Running out of IP addressses

Hi all,

I have just one DHCP server that is configured with 192.168.x.x ip with subnet of 255.255.255.0, but now I am running out of IP addresses. Will changing my subnet to 255.255.254.0 automatically solve my problem or are there other things that I have to look into?

Also, someone told me that it is preferred to use the ip class with 172.16.x.x because a lot of hardware vendors use 192.168.x.x by default and this may cause conflicts with as I try to configure new hardware. Any truth to this?

Thanks! :)