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> My office has about 15 computers on the network. Some computers have
Windows, 2000 or XP. We are looking to upgrade MS Office to the 2003
Professional or the Offfice XP application, but we need to know if we
should have every computer on the same operating system? The business that
manages our server informed us that there would not be conflicts between
the application software and the different operating systems. Is this true?
If not, why? Can anyone help me ?
>
> I makes sense to us non-teckies that one operating system reduces
conflicts with application software and gives us a common desktop operating
system architecture.

In a perfect world, all your desktop computers would be running the same
OS, but in the real world, this frequently isn't the case. It would be
easier to troubleshoot installation, network, printing, and other Office
(and non-Office) related issues if every computer used the same OS. That
said, it is by no means necessary to have the same OS on all computers to
install one application on said computers. The OS must be compatible with
the application, but it doesn't have to be the same as it's fellow desktop
computers. Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP are fully compatible with
Office XP and Office 2003. Installation routine should be exactly the same,
and the program should function exactly the same, regardless of which OS
you install it on - so long as the OS is compatible (that means NO Windows
95, Linux, and other "oddball" OSs).

HTH

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KB - MCNGP #26

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