upgrading - windows98 or XP ???

[Kelly]

Hi all,

After many years running an overclocked Celeron at
500 mgz... woohoo!! and a voodoo 3 2000 card I am
upgrading my system.

Still on a budget, but this is what i picked:

Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard
AMD 2500+ Barton
2 sticks of Twinmos/Winbond memory 3200
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
Maxtor 80 gig 7200 RPM drive
420 watt case
LiteOn 52x burner


Questions...

1 - The ATI box says I need windows XP, Is this
true, or can i stay with windows 98?

2 - I have never used XP, so is there a big differance
between the two? Should I upgade now with the new
install?

The system will be used for a few games and a home office,
hooked to a D-Link 604 router and DSL.

Other devices:
Canon Lide scanner
Kyocera fs1000+ laser printer
Cannon BJC 4300 for the few color prints I do


Thank you for the help

Kelly

 

[Bob]

Go with XP and don't look back. Only my opinion.

 

[Alan Shepherd]

Ati have officially stopped supporting Win98, although the ME drivers are
reputed to work well.

XP should work very nicely on your system, BUT if the scanner is a parallel
port type device - you'll be very lucky to get XP drivers for it, it may be
necessary to consider a replacement.

 

[Bob]

True about the scanner. I lost the services of my original PaperPort Mx
when I switched to XP. It was the perfect toy to get a quick b/w or grey
scale onto the desktop, but I had to move on.

 

[Sanies]

Definately go XP and by the sounds of it you like to hang onto your
computers till the very end so when you buy your new system get an OEM copy
of XP at the same time.
It will save you some money but the catch is that if you sell the comp you
have to sell the copy of XP with it.
XP is very different from 98 and is alot more user freindly as it has many
wizards and things that configure most of the install very painlessly.
Also XP has native support for just about any hardware you can throw at it
and has lots of things in there to pay around with...its a bit daunting at
first but once you have used it you will never want to go back

Sanies

 

[Mangyrat]

XP its a good os for gameing you may have some problems with older games but
nothing you cant live with. you can also run both XP and 98 on same sys if
you realy need suport for old games or app's
if you go dual OS you may want to use 2 hard drives "but you dont have to as
long as its same partition like fat 32" also XP runs realy well with 1 gig
of ram unlike 98/me.
i used to do the dual booting but after a few months i found i was not even
useing 98/me at all so i formated and went XP only
the big diferance you will see from the start is the teltuby interface. that
can be changed with a few clicks so it looks and feels like win 98.
for devices that dont like xp you can set the program that runs it to run in
compatability mode just buy right clicking on the short cut.
The stability of XP is great nothing like win 98

 

[Carl Sellars]

Hi all,

After many years running an overclocked Celeron at
500 mgz... woohoo!! and a voodoo 3 2000 card I am
upgrading my system.

Still on a budget, but this is what i picked:

Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard
AMD 2500+ Barton
2 sticks of Twinmos/Winbond memory 3200
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
Maxtor 80 gig 7200 RPM drive
420 watt case
LiteOn 52x burner


Questions...

1 - The ATI box says I need windows XP, Is this
true, or can i stay with windows 98?

2 - I have never used XP, so is there a big differance
between the two? Should I upgade now with the new
install?

The system will be used for a few games and a home office,
hooked to a D-Link 604 router and DSL.

Other devices:
Canon Lide scanner
Kyocera fs1000+ laser printer
Cannon BJC 4300 for the few color prints I do

At this point there is very little to be gained by not going down the XP
route IMHO.

However, if you want to continue to use your existing system and possibly
even network the two together, then I'd advise you to buy XP Professional
rather than the Home edition. There's about a 30% increase in cost between
the two, certainly here in the UK, but I've found that the difference in
flexibility, certainly when networking, is huge and easily makes up for the
difference in cost.

Hope that this helps,

 

[Kelly]

Thanks for the replies,
The scanner is USB pretty new, less then a year.

 

[Kelly]

Does this hold true even when using a router?
When I built the house I prewired every room with
2 pair of cat5. All home run to a central loctaion.

The DSL modem is in the central location along with a
D-Link DI-604 router. Is it a problem running XP with
other older machines on windows 98 ?

Thank's for everyone's help

 

[Carl Sellars]

Does this hold true even when using a router?
When I built the house I prewired every room with
2 pair of cat5. All home run to a central loctaion.

The DSL modem is in the central location along with a
D-Link DI-604 router. Is it a problem running XP with
other older machines on windows 98 ?

Thank's for everyone's help

Well it depends on what you want to do of course. The problems I've
encountered have been between two networked SP1 XP Home edition machines so I
don't know how good (or bad) it would be between XP Home and Windows 98. The
problems I've encountered include:

- The inability to share a printer between two XP Home machines without both
users having Administrator level access.

- It is not possible to have 'read only' and 'full' password protected access
to shared folders ala W95/98/2000 under XP Home.

- There are only two levels of user under XP Home, 'Administrator' and
'Restricted'. AFAIKT 'Restricted' is so restricted that the only network
resources they can get are email and web browsing. Printing has to be done
through the local printer and then only if it's not shared.

So what might this mean to you? Well:

- You must give everyone administrator access to all machines if you want
every user to be able to access all local networked resources.

- The result of this is that you can't keep any of your data private if you
share discs or folders.

- If your computer is compromised then because all accounts are administrator
level the uninvited guests have access to everything.

Indeed issue 183 of Computer Shopper here in the UK ran an article on XP
security and I quote from the introduction::

"Unfortunately many of the omissions from XP Home are irritating and
inconvenient. The documentation provided also downplays the most
sophisticated security issues which makes it even harder for the
beginner to make sense of it. You get the sense that it has been
pared down to encourage users to buy the more expensive Professional
edition."

This certainly holds true in my experience. I'm sure that someone will have a
work around to some of the problems that I've mentioned here but it does seem
reasonable to say that many networked features you may take for granted under
Windows 98 simply aren't available in the XP Home edition.

Cheers

--
Carl

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids,
we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
listening to repetitive electronic music."
-- Anon

 

[Kelly]

I guess that makes it official!
XP will be needed to run the audio, and ethernet!
I love forced upgrades!

And Since I need to share the laser printer
I will need XP Office I guess.....

Or I could buy the network card for the printer.

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[SST]

My dad has a canon film scanner and it is NOT supported under WinXP. We kept
his old computer (P3/733) with Win2000 on it just for that reason and
networked to his new AthlonXP with WinXP.

WinXP is SO worth it!

 

[Ed T Wilson]

Upgrade to XP, it is far superior to 98
I had to scanners that I used when I upgraded to XP
A visioneer 7600 USB flat bed that is not supported under XP and
visioneer admits as much. I keep it connected to an older Win98 box
A Nikon coolscan IV ED USB film scanner that is compatible with XP and
runs beautifully.
Check with the scanner manufacturer to see if they support XP.
If it is less than a year old chances are they do.
Ed