OSnews.com have posted their Windows Server 2003 as a Workstation: Great, But Not Unconditionally article. This is not a review of the product as a server. It is a review of how it performs after transforming it to a workstation or a desktop.
Installing the product is no different than recent versions of Windows. It is an easy procedure o follow, except for two parts: I don't like the staging installation, it serves no real purpose for the user; it should have been a normal, modern one-go installation, and it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. It took nearly 40 minutes on my MicroTel AthlonXP 1600+, 768 MB RAM and its 52x CD-ROM. And then, it booted for the first time... Windows Server 2003 (Win2K3 for short) booted in around 15 seconds, much faster than my Windows XP Pro (~25 secs), on par to a "clean" installation of Gentoo Linux (with no extra services) and slower than BeOS 5 (around 8 seconds, but BeOS doesn't load anything heavy on startup).
Windows Server 2003 As A Workstation Or Desktop
Installing the product is no different than recent versions of Windows. It is an easy procedure o follow, except for two parts: I don't like the staging installation, it serves no real purpose for the user; it should have been a normal, modern one-go installation, and it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. It took nearly 40 minutes on my MicroTel AthlonXP 1600+, 768 MB RAM and its 52x CD-ROM. And then, it booted for the first time... Windows Server 2003 (Win2K3 for short) booted in around 15 seconds, much faster than my Windows XP Pro (~25 secs), on par to a "clean" installation of Gentoo Linux (with no extra services) and slower than BeOS 5 (around 8 seconds, but BeOS doesn't load anything heavy on startup).
Windows Server 2003 As A Workstation Or Desktop
