OS change?
#1
03-14-02, 02:27 PM
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: N.W. MS.
Posts: 1,753
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes
on
0 Posts
OS change?
Am running Windows 98 and want to upgrade to either ME or XP. A friend runs ME and is thinking of upgrading to XP. Any suggestions, recommends or don't do's would be appreciated.
Also which package of software productivity are the best?
ie: Word, Works, etc. No one can read my word perfect files on their system.
Kay
Also which package of software productivity are the best?
ie: Word, Works, etc. No one can read my word perfect files on their system.
Kay
#2
03-14-02, 03:40 PM
Member
Join Date: Jun 2001
Posts: 1,421
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes
on
0 Posts
You asked for my 2 cents :)
Now mind you I don't have ME or XP. At one momet in time I was working 6 Tech sites, then I lost my mind and came back home to DIY.
Some things I did see were a whole lot of people, who were having Hardware problems with ME & XP mostly XP. A large amount of hardware was not XP ready. My ABIT MOBO has to have a Bios upgrade to run XP.
At our local Wal-Mart the XP programs went down $100.00 on a lot of the more costly versions of XP. They say sales are slow. You can't find a copy of 98 there because, I think people camp in the sporting goods just waiting for them to get their 2 weekly copies of 98.
When I was asking around about what OS to put on my new Computer, I got a lot of DON'T put on 2000 it has no DOS and you will be at the mercy of MS.
I chose Win 98SE. Now I know that you hopfuly get as many answers as those poor folks who dare to ask "What kind of Computer should I buy"? And in any board I have been on, 98% will jump back with Build your own. That's why we hang around together, could be we are Computer nut's
I even had a friend who owned a Computer shop who offered to build me what I wanted in a White box, and I still bought a Compaq. I just was not ready!
Kay I am going to buy two View Sonic Monitors next week. Brian gave me 2 links to do some checking on prices. I am going to get them for $336.00 ea to my door. I could have had them for $302.00. I then asked for a link to check the different resellers out. Mr $302.00 rated a 5, Mr $336 who cut $10.00 off ea. unit because I asked if I bought 2 would you give me a break? Rated a 10+ so you know who I am going to buy from.
The point I hope to get across is, Kay has to live with her decision for a long time. Get our opinions then go read what the pros have to say. I chose Win98SE and Word Perfect instead of 2000 pro and Office 2000, because I liked what I read from the Pros on Tech Republic and my friends.
I sure hope you get a lot of replies because I would like to know what some of the others think and why.
Best of luck Kay in your choice, Marturo
PS what do you expect from a guy who drives a 1969 restored Chevy Pick up, and listens to 60s & 70s Rock & Roll music LOL.
Some things I did see were a whole lot of people, who were having Hardware problems with ME & XP mostly XP. A large amount of hardware was not XP ready. My ABIT MOBO has to have a Bios upgrade to run XP.
At our local Wal-Mart the XP programs went down $100.00 on a lot of the more costly versions of XP. They say sales are slow. You can't find a copy of 98 there because, I think people camp in the sporting goods just waiting for them to get their 2 weekly copies of 98.
When I was asking around about what OS to put on my new Computer, I got a lot of DON'T put on 2000 it has no DOS and you will be at the mercy of MS.
I chose Win 98SE. Now I know that you hopfuly get as many answers as those poor folks who dare to ask "What kind of Computer should I buy"? And in any board I have been on, 98% will jump back with Build your own. That's why we hang around together, could be we are Computer nut's
I even had a friend who owned a Computer shop who offered to build me what I wanted in a White box, and I still bought a Compaq. I just was not ready!
Kay I am going to buy two View Sonic Monitors next week. Brian gave me 2 links to do some checking on prices. I am going to get them for $336.00 ea to my door. I could have had them for $302.00. I then asked for a link to check the different resellers out. Mr $302.00 rated a 5, Mr $336 who cut $10.00 off ea. unit because I asked if I bought 2 would you give me a break? Rated a 10+ so you know who I am going to buy from.
The point I hope to get across is, Kay has to live with her decision for a long time. Get our opinions then go read what the pros have to say. I chose Win98SE and Word Perfect instead of 2000 pro and Office 2000, because I liked what I read from the Pros on Tech Republic and my friends.
I sure hope you get a lot of replies because I would like to know what some of the others think and why.
Best of luck Kay in your choice, Marturo
PS what do you expect from a guy who drives a 1969 restored Chevy Pick up, and listens to 60s & 70s Rock & Roll music LOL.
#3
03-14-02, 05:34 PM
Choose XP. [My vote, even though I doubt I will use it]. In either event figure on building a new compliant PC and purchasing compliant trimmings. MS maintains a compliancy list on their site.
XP is the last of 32 bit Windows OSes. [Microsoft said so]. And, MS has worked long and hard moulding an NT networking world. When the 64 bit OS finally arrives it's likely that there will be fewer mitigation issues if you spend the two grand or so now on a XP compliant machine and peripherals. In the mean time you won't find vendors falling all over themselves to support ME or XP [especially ME].
As far as it goes minor differences are deliberately engineered into Windows programs. A minor difference between the 95 and 98 versions of Wordpad exists. If you know how, it's easy to convert between the two. So, choose your friends based on the Windows OS they use, find a conversion program, or learn how to doityourself.com
Seriously, if you feel left out or behind the times and you intend to stick with MS products upgrade to an NT version. Less culture shock when transitioning to the 64 bit os than from Win98.
For you ammusement, the following was resently sent to me buy a friend.
For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives:
At a recent computer exposition (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If General Motors had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, GM issued a press release stating: "If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
XP is the last of 32 bit Windows OSes. [Microsoft said so]. And, MS has worked long and hard moulding an NT networking world. When the 64 bit OS finally arrives it's likely that there will be fewer mitigation issues if you spend the two grand or so now on a XP compliant machine and peripherals. In the mean time you won't find vendors falling all over themselves to support ME or XP [especially ME].
As far as it goes minor differences are deliberately engineered into Windows programs. A minor difference between the 95 and 98 versions of Wordpad exists. If you know how, it's easy to convert between the two. So, choose your friends based on the Windows OS they use, find a conversion program, or learn how to doityourself.com
Seriously, if you feel left out or behind the times and you intend to stick with MS products upgrade to an NT version. Less culture shock when transitioning to the 64 bit os than from Win98.
For you ammusement, the following was resently sent to me buy a friend.
For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives:
At a recent computer exposition (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If General Motors had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, GM issued a press release stating: "If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
#4
03-14-02, 05:51 PM
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: N.W. MS.
Posts: 1,753
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes
on
0 Posts
You guys are great. 2000 loved the car/microsoft analogy. That was good.
Think I'll just stick with what I have now. Seems to suit me just fine considering I bought it 3 years ago and have only updated my drivers, added an external zip drive, maxed my memory capabilities (256M...ooooooowww big time, I know), and use ethernet instead of dial up.
I will link my friend to this page so she can make her own decision. All we have done to her 6 month old machine is add a CDRW and maxed her memory capabilities. She is running ME, not too spectacular to me, just looks like my Money 2002 program. Lots of light blue, and hard to navigate help files.
Thanks guys,
Kay
Think I'll just stick with what I have now. Seems to suit me just fine considering I bought it 3 years ago and have only updated my drivers, added an external zip drive, maxed my memory capabilities (256M...ooooooowww big time, I know), and use ethernet instead of dial up.
I will link my friend to this page so she can make her own decision. All we have done to her 6 month old machine is add a CDRW and maxed her memory capabilities. She is running ME, not too spectacular to me, just looks like my Money 2002 program. Lots of light blue, and hard to navigate help files.
Thanks guys,
Kay
#5
03-14-02, 06:06 PM
Windows ME to Windows XP
I was running Windows Me but I got tired of it giving me problems when I played video games with extra large files that required alot of the computers resources. Also I wanted to install alot more Ram in my machine but ME could not utilize it. Also Windows XP is supposed to be more stable than ME. So far I have to say that my experiences with XP's stability have been positive but it is a hassle to install it on your system. So I decided to try and run the gambit. When I attempted to install it, it would not proceed, I needed to update my video drivers and bios. Other than these two issues I had no problems with XP. However my computer is brand new and I just built it. Basically, if your serious about installing XP look for any compatibility issues ahead of time so you can handle those up front. XP will also tell you what hardware or software that is on your system which is not compitable in it's current configuration. I also think Microsoft has a utility on it's web site that will do the same thing. I have had some issues with trying to take documents and applications from home where I have XP to work where they are using Windows 98. I cant see any of the files, I assume this is because I have formatted my zip disks using NTFS file allocation rather than FAT 32. Currently I am investigating what I need to do so I can share files between XP and 98.
In my opinion, I like the way XP looks and the way it is set up but I am just scratching the surface on what the ramifications of using NTFS over FAT 32. I don't know what inconveniences I will have. So far I can say documents and files are forward compatible from 98 to XP but I think they are not backwards compatible from XP to 98 when you use the NTFS file allocation system.
But the biggest problem I had when installing XP was created when I downloaded my drivers. I think one of them had a internet spy program called WebHancer attached. It totally wreaked havoc on my machine, it changed my system files without letting me know. When I set my firewall to block webhancers attempts to contact it's home base it also prevented me from surfing the net. I could not use the MS uninstaller to remove it and I could not just simply delete the file from my directory. The only way I could surf the net was to let WebHancer do it's thing. Whan I found a program to download over the net that would eliminate WebHancer (AdAware) WebHancer corrupted the download. The only way I got rid of it was to download the software from work and take it home and install it. Other than this I can say my XP install was ok.
If you are a computer nut that likes the latest thing out, or run very large applications you probablly could benefit from XP. But if you just want a computer to surf the web type a few documents and don't really do a whole lot of extraeneous activities on your machine then you probably wont miss XP, Microsoft won't tell you this though. XP just hit the block this operating system is totally different from what most people have had at home and eventually it will probably become the norm. Personally If 98SE would allow me to use more ram then I may be using that, I would at least have considered it.
The best judge is yourself, go to a store and play with XP to see if you like it.
I don't know if my ramblings will help you make a decision but this is my 2 cents. I apologize for my long response.
Good Luck.
In my opinion, I like the way XP looks and the way it is set up but I am just scratching the surface on what the ramifications of using NTFS over FAT 32. I don't know what inconveniences I will have. So far I can say documents and files are forward compatible from 98 to XP but I think they are not backwards compatible from XP to 98 when you use the NTFS file allocation system.
But the biggest problem I had when installing XP was created when I downloaded my drivers. I think one of them had a internet spy program called WebHancer attached. It totally wreaked havoc on my machine, it changed my system files without letting me know. When I set my firewall to block webhancers attempts to contact it's home base it also prevented me from surfing the net. I could not use the MS uninstaller to remove it and I could not just simply delete the file from my directory. The only way I could surf the net was to let WebHancer do it's thing. Whan I found a program to download over the net that would eliminate WebHancer (AdAware) WebHancer corrupted the download. The only way I got rid of it was to download the software from work and take it home and install it. Other than this I can say my XP install was ok.
If you are a computer nut that likes the latest thing out, or run very large applications you probablly could benefit from XP. But if you just want a computer to surf the web type a few documents and don't really do a whole lot of extraeneous activities on your machine then you probably wont miss XP, Microsoft won't tell you this though. XP just hit the block this operating system is totally different from what most people have had at home and eventually it will probably become the norm. Personally If 98SE would allow me to use more ram then I may be using that, I would at least have considered it.
The best judge is yourself, go to a store and play with XP to see if you like it.
I don't know if my ramblings will help you make a decision but this is my 2 cents. I apologize for my long response.
Good Luck.
#6
03-15-02, 04:16 AM
Member
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: GB, WI
Posts: 774
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes
on
0 Posts
I can only respond to 98 and 2kp. I have ME, but never used it, and my only experience with xp was my moms HP. talk abot a piece of crap! 1.8GB, 512MB ram and the thing was slower then my amd 500. But then again it was suffering from the factory install blues. I use 98se on a 1.6 HP (stupid thing only registers 1.4) and IMHO 98/SE is the most stable for gamers, I know alot are going to say XP with 98 emulation is better, but have never had a system crash, unless I caused it. And use win2kpro on an AMD TB 1.0 for business and internet access. If you use dial up, and your primary pc function is online what ever stay away from 98. As soon as I get DSL will find out how well the 98 handles. The only time I have ever had any problems with win2kpro is when I attempted to force install games that didn't want to take. w2k had a habit of corrupting the uninstall files that seemed to spread and made the entire thing crash violently.
My 2cents
Brian
My 2cents
Brian
