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Microsoft released its first betas of Windows 2000 Professional back in 1997, so we've had plenty of time to admire its stability, security, and slick interface. But we were concerned that Windows 2000 Pro's 29 million lines of code and 500MB hard-disk footprint might make the OS dog-slow compared to current versions of Windows. We also worried that a system might need a bare minimum of 128MB of RAM to run the new OS efficiently.

Our fears were groundless on both counts. In fact, Windows 2000 is slightly faster than both Windows 98 SE and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on many common business tasks, and it's only a shade slower on others. And running the new OS on a PC with "just" 64MB of RAM is certainly practical: In many cases, we saw very little performance gain when running the same tests on PCs with 128MB.

Moreover, PC World tests of start-up and shutdown times demonstrate that Windows 2000--despite taking every bit as long as lead-footed Windows NT to boot up--has inherited Windows 98's relatively fleet shutdown speed.

The tests that we ran were designed to gauge the new OS's efficiency in a typical business setting. We timed a range of common Word, Access, and Photoshop tasks under Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, and Windows 2000 Professional on several identically configured Pentium III-600­based computers loaded with 64MB and 128MB of memory.

If you want the best features from previous Windows offerings without those products' major shortcomings, you should upgrade to this OS. But if you want better performance, invest those dollars in a faster processor or a memory upgrade.

We didn't test two other versions of Windows 2000 that are due to ship February 17. Windows 2000 Server is for departmental mail and file servers; Advanced Server is intended for use as a Web server. Microsoft expects Datacenter--a third yet-to-ship server version--to supplant mainframe database servers.

Upgrader's Guide to Windows 2000

How can you ensure a trouble-free upgrade to Windows 2000? What do you need to know once you get there? Our complete guide to the new operating system has all the answers you're looking for. See "Windows 2000: Your Ticket to a Hassle-Free Upgrade" and "Windows 2000: Tips for New Arrivals."

Fast Times, Mostly

Where did Windows 2000 outpace Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 SE, and where did it lag behind? In our first series of tests, we simulated real-world use on a standard midsize tower system equipped with 64MB of memory. In the test, we ran Netscape Navigator and had RealJukebox play a CD in the background; concurrently, we timed six different application tasks.

We also timed the same tasks without running applications in the background. But the results tended to be only marginally better than in the multitasking situation. So we decided to discuss only the multitasking test results here, both to simplify the analysis and to reflect more accurately how most people use their systems.

Split Decision

In four of the six tests--Word Mail Merge, Access Import and Run Report, and Photoshop Filter--Windows 2000 performed on par with or slightly faster than Windows NT 4.0, although the speed difference would be undetectable to most users.

Windows 2000's performance advantage over Windows 98 SE was more pronounced--about 15 percent across our six tests. Absent any hardware compatibility issues that might trigger performance slowdowns, upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 should yield noticeably better performance in some types of tasks.

But Windows 2000 doesn't always outrun Windows 98. Sometimes the OSs' differing file systems affect the results. We tested each operating system using its default native file system--FAT32 for Windows 98, and NTFS for Windows 2000. Previous PC World tests have indicated that NTFS is far slower than FAT32, due to additional file security and logging overhead. The Search and Replace test in Word corroborated this result: Both Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 (which by default also uses NTFS) took a dramatically longer time than Windows 98 SE to complete the task.

NTFS vs. FAT32

Microsoft says this delay happened because Word's search-and-replace feature generates numerous file-open and -close operations. NTFS dutifully logs these actions in case something goes wrong; FAT32 doesn't. But NTFS's added security takes time. A Microsoft engineer told us the company would try to modify future versions of Word to minimize the slowdown.

Other applications may encounter similar slowdowns during disk-intensive tasks, but some may not. In the Photoshop Save for Web test--in which the computer converts an existing file to prepare it for publication on the Web--Windows 2000 blew away both Windows 98 and NT 4.0, completing the job in roughly half the time. Microsoft's explanation: Windows 2000 is better than its predecessors at supplying big chunks of memory quickly to applications such as Photoshop.