Forum Moderators: open
Along with Windows 98 and a host of other products which Microsoft are no longer to support.
I have to laugh though. I once worked at a place where they were still using Windows 3.1!
Of course, this has led to new "major" versions that really were minimally or not at all improved, and even premature releases with "dribble-ware" fixes.
Many SMEs run on the motto of don't fix what ain't broken. If someone's getting the job done with Win 3.1, then more power to them, I say. I have several versions of some of my most frequently used programs, and I often prefer to older one for various purposes.
Not that IE 5.5 (or Win98 for that matter) is anything to hang onto -- and especially not IE 5 for the Macintosh.
However its not like the workout for NS4 so no biggie, and I have no problem with doing that for a couple more years.
(It's especially easy with the recent discovery around here on how to run IE 5.0 + IE 5.5 and IE 6.0 all on the same PC at the same time, without vmware etc)
Then there's the much improved hardware support. USB2? Digital camera? Just shove a card in and it recognises it straight away.
IE6 has numerous improvements over IE5. It has Strict Mode, where the box model bug is fixed. Sure there have been constant security patches, but at least we're getting them.
Yet I still see people scared of upgrading to XP and IE6. They are like me - why upgrade when 98 and IE5 works fine? But surely it's obvious that the newest is better - more features, less bugs. Anyone still using Windows95 and IE4 is insane.
Actually, they're probably running a slow and old PC, one of the only real reasons not to upgrade. That, and an age-old human fear of change.
Take a chance - upgrade! - and see what you've been missing.
The rest who have dragged their feet are probably doing it because they have not felt the need to upgrade. MS would like us all to do so every two to three years. Most users prefer a longer time period because of cost plus they don't use all the features. Throwing even more at them is not that big of an incentive to many.
There's a ton of stuff under the bonnet. The internet is faster with it. Everything seems smoother, more robust. I honestly can't see why anyone wouldn't want something improved that benefits their whole system.
It's like an old TV or VCR. You carry on using it until it finally breaks, then you get a new model and realise how much better they are thesedays.
Now how do we convince people still using Netscape 4 to change? :-)
Not in my experience. More like: Everything seems more robust, but you need a much quicker machine to get the same performance.
Though I use XP Pro and it does not crash very often. It does crash sometimes, but I would not go back to 98 where it would make a full working day without crashing just a few times a month.
It is more Plug and Play and less Plug and Pray, too. So adding printers/scanners/modems/cameras are usually as easy as plug it in. I find I don't even open the discs that come with most peripherals now! With 98, you can spend hours getting something to work, a minimum of 15 minutes, with XP it is usually a couple of minutes.
And yes, a 4 year-old system is getting on in years for a lot of people here. But HomeSite and Photoshop run zippy enough, and a lot of my clients are still on 300MHz Celerons or 200MHz Pentium IIs anyway.
[edited by: choster at 3:33 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2003]
I keep it well-maintained, and it crashes about once a day
? - remind me to never hire you for maintenance ;)
I have 512mb RAM on my notebook, my wife's notebook has 256mb. My machine runs much faster, however I do have a faster processor 2.4 vs. 1.8.
I keep it well-maintained, and it crashes about once a day
I hope your five-year-old car does not crash once a day!
Actually, once per day is quite normal for a maintained version of W98, non-maintained installations crash far more often.
You will probably find that 700MHz is fast enough for Windows XP, as long as (and this is a definate) you have lots of memory. I currently have a 2GHz machine, but only 128Mb and it runs exceptionally slowly. Looking to upgrade to 512Mb next year. If you processor is 700MHz, you may find 512Mb may be adequate to run it quickly.
Note: Upgrading memory is not what many people think. 256Mb is not double 128Mb in that the Operating System takes up a chunk of memory. It will take a bit more in a 256Mb machine than a 128Mb, but probably not double. It is estimated that by doubling the RAM, you will be tripling or possibly quadrupling the amount of memory available for intense tasks and applications.
Actually, once per day is quite normal for a maintained version of W98, non-maintained installations crash far more often.
Please tell me you are trolling - I've various Win 9x versions up for 200+ plus days as servers, or standalones doing CAD, rendering, etc - you guys need to examine your maintenance routines.
You can turn off fx like fading menus to get XP up to speed on a slow machine. I'd say it would run fine on a 700MHz PC.
One thing to remember is to have a large enough hard drive too. It'll need around 5Gb to run nicely.
Anything that crashes once a day should be deleted immediately! As for new drivers, hey, XP comes with hundreds built-in. Old hardware like Zip drives often works just by plugging it in! When it comes to driver support, you can't beat XP. Windows 98 is a pain to get drivers installed. (Reboot, reboot...)
Of course upgrading does mean scrubbing all your programs and starting again. It takes me about a week to get back to normal. Yes, I know, make a hard drive copy...
Some programs run better too under XP - after all, that's the standard now. I remember Photoshop Elements slowed down for several seconds when using the Save To Web option - you could see the screen being cleared and redrawn. Not sure why. In XP, the feature is instant.
What happens when programs are released that no longer support Windows 95 or 98? One good thing in XP is a setting where you can run old programs in 'Compatibility Mode' - as if they were on an older version of Windows. Mind you, it didn't work for Quake for me. Imagine my horror when I found the classic game didn't work in XP! Aggh! Luckily I was only wanting to try the Open GL graphics patch anyway, which makes it work in XP, so problem solved.
just my 1.5 cents,
robert
I did read a report once that compared Acorn RiscOS against an Apple Mac (I don't know what versions of OS they were) against Windows 98. The machines were as new and switched on. No applications were loaded and the machines were only touched once per day, the mouse was moved, just to make sure they were still alive. And believe it or not, even the AppleMac crashed all by itself - though it took about six months. Windows lasted less than three months and the Acorn never crashed. Interesting results that an OS can crash itself, months after being started. Why would it do that?
I actually found Windows 98 to be the worst they have produced (that I have used). Well, maybe except for Windows ME, but as I have only ever seen it on other peoples machines, usually with Gator/Kazaa installed, it may be a bit unfair to compare them! All I can say about Windows ME is that it was not a simple affair to just delete and reinstall (in fact I never did get it back on one machine!). So, deleting Windows 98 and reinstalling or coping with the crashes on my only business machine would have been highly risky. When my power supply blow up once, it took about 24 hours to get hold of one and fitted (because of circumstances) and the business ground to a halt. So a problem installing W98 again would have been a nightmare. System maintenance was done with Norton Systemworks, which solved a lot of problems, but never the crashing. I worked in an Adult Education place which had hundreds of machines with W98 and they also crashed repeatedly. Windows 95 was much more solid, but unfortunately, far less powerful.
System maintenance was done with Norton Systemworks
aha!
For the record, I regularly use a P2 366mhz laptop with 192mb of ram running XP. I won't call it a speed demon, but it isn't noticably sluggish until I'm running fireworks mx, a couple of browsers, various flavors of text editors and an apache test server.
98? Good riddens.
Time to upgrade - no more patches
So, for IE6 it is -- time to patch, no more upgrades?
:)
