Check out the top five reasons for moving to Windows 2000 or XP, and find out what you need to do if you decide to make the change. The article is at ZDNet’s TechUpdate.
Leave Windows 9x Behind
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
the reason why is because Microsoft is not supporting it any more.
<sacrasm>
yeah – that’s a good reason.
</sacrasm>
“2. No more technical support”
I have always found other sites besides Microsoft’s knowledgebase more helpful for fixing problems anyway. Those shouldn’t be going anywhere. I sill have a few users on Windows 3.1 and they like it that way. If I can still find support info for that OS the Win9x support will be there for a long time to come.
I do agree with Microsoft for not directly supporting the 9x platform though. It’s buggy garbage. Windows 2k was a godsend for support in comparison IMHO.
Well, Red Hat stops supporting their OSes only after 1 year. So it is more than fair to stop supporting an 8-year old OS, while there are new products out that do the job better.
1. No more hardware support. Well no sh!t. But what if you don’t plan on upgrading your hardware like many people do? If your hardware is that old that there is no more hardware support then what makes you think there is going to be any better support for that same hardware on a newer OS that has higher requirements. In most cases your computing experience will actually decrease.
2. No more tech support. Yea, when was the last time anyone was actually able to get tech support for any of MS’s products if you were a home user and did not have a support contract with MS? If they are talking about windowsupdate no longer supported, thats different. Otherwise this one is BS.
3. Better stability. The only point to make sense.
4. Better hardware support. Uh, isn’t this a repeat of 1?
5. Better software support. This one just doesn’t make much sense. Its more marketing than anything actually factual.
So, in conclusion, shell out $200+ for nothing. Way to go ZDNet!
I’m going to reformat my Pentium II 300 right now and load up Windows XP! After all, I’m sure the support for the AWE64 Gold, NE2000 ISA NIC, Voodoo1, and Rendition V1000 in it will be MUCH better under NT 5.1!
OK, so that was a little smartassed… but in my experience I’ve found that Win9x (particularly post-95) can be fairly reliable for day to day usage provided you reboot regularly and don’t install buggy crap on it to begin with. And though it may be made out of cardboard, duct tape, and bailing wire, at least when using it I don’t feel like I’m helping in some small way to expand Microsoft’s Glorious Corporate Hegemony ™. Windows 2000 pre-SP3 I can tolerate; XP grinds my gears and seems to enjoy doing so.
Viva BeOS and *nix. They’re the only things keeping me sane in the computer world any more.
P.S. Yes, I have nicer computers than the one previously listed, but I’m speaking from the perspective of an average user who might not know just how much of a Frankenputer he’s got…
How about calling it “Why you should buy a new PC.”
My guess is that many of the people still using 98(se) on a box are probably running older boxes (e.g. my P1 200MHz). If I was to put anything on it at all it would be slackware, samba and my MP3 collection…
Eugenia, an 8yr old OS? Are you talking about Windows95? They only supported 98 until late 99(new hardware at least), if I read the article right… what is that maybe a year and a half? and 98se was released in 99 right? That would make it a 4 year old OS.
I still want to play MOO and Privateer on my Pentium 120. Should I upgrade to XP?
…that they didn’t mention Windows Millennium Edition anywhere in this “report,” perhaps because it would undermine a good deal of the propaganda thrown at the reader. I also laugh at the fact that the description of “better software support” completely ignores DOS and Windows 3.1 app compatibility. Yes, some DOS games will work in a technical sense, but audio’s extremely difficult to make work by most peoples’ standards and timing issues remain. And the problems people have had with application compatibilty, CD burners, various hardware devices that are allegedly supported, and a slew of other fairly serious, attention-getting issues aren’t even specifically brought up. This isn’t a serious analysis, it’s a sales pitch. You can practically hear the mooing of this article’s target audience…
While DOS was a whiz kid in its heyday…
Um, no, it wasn’t. OS-9 for example made DOS look like a total dullard: modular, real-time, pre-emptive multitasking, multi-user. See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9
…work for Microsoft? He makes it sound like if you’re running a pre2k, you can’t buy any hardware. Well, my brand new laser printer and scanner work just fine with 98SE, thank you very much. So many people out there are still using pre2k OS’s that most hardware manufacturers wouldn’t dare NOT make a driver for their products.
I’m frankly not worried about MS’s “seal of approval;” that’s like a toaster company certifying that a particular brand of bread can go in its product. How many people have purchased hardware or software for Win98 and found them incompatible? Please. The only exceptions would probably the cutting-edge gaming stuff, but there are always other individual hackers out there who make their own drivers and offer them for download (though I’ve never tried any of these).
I’m tempted to reformat my P133 laptop and put NT4 on it. It hasnt got anything like USB that needs a higher OS
That’s why I need to upgrade from VMWare Express to VMWare Workstation.
Oh well – at least I went to Mandrake 9.1.
The only reasons I could think of for not switching to 2k/XP would be …
1. You need support for some piece of hardware or software that 2k/XP doesn’t support (especially games)
2. You’re not having any stability problems with your current OS (and yes, that is possible on Win9x under certain circumstances)
3. You are running older hardware that is either doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for XP/2k (I believe you need at least a P1 233mhz) or would be painfully slow.
4. You don’t want to shell out the $$ for the Windows upgrade. Of course, if you already have one version of Windows, you could probably upgrade for $100 instead of having to buy it new.
Most people who are still using Win9x are doing so on an established system, and I would speculate that it’s also a fairly stable one or they’d have made the move by now.
A note to Darious regarding his point #4: all versions of Windows 95 that were released before Windows 98 (including OSR2, OSR2.1, and OSR2.5) are ineligible for upgrade pricing from Microsoft. One has to pay full price in order to legally upgrade to XP from those platforms…
Those five reasons pretty much sucked.
I upgraded to Windows 2000 because BeOS was end-of-lined and Linux just wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t too bad with cygwin installed.
I recently upgraded to Windows XP and I actually like it a lot… I’m a little surprised.
– chrish
I’m using XP for all the serious stuff and a parallel installation of 98SE for games and test installations (i.e. if the software behaves nice there and I find it useful, I install it on XP).
Works fine. Haven’t had a single crash in XP so far (12 months or so with 8 hours/day average usage) and don’t have to fight have game compatibility issues.
…if I’m using orphaned software that ran on DOS, Windows 3.X, etc. (you know, the kind that I can’t fix because there’s no SOURCE CODE AVAILABLE for it???
Whaddaya think?
….where books couldn’t be read properly within 10 years because the human brain and civilization couldn’t remember much about how to read them.
“Well, you know, I could read that book OK until I finished High School. Now, I can still *sort of* read it, but it doesn’t seem to make sense all the time, and every once in awhile, one of the pages just kind of … pooof …. disappears….
I’m using XP for all the serious stuff and a parallel installation of 98SE for games and test installations (i.e. if the software behaves nice there and I find it useful, I install it on XP).
Actually, assuming you don’thave any games that need to run under Win98, you can do all of your testing by dual booting WinXP twice
So you’d have WinXP/WinXP instead of Win98/WinXP. I prefer the former method because I have found that some apps (especially OS or hardware-specific) react different in Win98 than WinXP – and this is especially true for drivers. Not only that, but some apps (such as Visual Studio.NET) don’t work under Win98 at all, so it’s impossible to even test that way.
I prefer this method of doing things over using system restore.
“4. Better hardware support. Uh, isn’t this a repeat of 1?”
Not exactly. No.1 was about hardware support(ie. Geforce 5+ probably wouldn’t support 95, 98, or ME.) Better Hardware support simply means that the drivers that are written for W2K and XP are probably more stable because Nvidia and other manufactors put a lot more effort to optimize(or fix bugs) for their drivers for XP than they will for 9X. If the Nvidia detonator drivers crash with a certain program under XP the drivers *will be* updated. If there is a problem under 9x they might update and they might not bother. Windows 9X is already in the minority of machines(Zeitgeist reported in Feb2003 that 49% of all users using google were using W2k or XP) By this years end windows 9x could be installed on less than a third of all machines. The point is that if the win9x drivers aren’t very good today don’t expect them to be getting much better assuming that your hardware maker is still releasing drivers.
Bleah, Microsoft has obsoleted me, and the major Linux distros seem to be following suit. My poor old AMD K6 (200Mhz) processor…
But even when I get a more powerful computer, I still intend to support my older software. Multi-booting–it’s a way of life!
———————————————————————- ———————————————–
DOS 6.22/WFW 3.11, Win98, BeOS 5.0.3, FreeBSD 4.2, and Mandrake Linux 7.1, all on one computer.
They don´t support my scanner
In my case I got rid of Win98 long before 2001. I moved up to Windows 2000 because of stability. I won’t go to XP on my Dell XPS 850 because it’s DVD card is not compatible with XP. If I decide to get the next version of Windows, I’ll upgrade my hardware. I already know that Longhorn (or whatever it will be called) will not work with my existing software so I’ll invest in new software.
On the other hand, I might go to Linux all the way. I already have two of my four machines on it.
Is this a gentle reminder passed down from Microsoft to get people to upgrade? Sheesh. I still use Windows 98 SE at home and it runs just fine. Sure, I get crashes and such but what OS doesn’t? If you’ve been computing since Win98 or before you know hang ups like blue screens and software chokes happen. The author must seem to think that everyone needs to be on the bleeding edge of technology. My 600 MHz AMD is doing just fine with what I have.
I remember what happened when upgrade time came around for me… I was running Win98, XP was coming out, and I said: “Forget it, I don’t need Microsoft owning me.” I downloaded RedHat 7.1, installed, and couldn’t have been more happy. Was the going rough for a while as I learned the new system? Sure. But I stuck with it, and things got much better.
For people who pirate all their software, this won’t apply, but I highly encourage people who are thinking of migrating from Win98 to try RedHat or SuSE out first if only because it’s far cheaper than going to WinXP. For some people, I know, this won’t be an option (no Linux versions of Photoshop and Macromedia stuff), but for those who it is, give it a shot – you might be as plesantly surprised as I was.
-Erwos
Windows 9x broke easy, but fixed easy. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. NT when it does crash, crahses HARD! Some of the machines I work on, blue screen into a blood curdling unrecoverable crash, that can’t be recovered even with that stupid “recovery disk”! In addition, MS needs to make a version of dos that can read NTFS (that console thing sucks), Fix their “run as” app so that it actually worked like “su” in Linux/OSX. It is amazing how large MS programming teams are, and that is the best they can come up with? Its command line has no JUICE. MACs have a more powerful command line now, how is that for irony!
1.) you already have it. slack rules :>
2.) the file formats of it’s apps are more easily accessable by ABiword, OpenOffice et al, thus easing the
transition to Linux.
3)WinXp and beyond.Here lies Dragons and Monsters with names like DRM, Palladium, product activation.
4)Less sticks diggin in your back to make you upgrade.
when MS wants to.
5) For IE,Exchange gutted win95 and win98’s, windows
directories of 40 and 90 Megabytes respectively.
6) Microsoft doesn’t want you to do this.
There are probably more. Win9x or win2000 should be the
last Windows anyone buys.It’s time to get it on with Linux and let the old Beast slide,gently or otherwise into the tarpit.
The WindowsXP Upgrade advisor is a neat idea. Something like this would be handy for people wishing to switch to Linux. If any problem or unsupported hardware could be identified before installing Linux, it would save newbies a lot of head scratching.
and it was BeOS
XP will run like molasse on my PC and i think it’s mega bloated, especially the UI. List all the stuff you will never use in XP and you will fall on your butt.
Not to mention that MicroBill want to have security now as a priority, fine but this is no more a PC then it’s a dedicated machine. I want to keep total control of my machine.
And about hardware compatability, Win98 will probably have more driver ever than XP because chipset are more standardised now.
hummmmm opentracker hummmmm
Why not use your Windows 9x boxes as terminals to connect to a Windows 2000 Server. Only costs $200 for a TS license instead of the $600 for XP. Plus most machines that are running Windows 9x – won’t be able to run Windows 2000/XP – so you’ll have to upgrade your hardware as well.
Besides, isn’t this the whole idea that MS were trying to make us swallow. Total Cost of Ownership. Only spend money on your servers and never have to upgrade your workstations … that’s what THEY were saying.
Win9x or win2000 should be the
last Windows anyone buys.It’s time to get it on with Linux and let the old Beast slide,gently or otherwise into the tarpit.
Sure, just as soon as Linux can do this:
http://www.propellerheads.se/de/products/reason/frame.html
Next.
Try the English version:
http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/frame.html
“are ineligible for upgrade pricing from Microsoft. One has to pay full price in order to legally upgrade to XP from those platforms”
Well eligible or not my experience is as follows.
I had a reformatted hard drive and booted an XP upgrade CD. It asked me for the previous operating system. I accidentally dropped in an OEM 95 OSR 2.1 CD and it worked! I had meant to use the ME CD which the machine had previously installed, but the XP upgrade accepted the 95 one.
I’m actually going to have to agree with Bayerwerke. 95 OSR2 did work when I tried it out as well…
<skosis>
They recently ammended the Win2K licenses to change it to an OS and a seperate terminal access to “help” with what you are proposing to do!
I personally would like to see Wine & WineX [I might even pay for it] reach the point that they can replace Win98. They don’t have to replace everything as Linux has better replacements for most default Win98 stuff. You might have to loose IE, but is that really a problem?
I haven’t really seen any distro that does Win98 style OS right. What we really need is an root..n..+1 style system. Root only in “safe mode” and cleaned up for easy installs [I personally think installs should be difficult! If you can’t take the time to do it right, you probably don’t need the program anyway! Install-on-demand is only for PHBs that don’t want IT help!], N user accounts with permissions and all the fun that ensues, and A +1 external account for admin, sharing, internet, etc. that can only be pre-configured from the root-without ever gaining root access. [kinda like a purple turtle sandbox with a moat and sharks and razor-tape!]
Why does root always have to be CLI or Full GUI, why can’t it be something else…that lets you gain access to preferences quickly but discourages you from using it daily. Mostly, why isn’t anyone actively presuing Win98 clients? I’ve tried Knoppix on a 350 Dell and it works great–as well as 98 + security too! Also, does anyone have patches to use actual windows drivers, or at least VM them for older, unsupported hardware?
With a little work someone could scoop up all the Win98 boxes and have upto 30% of the market-just by “replacing” software MS doesn’t want to support!
Linux zealots don’t tend to care about application support, because it seems for the most part they lack the background knowledge necessary to actually use most of these applications. If so, they’ll recommend a half-functional open source implementation over a full blown mature commercial product, such as ReBorn (rightfully dead after stealing copyrighted material from Propellerheads) instead of ReBirth, Ardour instead of ProTools, the Gimp instead of Photoshop, or Kontour instead of Illustrator. Reason’s fairly safe from open source clones, simply because the knowledge required to create a clone goes well beyond the scope of what a ragtag team of open source programmers could possibly hope to accomplish.
And meanwhile… the pros take no notice.
such as ReBorn (rightfully dead after stealing copyrighted material from Propellerheads) instead of ReBirth
Damn, I didn’t know they had killed off ReBorn. Kind of sucks I think that Propellerheads killed it since (AFAIK) Reborn did not run in Windows, and … is ReBirth even developed anymore ?
Damn, I didn’t know they had killed off ReBorn. Kind of sucks I think that Propellerheads killed it since (AFAIK) Reborn did not run in Windows
Well, the easy way they could’ve avoided legal troubles is by not ripping the artwork directly out of ReBirth. It serves them right for stealing copyrighted material.
is ReBirth even developed anymore
I don’t know of any need to continue development. Supposedly ReBirth is slated to become a standard rack component in Reason 3.0.
>You might have to loose IE, but is that really a problem?
Unfortunately, yes.
Two things – Active X and VBScript.
If Mozilla supported these, I could easily get rid of IE.
Linux is way much better.
http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/lnag_benefits.html#why_linux
two words.. exploits galore
how do you expect mozilla to support it when they are closed source and owned by MS? there both a joke anyways
I think the pros are starting to notice!
By the way, I’ve heard this setup and it’s amazing.
http://www.finalscratch.com/fs2/sys_req.asp
Ironically in written in asp
“simply because the knowledge required to create a clone goes well beyond the scope of what a ragtag team of open source programmers could possibly hope to accomplish.”
Wow. SCO said pretty much the same thing in their suit againt IBM but about the Kernel.
No said all the software in the Linux universe has to be
open source. Just the important basic stuff like the os,
and at least one opensource office suite, server, etc. so
no one can use their control of one of these to leverage
control of everything else.
So once Linux gets it a large presence in the workplace
proprietary companies like Adobe will port your precious
must have favourites over to Linux.
In short, don’t worry about coming to the Mountain , because the Mountain is coming to you whether you
want it to or not.
When you get to the top you will find a Penguin named
Tux.
———————
Everybody loves Linux
I needed the switch! So I upgraded from win98 to Man 9.0 and then to 9.1. Perfecto!
Well the main reason I went from 95 to W2K (with a layover with ME) was USB support. I had to jump throught some hoops to get my USB devices to work. Finally I simply couldn’t do that anymore. W2K is going to be my holding point, and W2K is decent once you have a couple service packs under your belt, even if there’s some software that will not work under it.
-I use 98se and Ghost daily. (Takes 3 minutes and keeps my machine pristinely clean (no viruses, fragmented files, registry problems, or nettrash)
-Develop software for windows, 98se gives broadest compatibility range. (must support my existing customers)
-Use Ghost to switch os’s for testing purposes instead of multi-booting (win98/2k/linux) (requires 2 hard drives)
-Dont like DRM, Palladium, Product Activation,
Subscription OS’s, or my nuts in a vice.
-If there was a Cross Platform Linux/Windows VB6 Clone
I would be gone tomorrow. (I know about Delphi/Kylix)
(Don’t bother with the VB sucks comments, I’ve heard it all before. If Linux had a good VB6 clone you could kiss MS goodbye, believe it. 3,000,000 developers can build a lot of linux apps.)
I’ve said it already but the Linux-community should work on games support. If they fail todo so they will fail to grow any further. I’m closing to my 30’s and still want a (new) game now and then so I’m running W2K. Not because I like W2K – because Mandrake is great for daily mail/web/office stuff but I’m missing my weekly relaxing game session on Mandrake so in a few years I’ll have no choice but to get the new Windows to play my weekly session…
-fredo
Hi Chris! Long time no see. You’ve gone over to the dark side… shame
Still, hope to see you back in BeOS someday soon, would be fun to try a responsive OS again
*remembers when two days ago (in win2k at work) was playing a mp3 album with WMP and it stopped playback because a explorer window was being minimized…*
Take care,
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
> Two things – Active X and VBScript.
> If Mozilla supported these, I could easily get rid of IE.
Thos two things are the best examples of why you _must_ get away from win. those are ugly proprietary only things that don’t have their place on the web. The very purpose of the web was to make something that was cross platform, and those ugly things just breaks crossplatform compatibility… for no reason.
Web designers should be aware of that !
way ago :p
I used (and still use, but only on my server) Linux (Slackware 9.0 atm), and BeOS on my Desktop.
No virus, no registry problems, …
w8, there is _one_ BeOS virus IIRC
Anyway, no platform is 100% secure (and BeOS certainly isn’t), but the key, and I’ll keep on repeating myself, is _technodiversity_.
<rant on>
…i havent seen such an obviously commercially sponsored article in awhile. point is, microsoft isnt selling enough units and will ghostwrite as many articles and research studies as it can to protect its bloated bottom-line.
xp is an overpriced, fisher price UI’ed piece of monopolistic bloatware. if you want to upgrade your hardware for the priveledge of leasing away your privacy and control of your own computer, then go for it.
</rant off>
— disclaimer: this is merely my opinion blah blah blah The MS Tax can and will be applicable to all system purchases blah blah blah User gives MS unilateral rights to all data and code on system blah blah blah