Re: XP vs Win2000 Pro

I've been switching back and forth from XP and W2K for the last couple of 
weeks (had a bad motherboard), and I think 2k is a little cleaner, but 
that's probably just perception.

I do know that XP is in constant contact with the mothership, moreso than 
w2k, and that bothers me a lot.

My decision has been made for me, i'll be returning to XP as soon as I 
have time to set up my laptop, but when I had it before, I did learned 
that there are a ton of things running in XP services that can be disabled 
that will save you a ton of memory.  There are plenty of tweaks you can do 
to make xp run better.

see this guy's webpage:   http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm   
lots of good information here.

see this page in particular: 
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm    This one lists each 
service, and explains what each one does, what it uses, and what uses it. 
Lots of them are simply wasted space, set on by Bill for his convienience, 
not our's.

Read his explanations and recommendations CAREFULLY, use the EXACT methods 
he recommends for disabling uneeded services, and document any changes you 
make so that you can recover if something you need doesn't work anymore.

Do the no-brainers first, then work for a day or two to see if something 
doesn't work.  Then, some of the trickier (networking services, etc) ones, 
do one at a time and see if they break anything.

I have a very similar working environment as you described (5250. code, 
notes, etc - as well as Novell and cisco VPN)  and I changed my active 
services to his recommended settings (all except for one or two), and had 
no ill effects whatsoever.  The changes I made saved me upwards of 100mb 
of memory just sitting still, not to mention the cpu cycles they took.

Your mileage may vary.

good luck,

Rick