WINDOWS upgrade form 98se to???

[mtxblau]

Originally posted by Fabrizo@Jan. 30 2003, 9:03 am

My thoughts on the different OS's:

Win2k - good performance, little memory usage, wonderful stability, good to use as a server, and has the ability to run basicly everything xp/win98se/me can.

WinXP - lacks a real DOS, eats up too much memory, but is currently the most used m$ OS for new comps which makes it so it gets the most upgrades and attention from that company.

Linux + BeOS - havn't tried them yet.

Just to follow up.

Win2K does run flawlessly, however it doesn't run everything - there are some programs (I've been finding recently) that don't operate properly at all in the 2K environment, but work fine in 98 and XP. But it does run a majority of mainstream apps.

WinXP lacks a real DOS, but so does Win2K.

Linux - clustering them together is like clustering all MS products together, unfortunately. I'm finding this out very quickly, as I just moved to Linux on my laptop. They all run from the same kernel, roughly, but how they use that kernel is an entirely different matter.

Redhat, Debian, FreeBSD - they're all aimed at a particular market, as in running servers, etc. They're hardly geared towards people just getting into Linux, and as many admins have been saying recently (about Redhat, in particular), they've been overlooking and avoiding their shortcomings (ie, adding new hardware, intuitiveness, etc.)

Then there's a bunch of versions that are geared towards the more 'casual' (if you could use that term) user. Items like SuSe, and Mandrake, which allow you to install in a folder, rather than a partition, use a variety of bootloaders, and setting up is quite easy (SuSe implements something called YaST2 - it makes setting up Linux very straightforward, and Mandrake has something similar). I'm currently learning/using Mandrake 9 - it's autodetection and setup are light years ahead of RedHat's.

Why would anyone really want to switch to Linux? Well, if you want to get away from MS and can't afford a Mac... everything you need to run Linux is free, and there are forums aplenty for help (if you have the patience). After installing Mandrake, all I added was Netscape 7.01 and AOL's AIM (just because those are what I like and am used to). They're optimized for a variety of processors (even the K6, I speak from 1st hand experience), and because they're trying to gather more support, there is loads of information to get you going.

That's just my 2c.

----

Falstaff, you never addressed the superior graphics capabilities and enhanced experience you referred to. I really do want to know.

 

[antime]

Originally posted by MTXBlau@Jan. 31 2003, 7:51 pm

Win2K does run flawlessly, however it doesn't run everything - there are some programs (I've been finding recently) that don't operate properly at all in the 2K environment, but work fine in 98 and XP. But it does run a majority of mainstream apps.

That indicates bugs in the programs you want to run. The increased compatibility of XP is specially added bug compatibility, not faults in W2K.

However, there's little advantage to ultra-stabile operating systems as long as your applications aren't stable, you lose your work either way. The Mac has a small advantage in being such a niche platform, as it means the application developers are, on average, of a higher standard while Windows is drowning in multi-megabyte MFC "Hello World"-apps that don't work correctly.

Anyway, for maximum OS stability on x86 CPUs get QNX and for maximum stability overall get a VAX system running VMS.

 

[mtxblau]

Originally posted by antime@Jan. 30 2003, 4:05 pm

That indicates bugs in the programs you want to run. The increased compatibility of XP is specially added bug compatibility, not faults in W2K.

No, the program specifically says "not meant to run on NT" or "win95 environment not found" or "this program wasn't designed to run under Windows 2000, the program will exit now". Unless those are bugs, in any event, they aren't 'crashing' without reason.

I actually have some hardware that refuse to work outside of Win98. Go figure.

 

[Falstaf]

I must admit that i was not up tp date on the current comparisons made in the article in Gamefoo's earlier post. For the most part, my comments were (foolishly?) based on Apple's own hype. And I do hereby retract my former comments on Macs being graphically superior to pcs. I was also interesting reading the comments, following the link at the bottom of the page, in the forums section of the linked page. I will be interesting to see wwhat sort of changes the new IBM cpu's, Apple will start using in March, will bring to the Macs that will come out of this colaberation.

I still hold that ths Mac os is much more user friendly than the windows os. While it is true that OS X has a command line, I have never had to access it. While my experience with XP is not all encompassing ( I would like to try the Pro version. I had it and office for XP Pro, I gave them away. they were sent to me for evaluation reasons but I didn't have time to participate.) even Win2kpro needs periodic command line access to resolve issues.

Having said that, I will once again state that I do not have a fanatical, 'religous' attitude toward either platform. I use both, as the need arises.

I do wish to state though, that for the average home user, ( I qualify this as most users here are gamers, ect. and abuse their cpu's quiet heavily.) speed is a moot point. It means nothing to them. They don't understand it and more to the point, they don't need it. They never tax their computer with any graphics greater than that displayed (for example) on this site. Thats it! 85-90% of the time their cpu is idle. They have no need for the latest and greatest. A broad band connection would be of much greater use than the latest P4 or G4 powerhouse processor. Most techies I know are still using P2 300-P3 500 processors. This is a side point to the above comments, so let me recap....I recant my comments about the Mac G4 being faster than the P4, my info was obsolete and I was in error. (coarse, I still think Macs are the coolest looking computers made. Who doesn't lust after the ultra wide Studio flat panel display?)

 

[IceDigger]

www.xandros.com

you'll like it

 

[Fabrizo]

Originally posted by MTXBlau@Jan. 30 2003, 2:51 pm

"WinXP lacks a real DOS, but so does Win2K."

Could you explain this a bit more? I know that WinXP's dos is emulated basicly, but what about win2k's?

 

[Curtis]

It's the same. Windows 9x is basically just a nice graphic interface for all the DOS commands (with some extra bits-and-bobs like DirectX). Underneath the interface, is the core DOS technologies that have been around since the 80's.

Both XP and 2K are complete re-writes and have no MS-DOS core to speak of. You can't, in either OS, "exit to DOS" because when you are at the desktop, you are already in "DOS".

 

[antime]

Originally posted by Curtis@Feb. 01 2003, 1:37 am

It's the same. Windows 9x is basically just a nice graphic interface for all the DOS commands (with some extra bits-and-bobs like DirectX). Underneath the interface, is the core DOS technologies that have been around since the 80's.

That isn't really true, but Win95 does bend over backwards and in a couple of other interesting ways to enable DOS programs and programs and drivers for older versions of Windows to run. I can give you a long, very technical answer but I don't think anyone really cares that much.

 

[gamefoo21]

i am forced to agree with falstaff because i do believe that mac's are cool looking machine's.

Oh btw. a 333mhz amd k6-2 processor has a 100% cpu load while running a 10Mbps lan card at full speed. and for encoding things having a powerful processor comes in handy.

 

[Curtis]

Originally posted by antime@Feb. 01 2003, 8:55 pm

That isn't really true, but Win95 does bend over backwards and in a couple of other interesting ways to enable DOS programs and programs and drivers for older versions of Windows to run. I can give you a long, very technical answer but I don't think anyone really cares that much.

That's about right. If I cared enough, I probably would have known that true answer in the first place. Oh well...