My dad wants to upgrade his comp and my sisters comp from windows me, and he thinks that 2k3 server is the best upgrade path. My sister plays a lot of games on her computer, so I don't really think that would be best, but he's convinced it is as he can get a good deal on the OS. Is it possible to effectively use 2003 server as a gaming OS?

Server OS's are really designed to be just that - To serve something. Whether it be a domain controller, file, print server etc. There are literally 100's of features & services in win 2003 server that you won't have any use for on a home PC. All of the services that run on a server OS will make your gaming experience pretty crappy. I guess you could diable a bunch of stuff, but what would be the point ? I think it's a bad idea. XP pro will do the job so much better for less than 1/4 of the cost. PS - ME cannot be upgraded to server 2003. You would have to do a clean install.

it is such an amazing experience using windows server 2003 as a workstation. powerful, stable and definately fast. my advice to you, download the trial version from the microsoft web site, use it less than 1 month, try it out, if you don't like it, just format your PC and install windows XP Pro. but do believe me, after you install the windows server 2003, you don't even want to switch off your PC. windows server 2003, is really a very impressive piece of OS. try it out, you will love it!

Win 2k3 server is an amazing Operating System, simply blows away XP Pro, IF you have someone knowledgable around to set it up. Myself, I play Quake 3, Rocket Arena 2 and 3, Battle Zone 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Grand Theft Auto 3, and several other minor games regularly on it. No problems what so ever, runs them excellently. Be warned tho, be sure that the machine you plan to install it on is pretty strong. Since it is a server O/S, many of the Vid/Sound services are not optimized, so they tend to use more resources than say Win XP would. Feel free to E-mail me if you have further questions.

Thank you for your help everyone. Price is no object, as I can get a pretty good deal through a student discount. It sounds like that serving is exactly what the OS is meant for. However, it also seems to run games if you do some optimizing. Thank you for the information everybody.

There's another choice. If you use partition magic + boot magic, to create a partition for windows 98 and games and a partition for Windows 2003. Both of them are active partitions and each one will have a different o.s. (W98 and 2003) Upon startup, Boot Magic will prompt you to select the system to boot up from. I could not agree more with lightningstrike who said that Windows 2003 blows XP Pro away, but he's right, some fixings must be done to get that advantage and use is as a workstation. Good luck

"Since it is a server O/S, many of the Vid/Sound services are not optimized" Services not optimized? You just have to turn them on/off. As far as workstations go, same sheit as xp but more "up-to-date" responsive & stable...