I'm an XP Pro user, and I must say that it's not the best OS if you don't have lots of RAM that you don't need.

What I mean is that XP Pro (Have not tried home) is a memory hog of death. I haven't installed SP1 yet though, so those problems might be fixed in that, but XP Pro as it is, is not a good OS, memory wise.

If you're gonna use the machine as a work machine only, I suggest going with Win2k.

I've got two comps at home right now, one which will serve as my "work machine", as soon as I can get my hands on a nice HD, somewhere in the 160GB range ;)
That machine is running, and will continue to run, Win2k. It's far superior with memory management in my experience, as opposed to the other comp, which runs WinXP Pro. I play my games on that, and so WinXP is better suited for it than Win2k (2k has support for a lot of games, but far from all) but I see a huge difference in memory management.

[/ramble]

Anyway, what I was getting at was this:

Unless you can afford a -lot- of ram memory (For optimal performance DDR is preferred, but if you have SDR, go double what you would if you had SDR. So if something runs fine with 512DDR, you'd need 1024SDR to achieve the same, or close to)

Then of course, your memory needs will change depending on what apps you want to run. But with WinXP Pro, I wouldn't run with anything less than 512DDR if I wanted to use "heavy" apps, like NLE applications.

Tomas is correct that WinXP needs a lot more memory. But then
memory is pretty cheap now-a-days. I still prefer Win2K prof. for
my own video work but that is a personal thing.

The ever increasing problem with all OSes as they get prettier, with better interfaces, is that they require more juice. It's just the nature of the industry. But what's also the nature of the industry is dropping prices... So it evens out. :)

Right now, at this very moment, it's not even enough for me to spend cash on more RAM in order to have WinXP pro on both machines ;)

In WinXP, it's more or less a demand that you have DDR, with Win2k, you can get by with SDR. Of course, bigger, badder, faster, more expensive is always better, but it's not always that you can afford bigger and badder.

Edit

Almost forgot to make another point here.

When DDR is as cheap as SDR, then I will say that the need for memory and the prices evens it out, but not until then.

Win2k or XP
 

Been Using Win2k sp3 ...been on my system for about a year and it has not crashed yet......768 megs of mem, but it ran fine on 512....but the xtra ram lets me keep more fat apps open, and Adobe apps are mem hogs......using a MSI K7T turbo 2, which is still being made.....about the only board out there that will take PC133 SDR...very stable board, will run a 2400+ Athlon with bios upgrade to 3.60.....you can find the board for about $80 on the internet.....soon it will be down to $49, the way things are going

Sure XP uses memory, but not that much more than W2K. I run Pro on a system with 1GB RAM and rarely does the system ever come close to using 512MB. I urge people looking at XP to typically go 256MB for normal use, if they do anything stressful, like video work or hard gaming them I suggest 512MB. 1GB is overkill for almost anything, my next system willprobably only have 512MB, but of course as cheap as RAM is getting you never know. DDR is the preferred RAM type unless you can afford RDRAM. With Intal and nvlide Dual Channel DDR boards you can now get RDRAM performance without having to buy RDRAM. Problme with Intel chipset for dual channel is those boards typically cost over $225!

Many Applications
 

That have preview to ram options will pee through however much ram you can throw at them.

Boris, Vegas, Discreet products allow you to ram preview and the more you have, the better.

I have a gig of pc2100 ddr and it ain't enough.

Oh well

I'm wondering Tomas why you say XP needs DDR memory. I'v
run XP on more non DDR systems than the other way around and
it runs fine. In one of my systems I even have old 100 mhz
memory and XP runs just fine!

I would go with (at least) 512 MB for video work. I myself do
editing on "only" 256 MB (I'm using 2K prof. for that and it runs
find with that amount of memory). My XP machine has 768 MB
mainly because memory was cheap and I just put it in (1 year
ago) and also because apps and games etc. "need" more and
more.

Well, I have upgraded. This post is from my new Windows XP Professional Computer with a 200 gb hard drive. I am just working on restoring all my files and installing all my old software. Thanks for all your help! So far so good with XP Pro (and the 200 GB hard drive is very nice!).

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : I'm wondering Tomas why you say XP needs DDR memory. I'v
run XP on more non DDR systems than the other way around and
it runs fine. In one of my systems I even have old 100 mhz
memory and XP runs just fine!

I would go with (at least) 512 MB for video work. I myself do
editing on "only" 256 MB (I'm using 2K prof. for that and it runs
find with that amount of memory). My XP machine has 768 MB
mainly because memory was cheap and I just put it in (1 year
ago) and also because apps and games etc. "need" more and
more. -->>>

Right, I'm running WinXP at home with 384MB SDR ram right now, and it works. Sure it does. I can run Photoshop even, and I can play all my games (not on super quality and not super fast though).
But, I don't want to get serious with doing anything on it until I get my replacement kit (ordered and on the way) for the comp.

WinXP runs with 128MB SDR ram. However, you can do sweet naff all when it comes to heavier applications and newer games.

That's why I said you should not even think about SDR when running WinXP. Especially not for video editing.

And then it's a question of speed as well. You might have 4 gigs of memory, but if it runs at 30mhz it will do you no good.

Guys,

For the last several months I have been having fairly regular freezeups on my PC. Sometimes it's while running an app, sometimes while sitting there. I defragged shortly after this started to happen, and it didn' t help a bit. I'm getting tired of it, and looking for a fairly inexpensive fix.

Still running Win 98SE. This machine is a both my regular PC and my video editing machine (not worth it now to buy a separate one for editing).

What's that you say? Reformat and reinstall? No! I just tried to back up the entire C drive to my firewire drive, and came across some sort of "file cannot be copied, sharing violation" at some point, so that option is out. I'm not losing all my stuff.

How this relates to this thread is that you mention XP Pro and Win2k Professional are stable systems, and I'm wondering if possibly installing one of them could solve my problem? Even the reputedly uncrashable Vegas Video 3 has crashed/froze several times on me. I'm at my wit's end.

Well I am on WinXP Pro now (was on 98SE like you) and I have had a few crashes. A couple in Premiere 6 and a couple in Widows Explorer. I upgraded because of the NTFS problem not for a more stable system. But let me say this: I believe there is no such thing as a computer that doesn't crash. Every Mac, every PC, every OS, and every video game console I have used has one time or another crashed on me. Some people may have better experiences but crashes are inevitable.

Yeah but the frequency of mine has multiplied exponentially in the last few months.

Josh,
Upgrade the system. Turn it into a paperweight.

Seriously, I would consider going XPPro, but I don't know what the rest of your system looks like. If you are upgrading the os, and adding ram, and maybe a hard drive, or a new card...

You are building a new system.

Time to do a cost benefit analysis.

Regards

Well, here's the other specs: 1 gig of RAM, an AMD 1600 XP+ processor. Anything else?