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Windows Longhorn


epp_b

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It's said to be completely incompatible with any current software hardware that work with FAT32 and NTFS, because of it's new filesystem. Who on Earth wants to spend thousands of dollars to buy all new hardware and software, just to run the latest OS from Microsoft anyway (oh yeah, and did I mention that it will probably be mostly Microsoft software that will work with Longhorn to begin with....hmmm, sounds like Microsoft to me)?Not only that, but knowing how Windows XP already requires a very decent machine to run anywhere near swiftly, I can't begin to imaging how slow Longhorn will be. This means the new components users will be forced to buy will have to be the latest and greatest, costing even more money!Even some of the concepts are stupid and pointless...flapping around half-transparent rotating windows, the overall ugly "plex" look, and the idea that, once again, Microsoft will have to release hundreds of patches before it's half the operating system they intended it to be.Microsoft needs to rethink it's "product lifecycle" threories. When you make a product, you don't say "I'm going to support this product for only a certain period of time, after which you will be forced to buy the new version of the product with new bugs and problems, just when you're starting to get comfortable with the one you have. If you don't we won't support you, and you'll be screwed".You make a product, and you support it -- and that's final. Go ahead make new versions of the product. Some people like the idea of fancy (albeit useless) new features, so they'll bite. Just don't drag the rest of us down with them!

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It's starting to sound like they are trying to kick start a slowing PC industry by selling PC's that can run this stuff.Kind of like Win XP Media Center Edition. Can't get it without a new PC fom select vendors.Chris

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The question is, why is the PC industry slowing? Is it because people are just not interested in owning computers? Of course not -- especially in this day and age! It's because most people are satisified with the computers they already have -- so why bother spending the money to upgrade if they don't have to?!PC manufacturers need to be increasingly inovative (with maintaining compatibility, of course!), and stop beating a dead horse, in order to convince users and give them a reason to upgrade. And don't go on telling me that inovation is dead -- there is no limit as to what the creative mind of a human being can invent.I don't believe the Microsoft is being inovative with their upcoming Longhorn OS, just useless. It looks like another bloated OS that will only be subject to more exploitable vulnerabilities because of the fact that it's so unnecessarily overdone. All the fancy-schmancy GUI tricks are probably pretty cool, but not worth forking over the big cash it's going to cost. I'll stick with my Win98SE, thank-you very much.

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The question is, why is the PC industry slowing?  Is it because people are just not interested in owning computers?  Of course not -- especially in this day and age!  It's because most people are satisified with the computers they already have -- so why bother spending the money to upgrade if they don't have to?!PC manufacturers need to be increasingly inovative (with maintaining compatibility, of course!), and stop beating a dead horse, in order to convince users and give them a reason to upgrade.  And don't go on telling me that inovation is dead -- there is no limit as to what the creative mind of a human being can invent.I don't believe the Microsoft is being inovative with their upcoming Longhorn OS, just useless.  It looks like another bloated OS that will only be subject to more exploitable vulnerabilities because of the fact that it's so unnecessarily overdone.  All the fancy-schmancy GUI tricks are probably pretty cool, but not worth forking over the big cash it's going to cost.  I'll stick with my Win98SE, thank-you very much.
Sorry, but Win98 is obsolete OS and a piece of junk. It is unreliable and unstable. Yes, I know that YOU don't have any problems with it. Probably because you don't do much more than email and cruise web the web. In my last job, I was forced to use Win98SE. I was running TweakUI, so I had the setting on for writing errors to FAULTLOG.TXT. After a year of so, I had over 100k of error notifications trapped. I had to reboot every day at least once and sometimes 2 or 3 times. Sheese.I fought for years against switching from Win98SE, rationalizing that it wouldn't do much for me, Win98Se was fine for what I needed to do, etc. But I brought a new system in January 2000 and it came with Win2K. I was very happy with how much more stable it was then Win98. In December of 2002, I switched to WinXP. It's even better than Win2k. Once I learned that I didn't have to muck around with those registry cleaners any more, WinXP has been incredibly stable. It can be weeks between reboots for me now. My DSL is always on, everything always works when I want it to.By sticking with Win98, you are cheating yourself and wasting your time. Oh yeah, you save a few $$ in hard cash but what is the cost of your lost productivity.Lastly, don't forget that companies are businesses and are trying to make money. They can't do that by selling a new application or OS to someone every 10 years. They do it by selling upgrades. In order to entice people into upgrading, they have to add new features. Personally, although my NTFS based file system is very organized, I think what MS is trying to do with the Longhorn file system is very interesting. The bottom line is that if you stick with Win98 and continue to resist upgrading, you'll find yourself more and more isolated from what is going on in the mainstream. If you have problems, there won't be many who you can turn to for help. Other people will be messing around with video editing, online music, intensive gaming, wi-fi, mobile communications, ubiquitous computing and so on while you will be left only able to play with email and cruise the web. You talk about big cash outlays to update. ****, you can get a complete new system these days with terrific specs and a new OS for $500 or $600. That's like $50/month for 1 year! You probably spend that much on lottery tickets each year. :P No, the truth is that some people hate changeand some people are afraid to change. The only people who really embrace change are wet babies. :D
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I guess what gets me the most besides the hardware and software issues is the licensing. That is why I am so glad there are alternatives such as linux to escape these MS practices. I said earlier this year I don't like the direction MS is headed with it's up and coming new releases and it's just gonna get worse.Long live open source

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Personally, I think Longhorn will be a great step up. If they get the Yukon file system right, it will blow away NTFS... XP does not take a $2000 machine to run well... It runs quite well on anything with roughly 600Mhz or above (which you can get a complete system for less than $300)... Just remember to put a good bunch of RAM in it (real cheap), and it'll run like a dream! I've used it on a PIII-600Mhz system with 256Mb of RAM, and had no issues with XP... Not EVERYTHING will be incompatible with Longhorn... It's just a matter of getting new drivers written for the currently existing hardware (Same thing that occurred with Win2k)... No big deal here...Computers are an ever-changing business... MS isn't going to make any more money from Win98, so why keep spending money to support it? Is Macintosh supporting OS7? I'd be surprised... Can you get official support for old Linux distros (i.e. RedHat 6)? I'd doubt it. It's just the way things work. Computers aren't a once in a lifetime purchase. They're a 2-3 (maybe 5) year purchase... That's the way they're designed. And you don't have to spend a lot of money to keep current. I upgraded 6 of my family's computers this year and spent no more than $500 on any one of them (most around $300)... All of them had computers that were 4-5 years old, so if you figure that you can save $100/year and then buy a new computer with that savings, it's not that expensive... As far as the licensing issue goes, what does it really matter? If I buy a copy of Windows, I'm allowed to legally install it on one machine (not 4-5)... Now they're just checking to make sure this is really the case. If I want more installs, I buy more licenses... don't see a problem here. (Oh Waaa! I have to spend money for something!!!) Somebody has to support the 100's (maybe 1000's) of software engineers that work for an honest living to make good software)...And about the patches thing, MS is no exception to the rule here... Ever tried installing Linux? Make sure you download the couple hundred Megabytes of patches to go along with it too... Ever played a major video game? Gotta go download the patch(es) for it too. It's the way software works now... Get used to it. :P

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i am gonna stay away from Longhorn. I'm downgrading from XP to 2K because i find XP to be unstable over time. i'm starting to get BSOD here and RUNDLL errors there. and i'm my 4th XP re-install. i just gave up. i hope 2K is more stable, as it appears to be more common thru businesses. but one thing i agree: Win98 just doesnt have stability to run video, music, games, all in one environment. it craps out too often. and WinME, dont even mention. i've had it crashed during first boot-up after fresh install! :oedit: maybe now you understand why i'm tinkering with Linux. it just needs a good WYSIWYG web editor and more support for Windows-based games and i'll switch over 100%

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Sorry, but Win98 is obsolete OS and a piece of junk.  It is unreliable and unstable.  Yes, I know that YOU don't have any problems with it.  Probably because you don't do much more than email and cruise web the web. 
Er...ah, you are wrong there my friend.I'm a web developer, I do a lot more than just check my e-mail and surf the web.I use many programs on my Win98SE machine, including web apps (SSH, FTP, etc.), text & WYSIWYG HTML editors, several bitmap and vector imaging tools, file compression, flash authoring software, productivity and office tools, web browsers, and several miscellaneous tools and utilities for productivity and system maintenence. And sometimes I will listen to MP3's while I work. Yessiree, I do a lot more than just surf the web and check e-mail.And who cares about games? Computers are for work :P You want games, use a dual boot or VPC. Once you're playing a game, you're hooked for a while anyway.Yes, I agree Win2K is quite a bit more stable and reliable than Win98. Rarely, I'll find that I have to use a dual boot to avoid an application conflict. But I can live with the occasional BSOD and having to reboot a few times a day. So what? I'm not running a web server that needs to be up 24/7/365.
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This may come as a surprise to some but, I think Windows XP is probably the best Microsoft operating sytem to date, although not perfect. It is very stable and I have not had to reinstall or reimage my current installation which has been the one I installed on my 7 month old main computer. I have not had a BSOD and really, the only time I've had to reboot was after installing patches or software upgrades that required it. Mind you I slipstreamed Service Pack 1 into my installation CD so it was pretty up to date when I installed it and I only installed the necessary pre-SP2 hotfixes that were critical. I am a power user so I tend to use quite a few applications simultaneously. For instance at this moment this particular session has been running for almost 6 days since I upgraded my EasyCD/DriectCD. There are 13 applications running consisting of 42 seperate processes. There are 4 MozillaFirebird windows open with 27 web page tabs which at the moment it is using 103 MB of memory! There are two Windows Explorer windows, a Word document, two PowerPoint presentations, WinAmp, SSH client, and a command prompt. Try that in Windows 98.The main reason I'm not using Linux as my main computer is 3D hardware acceleration for my graphics card and that I have no SuSE or Mandrake drivers for even 2D support (Matrox Parhelia if you need to know). But Linux 2.4.x is pretty good and I expect 2.6 to been even better. I'm happy using both because I like choice. :P

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OK, Peachy, you got me there. There's no way Win98 could run that many apps at one time and not get angry. But I don't have the need to run that many apps at once. If I do, I'll upgrade (probably to Win2k, I had a pretty bad eXPerience -- pun intended -- with WinXP, but that's another story with XP on lemon hardware).

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nlinecomputers

I'll be switching to Longhorn when it comes out. I am a computer tech, I sell and service PCs, so I will not be able to avoid it if I wished too. NO one is forcing anyone to upgrade, however Microsoft can only sell you an OS once. Yet they are suppose to fund unlimited support off this one purchase? In the Open Source world the software is FREE and the support costs money. Well guess what? Most users don't need to have enough support to be willing to pay for it.I don't like some of Microsoft's tactics but being critical of them just because they roll out a new product is short sighted, selfish, and sily IMHO. They have to make a buck too.

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This may come as a surprise to some but, I think Windows XP is probably the best Microsoft operating sytem to date, although not perfect.
peachy, i want your honest opinon.would u say Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4 is as stable as XP SP1? i'm switching back to Win2000 coz i always hear good things being said about it. In my understanding, i see XP to be exact same technology as windows 2000, only with multimedia bloat and other things added on. is that a good way to put it, or does XP have newer technologies than win2k? if so, what are they?i'm also going to load up win2k on my brother's PC (he has XP as well), but for a different reason than stability. XP in its default uses about 120mb RAM, and i can tweak it down to 70-80mb RAM usage on boot-up. still, he only has 128mb RAM, doesnt want to upgrade, and his hard drive is always swapping memory around, making it a dog. i checke dout win2k, and it only used 45mb on first boot-up, and i could tweak it down to 30-35mb if i had to, leaving him with nearly 100mb of free RAM for apps. wouldnt that make his overall computer quicker than by running XP?
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I'll probably switch to Longhorn, too, Nathan. The Yukon FS looks intriguing and it's about time Microsoft started using a journaling filesystem. Besides, we need an operating system that can make use of our 4 GB processors and 2 GB of memory and would find 500 GB of storage cramped! :P When I first tested Windows XP in the late beta stages I knew that that was my next operating system. Sure, I had my optimised Windows 98 but it was annoying having to reboot at least once a day just to get regain some system resources. And at work I was still using a PC with Windows 95 on it up until mid-February. You can't imagine how happy I was to receive a P4 and Windows XP. :D

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I don't like some of Microsoft's tactics but being critical of them just because they roll out a new product is short sighted, selfish, and sily IMHO.  They have to make a buck too.
speaking for myself, i'm not critical of new OSes. i like their 2K/XP platform as it is stable, but i dont like the bloat. it seems with each new version, more and more things are "no-questions-asked" installation options. i mean, why make Movie Maker 2 a permanent part of windows? or MSN messenger? or Windows Explorer? or Outlook Express? (list goes on and on and on)i just wish they offered 2 versions: one 'newbie' version that just load up everything, no questions. and a real "pro" version that lets u choose on install what you want to install. some dont need web servers, some dont need it for internet, some dont want any games, or multimedia, or they like winzip and dont want built-in zipping, or like ACDSee and dont want built-in image viewer. all those options should be OPTIONAL, as they are in Linux distros. (and as they were in windows 95 and 98) .you can install as much or little as you want. its about CHOICES, or lack thereof.
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Grasshopper
but that's another story with XP on lemon hardware
I have to agree with you there.Lemon hardware makes a difference. Even in combo with other hardware.I have two machines at home. The second one -- half its parts are ones that previously "didn't work" very well.They do now cuz I have different cards and OS installed.
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Lastly, don't forget that companies are businesses and are trying to make money.  They can't do that by selling a new application or OS to someone every 10 years.  They do it by selling upgrades.  In order to entice people into upgrading, they have to add new features.
You're right. Companies are in business to make money. As the corporate controller for a $100 million company, why should I spend my company resources just to have the latest and greatest from Redmond, when we can run our operations quite nicely with 98, 2K, and XP (mostly 98)? For our MS Office needs, Office 97 still does everything we, and I'd be willing to bet most business users, need. I can't fault Microsoft for heading in the direction they are. They do need their customers to continue to upgrade their software. Longhorn does just that, and from what I've read elsewhere, will continue to generate annual revenue after the initial purchase. All of this is why we're seriously looking at switching to Linux for our desktop OS.
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peachy, i want your honest opinon.would u say Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4 is as stable as XP SP1?  i'm switching back to Win2000 coz i always hear good things being said about it.
Prelude,Yes, I would say that Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 is just as stable as XP with Service Pack 1. Heck, even with SP3 Windows 2000 is quite stable. I have a Windows 2000 Server with SP3 that has been up since April 10. It sits quietly handling my VPN connection, DHCP and DNS services. So, Windows 2000 Professional with SP4 is the way to go. And I would seriously consider making a slipstreamed SP4 install CD; it will save you time during the installation.
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nlinecomputers: I don't like some of Microsoft's tactics but being critical of them just because they roll out a new product is short sighted, selfish, and sily IMHO. They have to make a buck too.I'm not being critical of the fact that they are coming out with a new product. Everyone has to come out with new products eventually.I'm being critical of what they are doing with that new product. I think that Microsoft rolls out new versions too soon and too drastically; and discontinues their current ones too early. They have the market in such a monopoly, that they can practically do whatever they want, and force-feed us new software by selling their OS's to the vendors. Average Joe User doesn't know that he doesn't have to buy such and such a component with such and such software to do such and such a thing.Prelude76 hit it right on the nose. Two versions: newbie and advanced (XP Home and Pro are NOT this way). Newbie versions will install all the bloat and crap that power users will never use (because they want to use their own stuff), because newbie users will probably never know or care about it anyway. The advanced would give you options of what to install, and what not to install.Peachy: Sure, I had my optimised Windows 98 but it was annoying having to reboot at least once a day just to get regain some system resourcesLike I said. Big deal, I'm not running a server. I'll usually reboot just before I leave my computer to have lunch or something.

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Like I said.  Big deal, I'm not running a server.  I'll usually reboot just before I leave my computer to have lunch or something.
You don't need to run a server to appreciate uptime and stability in a workstation. The point is that Microsoft has been trying to tout the benefits of multitasking that only became possible after Windows 2000 arrived. There's nothing so annoying as application memory leaks compounded by a resource-starved (64K memory heaps!) operating system that was just a pretty GUI sitting on top of DOS (Win 9x). With the NT kernel Microsoft began a project that took almost 10 years to perfect and it couldn't have come any sooner. :)
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And about the patches thing, MS is no exception to the rule here...  Ever tried installing Linux?  Make sure you download the couple hundred Megabytes of patches to go along with it too...  Ever played a major video game?  Gotta go download the patch(es) for it too.  It's the way software works now...  Get used to it.  :)
Of course all software needs patches. Not that I'm trying to defend either side here, but if the tables were turned and Linux had the desktop market, I'm sure we would hear a lot more about security issues and patches for Linux. Part of the fact that Windows is so frequently patched and found faulty for vulnerabilities is because it is so popular -- there's no point in finding Linux vulnerabilities becuase (there aren't as many :)) and there aren't nearly as many people using it yet...so what would be the fun in that :lol:Please, don't get me wrong -- I'm NOT defending Microsoft, just stating what I see as a fact. The only way M$ is getting me to use Longhorn is kicking and screaming.
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Little John
:) I understand that with this new OS you can't even tell where your data is located on the hard drive and that you HAVE TO use some sort of data base to access you files.Does any one know is this true? :)
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:D I understand that with this new OS you can't even tell where your data is located on the hard drive and that you HAVE TO use some sort of data base to access you files.Does any one know is this true? :o
Hmmm...by reading a few of these articles, it looks as if that may be the case. This is most disconcerting. How the heck are you supposed to get at your files without folders/direcotires? Talk about disorganized!http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1046783981 definately shows that it's based on SQL concepts.
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I guess what gets me the most besides the hardware and software issues is the licensing.  That is why I am so glad there are alternatives such as linux to escape these MS practices.
Ha! Not if SCO gets their way :D
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Lastly, don't forget that companies are businesses and are trying to make money.  They can't do that by selling a new application or OS to someone every 10 years.  They do it by selling upgrades.  In order to entice people into upgrading, they have to add new features.
You're right. Companies are in business to make money. As the corporate controller for a $100 million company, why should I spend my company resources just to have the latest and greatest from Redmond, when we can run our operations quite nicely with 98, 2K, and XP (mostly 98)? For our MS Office needs, Office 97 still does everything we, and I'd be willing to bet most business users, need. I can't fault Microsoft for heading in the direction they are. They do need their customers to continue to upgrade their software. Longhorn does just that, and from what I've read elsewhere, will continue to generate annual revenue after the initial purchase. All of this is why we're seriously looking at switching to Linux for our desktop OS.
If you're running mostly with Win98, then your people are likely experiencing stability issues and not maximizing productivity. At the Controller level, you are unlikely to know of or hear the day-to-day problems that people encounter with this obsolete OS and the slow hardware that you are probably running it on. How many people in your organization have to reboot Win98 at least once daily? How much time is lost doing this? What is the impact on their thought process? How about lost files or work when this happens? Win98 is slow and unreliable, particularly when you add software suites like MS Office. Office 97 is bug-riddled and also unstable. Finally, Win9x use of 64k GDI & User heaps limits the number of simultaneous processes you can run and results in resource drains forcing periodic reboots to restore resources. Win Win98, you are artificially constraining your people, thereby limiting their potential productivity. I'm sorry, but I think anyone still running Win98 in a corporate environment is being penny-wise and pound-foolish! Don't know where I got this:Top 10 Reasons For Enterprises To Adopt Windows XPThe reasons IT pros gave for why their companies have switched to Windows XP on the desktop, or are strongly considering doing so: 1. Stability and reliability. Many of XP's enterprise early adopters were moving from Windows 9x/Me, so the stability issue was both of paramount concern, and they also found what they were looking for -- even if they might have found a similar experience in Windows 2000. 2. Better plug-and-play hardware support. Although there is contention on this issue, Windows XP's newer driver pack as well as built-in support for a wider variety of hardware types does support new PCs better than Windows 2000. USB and CD-RW devices, for example, are better supported than under NT or Win2000. 3. Faster Windows load times, and performance in general. In many environments, Windows XP loads a bit faster than Windows 2000, and that's an advantage that many IT managers prize. Some notice increased performance overall. 4. Remote desktop connection/assistance. Even though Windows NT and Windows 2000 have offered similar features for years, Windows XP seems to have gotten the features down just at the time when corporations are needing help with remotely accessing one PC with another for a variety of reasons. 5. Easy to install. Although many people on the other side of the fence disagreed on this point, IT pros with heavy Windows 9x installations in particular referenced an advantage in this area over Windows 2000. 6. Works better on laptops. Many find that even older notebook PCs, originally designed for Windows 98 Second Edition, for example, work well with Windows XP, whereas that might not always be the case with Windows 2000. 7. Easier to use. Networking, user interface, self repairing, and other aspects make it easier to use Windows XP, according to some (although there is also a learning curve). 8. Automatic updates. Windows XP was designed around the notion that Windows operating systems need to be periodically updated. It makes that process automatic. In particular, that makes applying security patches -- always an IT concern -- an easier process. (With Service Pack 3 installed, Windows 2000 is also capable of automatic updates.) 9. Relatively bug free. Although some IT pros feel just the opposite, many feel that Windows XP has been far less bug prone in its first year than previous Windows operating systems. The automatic update feature may have had something to do with that. 10. Longer lifecycle. Microsoft is aggressively pursuing shortened lifecycles for all versions of Windows. So, only if you're considering XP against another version of Windows, XP makes better sense from a long-term-support point of view.
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I'm being critical of what they are doing with that new product.  I think that Microsoft rolls out new versions too soon and too drastically; and discontinues their current ones too early.  They have the market in such a monopoly, that they can practically do whatever they want, and force-feed us new software by selling their OS's to the vendors.  Average Joe User doesn't know that he doesn't have to buy such and such a component with such and such software to do such and such a thing.
Hmmm, So you think MS rolls out OS versions to quickly? I disagree.Take a look at the Windows OS timeline here:http://www.theeldergeek.com/windows_timeline.htmI've edited the list from the link above to eliminate beta's & release candidates. If anything, it looks like Win2000 should have been out a year eariler. The first release of Win98 was a real piece of junk and they had to come out with Win98SE not long afterward to fix things up.Microsoft Operating Systems Based on the Windows 9x Kernel November 1983 Windows First Announced November 1985 Windows 1.0 April 1987 Windows 2.0 May 1990 Windows 3.0 April 1992 Windows 3.1 February 1994 Windows 3.11 August 1995 Windows 95 June 1998 Windows 98 May 1999 Windows 98 SE September 2000 Windows Me In January 2001 Microsoft announced the demise of the Windows 9x kernel. Microsoft Operating Systems Based on the Windows NT Kernel August 1993 Windows NT 3.1 September 1994 Windows NT 3.5 June 1995 Windows NT 3.51 August 1996 Windows NT 4.0 February 2000 Windows 2000 October 25, 2001 Windows XP Home and Professional
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Prelude76 hit it right on the nose.  Two versions: newbie and advanced (XP Home and Pro are NOT this way).  Newbie versions will install all the bloat and crap that power users will never use (because they want to use their own stuff), because newbie users will probably never know or care about it anyway.  The advanced would give you options of what to install, and what not to install.
of course you know that if you do a custom install of Windows, you can choose to include (or not include) a whole lot of options? You don't HAVE to install Movie Maker or MS Messenger, etc. Or after install, go to Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel and select Add/Remove Windows Components. There is a lot you can remove.No, you won't be able to remove certain components that MS considers core, such as IE. With mmemory and hardware so cheap, I don't consider this a big deal.C'mon - methinks you are just scraping the bottom of your excuse bag to try and justify, more for yourself than for anyone else, reasons for not upgrading. I've been there and I've done that myself. Hopefully, I learned a lesson and I won't be so shortsighted in the future....
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:D I understand that with this new OS you can't even tell where your data is located on the hard drive and that you HAVE TO use some sort of data base to access you files.Does any one know is this true? :o
Hmmm...by reading a few of these articles, it looks as if that may be the case. This is most disconcerting. How the heck are you supposed to get at your files without folders/direcotires? Talk about disorganized!http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1046783981 definately shows that it's based on SQL concepts.
Here's an app you might try out to see how you can use SQL to organize everything right now:http://www.sqldesktop.com/It's 19mb although the author also offers a segment download. It also works on Linux. Not sure if it will work on Win98 though :o
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of course you know that if you do a custom install of Windows, you can choose to include (or not include) a whole lot of options?  You don't HAVE to install Movie Maker or MS Messenger, etc.  Or after install, go to Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel and select Add/Remove Windows Components.  There is a lot you can remove.
Albiet, this leaves a registry a nightmarish mess. I like my registry as clean as possible -- AND I HATE MSN MESSENGER :angry:As far as the new SQL concepts for the Longhorn filesystem goes, I think that SQL-based searching in addition to having directories to organize your files would finally be useful (and RegExp in the searches -- big time power searching!)
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If you're running mostly with Win98, then your people are likely experiencing stability issues and not maximizing productivity.  At the Controller level, you are unlikely to know of or hear the day-to-day problems that people encounter with this obsolete OS and the slow hardware that you are probably running it on.  How many people in your organization have to reboot Win98 at least once daily?  How much time is lost doing this?  What is the impact on their thought process?  How about lost files or work when this happens?  Win98 is slow and unreliable, particularly when you add software suites like MS Office.  Office 97 is bug-riddled and also unstable.  Finally, Win9x use of 64k GDI & User heaps limits the number of simultaneous processes you can run and results in resource drains forcing periodic reboots to restore resources.  Win Win98, you are artificially constraining your people, thereby limiting their potential productivity.  I'm sorry, but I think anyone still running Win98 in a corporate environment is being penny-wise and pound-foolish!
At the corporate office, the people using Win98 (including our IT manager) don't reboot their systems that often. Sadly, the non-IT users are not that computer literate, and wouldn't even try to reboot without asking me about it. It just doesn't happen that frequently. I recently got a new PC at work with XP Home (yes, Home) installed. While I agree it's a very stable OS, I don't find that I reboot it that much less than I did when I had my prior system running Win ME. At our division offices, most people turn off their systems every night, so that helps. Again, though, I'm not aware of any real problems. I'd see them during my visits to the locations, as the offices are rather small. All we're using on these systems is Excel and Word (mostly 2000) and ProComm Plus as terminal emulation to connect to our RISC 6000 box that runs our financial, distribution, and HR systems. Some of the PCs are so old and slow that there's no way they can run anything other than 95 or 98. Replacing them all is not going to happen due to the cost involved. Then again, we have a number of users still connecting via WYSE50 dumb terminals.
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I agree with bjf123. If you're using mostly office suites, it isn't much of a hassle on the system with Win98.If you have a decent machine, you can run Win98SE quite smoothly while multi-tasking. I run it on an AMD Athlon 1300+ with 512 MB RAM, a 5400 RPM 10 GB HDD, 64 MB VGA card. Being a web developer, I obviously use more than just office suites. Is it that big of a deal to have to reboot a couple times a day? Windows 98 takes less than 30 seconds to start up on my machine. I'm not gong to spend an extra $300 for a new OS just so that I can save 2 minutes per day on productivity.My parents' computer, a Celeron 466 with 256 MB RAM, 5400 RPM 10 GB HDD, 16 MB VGA card; also runs quite well on Win98SE for it's age and the torment it's received from several applications being installed and removed freqeuntly (although I do what I can, when they're not looking, to keep the registry clean and see that it keeps running for what they need it ;)). It's usual uptime is usually around a few days to a week. Rarely do they actually need to reboot because of some type of a problem or error (BSOD, for example).

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