Win98 versus 2000, XP, Longhorn, etc.

[Howard Schwartz]

Although I tried 2000 for a while, I now use windows 98 for most of my pc
needs. There are significant freeware tradeoffs to upgrading to MS's
latest OS, compared to staying with one that works well for you for a
number of years: Many new freeware applications only work on the
newer OS's. Many beloved old application do not work well or at
all on the newer OS's.

Generally, each new MS OS, seems to require more hardware to work decently:
more disk space, more ram, faster processor, every so often new kinds of
ports (e.g., USB), and new kinds of buses, more disk space, etc. Often
enough old working hardware needs to be replaced because of driver
problems, incompatible cables, ports, file systems (NTFS).

I stagnated at 98 because it still sports a real dos underneath, and
I retain a host of still very useful dos programs. Yet, the thing
seems more unstable and tempremental than even 95: One corrupt file or
setting somewhere, and often a complete reinstall seems the only thing
that repairs the problem.

The newer OSs, claim much better stability using NTFS, eliminating dos,
various self repair mechanisms, etc. But, one's computer then seems
doomed to never become like a car or a VCR: Once you learn it, you
learned it and it continues to do things you want in the same way
for years.

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

 

[badgolferman]

Howard Schwartz, 6/21/2006, 1:40:54 PM,

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

W2K was a giant leap in reliability, stability and security from W9x/ME
series. Although I use WXP now, I could just as easily get by with W2K
at home or at work. Really the only significant improvement in WXP is
Remote Desktop/Remote Assistance and it can be substituted with VNC
packages. Even most older applications have a chance of running in
Compatibility Mode although that is not always reliable.

If your current OS meets all the requirements you have then all you
need worry about is security problems and compatibility with newer
websites. A dual boot system might be the answer for you.

 

[beenthere]

Although I tried 2000 for a while, I now use windows 98 for most of my pc
needs. There are significant freeware tradeoffs to upgrading to MS's
latest OS, compared to staying with one that works well for you for a
number of years: Many new freeware applications only work on the
newer OS's. Many beloved old application do not work well or at
all on the newer OS's.

Generally, each new MS OS, seems to require more hardware to work
decently:
more disk space, more ram, faster processor, every so often new kinds of
ports (e.g., USB), and new kinds of buses, more disk space, etc. Often
enough old working hardware needs to be replaced because of driver
problems, incompatible cables, ports, file systems (NTFS).

I stagnated at 98 because it still sports a real dos underneath, and
I retain a host of still very useful dos programs. Yet, the thing
seems more unstable and tempremental than even 95: One corrupt file or
setting somewhere, and often a complete reinstall seems the only thing
that repairs the problem.

The newer OSs, claim much better stability using NTFS, eliminating dos,
various self repair mechanisms, etc. But, one's computer then seems
doomed to never become like a car or a VCR: Once you learn it, you
learned it and it continues to do things you want in the same way
for years.

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

Hi H.
You have to analyse what you actually Do with your machine.
Does the one you have fulfill all your computing tasks.
Everyone could keep chucking money at upgrades, and still Do,
on the machine, what they`ve always done.
That would be a total waste of cash.
It`s impossible to catch up with technology now.
Todays new stuff is old hat by next week.
My yardsick, is to stay 1 year behind the current.
That way parts have come down to a realistic price.

 

[mike]

I stagnated at 98 because it still sports a real dos underneath, and
I retain a host of still very useful dos programs. Yet, the thing
seems more unstable and tempremental than even 95:

That's probably true, and the only thing (I theenk) 95 hasn't got that I
miss is the quick launch bar.

But powerpro will do all that for you and a helluva lot more.

One corrupt file or

setting somewhere, and often a complete reinstall seems the only thing
that repairs the problem.

You should try alt.win.98 before you do that. In any case, the low level
reinstall over itself is non-destructive

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

Well, I'll give XP a swerve, it'll be obsolete before I think about losing
98.

My Win98SE, with a bit of maintenance is dead stable, reliable and never
lets me dow

 

[Thorsten Duhn]

Hello,

W2K was a giant leap in reliability, stability and security from
W9x/ME series.

full ACK. I was a long time Win98SE runner myself, but in the end
I never regretted upgrading to 2000, which I still use at home.
XP Pro (at work) is fine also, after reconfiguring all this candy
colored GUI stuff...

Regards,
Thorsten

 

[Roger Johansson]

I stagnated at 98 because it still sports a real dos underneath, and
I retain a host of still very useful dos programs.

I have used win2000 for a couple of weeks now and I think it is better
than win98se, programs which often crashed before are stable now.

And I still have some kind of DOS, I can open a DOS console and use DOS
commands.

The only program that has stopped working, so far, is ATM, Another Task
Manager, which said it only works under win98 and closed itself. It is
easily replaced by process explorer and other programs from
sysinternals.com.

Yet, the thing
seems more unstable and tempremental than even 95: One corrupt file or
setting somewhere, and often a complete reinstall seems the only thing
that repairs the problem.

I have everything backed up with norton ghost partition imaging, so it
is no catastrophy if the system crashes. No signs of any instability so
far.

I tried replacing notepad.exe with metapad, and found out that this
win2000 system defends itself against such attempts, it just restores
the real notepad.exe.

I don't need a launch bar because I use Total Commander, which has a
toolbar where I put the programs I use often. Otherwise I would maybe
use powerpro, but this saves me an extra program running.

Powerpro is a very good program, but when it crashes it crashes very
hard, at least in win98, that's why I stopped using it.

(TC and ghost are payware, they are among the very few programs I use
which are not freeware)

 

[Craig]

Howard Schwartz wrote:
....

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

Howard;

Executive summary...
- Don't stay on pre-ntfs OS' if you can help it
- NTFS-based OS' are good platforms to stabilize on (for ~3-5 years)
- *nix is a great alternative and there's a learning curve

Opinions are like...linux distributions. Everybody's got one! <g>

I'd never recommend win98se or their predecessors. An exception to the
rule: when the old h/w platform will not be upgraded /and/ the operator
is *very* security-savvy. But even then, I'd stress trying a
stripped-down install of win2k or xp or DSLinux first...

I've stopped upgrading my personal MS OS' at Win2k. The lans I support
are a mix of win2k & XP. For my personal OS, I'm scrambling to make the
switch to some flavor of Unix/Linux/BSD before win2k is no longer
supported by MS. Hopefully, after enough experience, I'll switch the
lans over.

OK, that's me. As to your question. If I were to stop upgrading at a
particular MS OS, I'd either stop at win2k or winxp pro. The reasons
for this start with the NTFS kernel.

The NTFS kernel is preemptive & reentrant. These two design features
alone make it far and away more /stable/ and secure than winme or
win98(-se). Another reason is that they are widely distributed
throughout the business world meaning that fresher technologies will be
made to interoperate with them regardless of MS' plans for them.
End-of-lifing (EOL) a product is an Engineering/Marketing necessity but
that doesn't mean businesses will follow (viz nt4.0). This means 3rd
party companies will continue to "support" NTFS long after win2k and XP
are EOL'd.

That's where I'd suggest one would stop upgrading if one were so
inclined. Professionally, btw, I'll have to load, learn and use Vista.
No bitterness here. I look forward to learning how to fly that sumbyatch.

Wrt the /other/ OS's (Unix-Linux-BSD-etc), the newer upgrading paths are
much less painful (apt-get, yast) & more automagic (debian's
implementation of apt-get, synaptic). And *much* more selective than,
say, MS. So...as long as we're talking clients (desktop or laptop), I'm
not sure I see any problem to "perpetually" upgrade the *nix kernel, for
example, and leave everything else alone (eg if there are hardware
limitations). Generally speaking, such an upgrade/update would be
transparent to the user.

Below, I've included a couple of ZDLab papers comparing stability and
performance of Win2k to its predecessors. As well, a feature matrix of
the MS OS'provided by ntfs.com.


hth,
-Craig

Uptime study
doc download
<http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/b/5/db5b2495-d913-46c6-b69d-c5a0c8a78b6f/win2000r.doc>
web page
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/professional/evaluation/news/zdwindows.asp>

Performance study
doc download
<http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/5/f/75fe094b-984f-4661-8e9b-289f345eb54d/zdlabtst.doc>
web page
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/professional/evaluation/performance/reports/zdlabs.asp

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

 

[Sparkle]

I stagnated at 98 because it still sports a real dos underneath, and
I retain a host of still very useful dos programs. Yet, the thing
seems more unstable and tempremental than even 95: One corrupt file or
setting somewhere, and often a complete reinstall seems the only thing
that repairs the problem.

Win98 is my last stop along the Windows line. No updates, no patches, it
continues to work just fine.

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

When the time comes that I need to move on, I suppose it'll be Linux.

Amazes me that people are willing to be specimens under the MS
microscope. And every few years, when MS says it's time, they pay again
to keep themselves there.

 

[meow2222]

Amazes me that people are willing to be specimens under the MS
microscope. And every few years, when MS says it's time, they pay again
to keep themselves there.

Quite. MS are good at one thing: getting people to pay again and again
for windows.

I also think it depends what you want. 2k and 98se are the only windows
contenders imho, xp isnt worth touching, and 95 isnt either on modern
hardware.

2k gives a big stability improvement over the tottery 98, but the flip
side is more time setting it up and learning its ins and outs, so
whether its worth the cross-grade is a matter of question.

You can keep running that P3 on 98 and have it continue to do
everything, or you can keep buying new os and new hardware and achieve
not a whole lot more.

Re software, 98se is the version of win that will run the most apps.
Although the latest software is often nt only, there is always
something that does the same on 98. 98 has the benefit of being able to
run close to eveything written for the PC from 1981 to recently, 2k and
xp arent 100% compatible and dont have the same range of stuff
available.

2k has a terrible case of spyware. Put your ntfs drive onto 98 and
watch those enormous spy files gobble up space, MS seems weirdly keen
on spying on its customers.

If 98 works for you, whats the point spending money time and hassle to
get the same end result with 2k? If it doesnt, 2k will give you more
stability.

98's apps can all be replaced with better 3rd party ones, eg coral
taskmanager, win32pad, opera, dazycalc and so on.


NT

 

[Craig]

Howard Schwartz wrote:


Win98 is my last stop along the Windows line. No updates, no patches, it
continues to work just fine.



When the time comes that I need to move on, I suppose it'll be Linux.

Amazes me that people are willing to be specimens under the MS
microscope. And every few years, when MS says it's time, they pay again
to keep themselves there.

"Specimen under the MS microscope?" Feh, I call sour grapes.

Help me out. I can only find three reasons to avoid MS OSes:
- lack of interest
- not a requirement
- it's a "religious" thing

The rest is black helicopters & tin-foil beanies.

And MS operating systems have done more to light a fire under the
collectively moribund arses of Unix shops than even Linux. Linux didn't
sucker-punch DEC, WANG, & the rest. Windows did. Gawd-awful warts &
all. The only shop to come close to supporting as many off-the-rack
hardware combinations as MS was SCO. And you see to what they've been
reduced.

But then, I'm biased. I /love/ computers. Hardware, firmware, software
& floppies (yea, **it happens). I lust for the intel core duo L2400,
miss my TRS80 and, regularly ravage my GRUB. OMFG...I'm hooked!

(pssst, hey mister...wanna nickel-bag of 8011.2 pre-n? It's good
stuff...uncut.)

-Craig

 

[S.O. Meone]

I tried replacing notepad.exe with metapad, and found out that this
win2000 system defends itself against such attempts, it just restores
the real notepad.exe.

W2K (and I think XP also) keeps back ups of important system files in
<C:\WINNT\system32\dllcache\> , from which it automatically replaces a
removed or tampered with system file. Remove Notepad.exe from that
folder first. Only Gates knows why that crappy editor is considered an
important system file.

S.O. Meone

 

[arachnid]

Help me out. I can only find three reasons to avoid MS OSes:

- lack of interest
- not a requirement
- it's a "religious" thing

You missed one:

- it doesn't do 64 bits

Oh, sure, you can get 64-bit Windows if you're willing to spend the extra
bucks, but try getting all of your favorite applications in 64 bits.

 

[tbar]

Win2K/XP, what's the difference?

Everybody should save their old pc's.

Dos box: Duke Nukem, Full Throttle
Win98 Box: Netscape 1.0

 

[John Jay Smith]

I use everything from win2k upwards.

I will never install win98 on one of my machines unless I absolutely have
to. (I have some old machines laying around)/

Win98 tortured me for several years when I had to do complex graphic work
and
it kept crashing all the time.. it had very bad memory handling...

WinMe was an acknowledged abomination.

if you want to do some very basic things 9x is still ok.. but everything is
getting
updated....

I don't know about vista though.. I have been beta testing it for a long
time
and it just gives me the creeps....its the Bloat king of all OS...

What in the world do they have in 7 gb installation? Xp needed 1.5 gb....
I can understand 3 or 4.. but 7? And the ram? With 512 mb ram its still
slow... lol

When I use vista on production machines I will have to do some
customizing...

But indeed I will have to follow the advancements because of what I do,
I always need the latest technology at least on 2 machines...
so that means upgrading hardware, too.....


So it really has to do with what you want to do..... and what you want to
learn...

 

[Sparkle]

"Specimen under the MS microscope?" Feh, I call sour grapes.

That makes no sense. "Sour grapes" is when you can't have something, so
you conclude it's probably no good anyway.

Help me out. I can only find three reasons to avoid MS OSes:

You found four. Yes, funny names and giggles do help make that last one
easier to swallow.

 

[Craig]

You missed one:

- it doesn't do 64 bits

Oh but one day...one day!

-Craig

 

[Craig]

That makes no sense. "Sour grapes" is when you can't have something, so
you conclude it's probably no good anyway.

Dude, you evidently can't have fun w/an MS OS, ergo, sour grapes!

You found four. Yes, funny names and giggles do help make that last one
easier to swallow.

You got me Sparkle. But then again, I must be pretty...facile. Being a
'specimen' and all.

toodles,

-Craig

 

[Sparkle]

Dude, you evidently can't have fun w/an MS OS, ergo, sour grapes!

But, Dood! That still doesn't work. Win98 is still doing just fine for
me. (You accidentally snipped that, go back and look again.)

You got me Sparkle. But then again, I must be pretty...facile. Being a
'specimen' and all.

I was thinking "docile" but, hey, I'm sure "facile" describes you too.

 

[Craig]

But, Dood! That still doesn't work. Win98 is still doing just fine for
me. (You accidentally snipped that, go back and look again.)

Silly rabbit, just because you /use/ an MS OS doesn't dictate that
you're having /fun/ with it. And from all indications, Sparkle, it
doesn't look like you're having much fun. Ergo, sour grapes. <vbg>

back to you...

-Specimen

 

[Mike Dee]

Although I tried 2000 for a while, I now use windows 98 for most of my pc
needs...
[...]

Any opinions whether to perpetually upgrade or when, why and how to
stop at a particular OS?

I ran mostly 98se up until about 3 months ago. I decided it was time to
use a more modern Windows OS. I have gone to Win 2000 Pro. At this point
in time I have no intention of moving to XP or the up coming Vista.

Oddly it was the GPL'd and freeware softwares, not MS that drove me to
this "upgrade". Because more and more of the main GPL software efforts are
designed to run on Win 2k or above, and if they happen to run on 98, they
aren't supported (Gimp and Scribus spring to mind) Open Office is one of
the exceptions, for now. Supporting larger than 2 GB file sizes were
another reason for my migration.

True, I do lose a real DOS box in the trade off. But I also keep a very
well maintained P166 for that alone, it runs DOS 6.22, WFW 3.11, and '95
very nicely too.

If you have room for more than one computer for your own use, then your
options change for the better, IMO.