Your SOHO business is expanding. It has almost outgrown what used to be the spare bedroom at home, or the shared space in the local office park, and so have your computing needs. If you've already grown into a larger office space, you need to be sure your infrastructure is stable.

If you are like a lot of folks, your present operating systems are two to three revisions behind, and it's time for a change to get you through the next couple of years.There are a lot of options here, and what you choose may make or break your business. Sharing data between two or three PCs in a peer-to-peer network is relatively easy and quick, but when you get beyond 10 users, it makes sense to leave the desktops alone and let a server handle the shared-resources load. Consideration must be given to server software, present staff expertise, and any necessary training or new personnel. It is likely that the acting in-house techie who's also working in marketing or shipping will have to make a career choice: Step up to network engineering and administration, or step aside and let the boss hire an IT professional or a consulting firm.

When most of us think home- or small-business operating systems, we're thinking Microsoft, but it is not the only choice. And with the dawn of Windows 2000, with its enterprise-level complexity and compatibility issues, Microsoft seems to be ignoring the small office network. On the desktop side, Windows Millennium Edition (Me) is the next thing from Microsoft. Because Me does not support legacy DOS applications, you may be forced to consider other alternatives or stick with Win 98 SE. Other vendors would ably fill these gaps, however. Novell still has a significant hand in small-network configurations, and the variants of Linux and the Mac OS are not to be ignored either. With all the transitions at Microsoft, now's the time to seriously examine your operating-systems strategy with an eye toward the long term. desktop strategy Windows Millennium Edition (Me) has hit the streets and copies of Windows 98 SE will be hard to find. Me is the preferred desktop operating-system upgrade for most users of Windows 95, 98, and 98 SE.

Me is the most significant upgrade to the Windows OS since Win95. Of particular interest here are faster boot times with no processing of the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files (your system hardware must fully support Windows devices and use native Windows device drivers, no DOS/real-mode drivers) and a change in the Windows registry structure to allow faster loading of the operating system. It offers considerable stability and speed over 95, 98, and 98 SE. Your software vendors may not have Me-compliance-tested versions of their applications available until later this month, however.

Me comes with a new support service called PC Health. With this, Microsoft is hoping to embrace several software and hardware vendors into a single on-desktop point of contact for application and driver updates and to provide critical system information to help desks. PC Health will be where users go to access the many different kinds of help, such as Windows Help, KB articles, multimedia how-to tutorials, Web-based help, troubleshooters, and others. Still, Me is not NT-based like Microsoft's next consumer desktop, code-named Whistler and due in 2001. But given three to six months to get stabilized, Me will have to do for now.

While vendors are coming on board and getting ready for this new OS, Microsoft itself has provided a few new features of interest in addition to the Windows Update Manager we've seen in Windows 98. These include: digital signing of device drivers to let us know that that drivers we are getting are authentic and checked out to work; and a more robust System Restore feature not unlike ScanReg, GoBack, and similar utilities that return your system to the state it was in prior to changes that may have corrupted the system.

Windows 2000 Professional, Server, and various other server versions have been out for quite some time. As you probably know, the Windows 2000 OS series is a significant upgrade to Windows NT. As a professional-level operating system, it is intended for more secure environments, and requires a slightly more advanced skill set to install and set up. Unless you plan on growing fast over the next few years, Windows 2000 is probably not a good choice for SOHO offices. Unless you plan on a 2000 upgrade, you should go with Windows Me over Windows 2000 Professional on the desktop.

The good news is that all of the Microsoft operating-system choices have been designed to work with each other, especially in a network or workgroup configuration. This means that any two or more Windows PCs can network with each other, share files, printers, and even dial-up or always-on Internet connections (98 SE, 2000 and Me).

With Me for desktop and peer-to-peer networking and Win2K for servers, SOHO users might be compelled to look for other options. If you are just setting up the office and want to plan for future staff additions, you might consider the Mac OS or even Linux as your base OS.

For Macintosh users, it is worth waiting until January 2001 for its Mac OS X, with its Unix OS beneath the less familiar (but still easier-to-use) Aqua Macintosh interface. The beauty of OS X is that it is a significant upgrade from previous Apple products on the network side, and it can handle heavy-duty workstation computing for graphics-intensive tasks. It's also easier to use and administer than its competitors in this space. Application program compatibility and upgrades are not supposed to be concerns, but check with your software vendors for upgrades to your present applications before getting too far ahead of yourself.

Corel, Caldera and other distributors of Linux would like you to consider this operating system for your desktop and servers. If you are starting completely from scratch for desktops and have a hobbyist's interests and skills, this is one way to go, and it's suitable if you're using the WordPerfect suite of office applications instead of Microsoft's. There are tools available that will let you run Windows applications under Linux, but this complicates matters for most situations. Chances are that Linux will not be a serious desktop OS contender for another year or so, until installation and configuration tools make it as easy to set up and maintain as Windows or Mac OS (or until Linux windows managers are more intuitive). Converting existing Windows desktop users to Linux may be more of a challenge than you want to face.

All things considered, it appears the Microsoft Me and the new Mac OS X are your present choices. Linux is just not ready for the average user's desktop owing to still-complex setup options and lacking mainstream desktop applications.