Carlson said:
Maybe you're thinking of the FAT32 file system, which does have a
limit, but the NTFS file system has no problems with larger files,
regardless of OS.
Click to expand...
That's the strange thing about FAT32. On the 98SE box I have Windows can see and access some 4gb files, but if I try to ghost that partition or even copy to another drive I get an error msg. Seems like DOS is imposing the 2gb limit.

--
Ian
 
linuxworks said:
the so-called 'playskool' colors ;)
Click to expand...
Yes indeed. I suppose I could get used to them if I really tried. But they put me off so much that even if I go into an internet cafe and see that setting, I immediately try to change it.

--
Ian
 
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