Bryan said:
Any thoughts about this: 98se
vs. XP? I have a Pent. 733 with 512 RAM and dual monitor
(dual head video card) system.
Other posters already mentioned the HD limit thing so I won't.
I have a Katmai P3 @ 450 MHz on a seriously outdated mainboard with
a mere 320 MB RAM, dual monitors (via two video cards) and an
absurd amount of software installed (web server, DTP, imaging,
audio, programming languages, internet stuff, security stuff, a
bunch of lightweight games and more).
I'm running XP Pro, and IT WORKS JUST FINE, no matter what some
people might tell you. I dare say your hardware won't pose an
obstacle to Windows 2000 or XP. Your 512 MB RAM in particular will
help. I rather like XP Professional, I just wish it was open source
or something. Windows 98 is a nightmare.
If you care about my subjective opinions (and I don't quite see why
you should, but), read on.
pros:
Hardware installation is dead easy. Not that I can't guarantee this
for anyone else's setup, but I rarely even have to dig up the
driver CD when plugging something into my computer.
Task Manager. You can obtain information on active processes via
the Task Manager. If a program hangs, you can easily kill it. Fatal
crashes (bluescreens) are mostly due to bad drivers and don't occur
just because it's that time of day or something; Windows isn't
quite "there" yet, but a decently configured XP is less unreliable
than Windows 98.
XP is a multiuser OS (the Home Edition less consistently so for all
I know). This might actually be of more interest to you than it is
to me since you don't seem to live alone. Protect your OS from
careless manipulation from inside and out, restrict users to their
own user profile directories, keep each user's settings and data
neatly separated. I also suspect some of the software I use
(originally Linux/Unix software ported over to Windows) might not
work that well on a single-user Windows (that may not concern you
much).
Some control over services. Things running "in the background",
such as a firewall or server or dozens of potentially useless-for-
you Windows components can be listed, stopped, started and
configured in central places.
Look and feel. Well, I was rather put off by the "Fisher Price"
look, but eventually realized I actually prefer it to the drab,
kinda "dirty" Windows classic look. Not that you can't use that one
anymore if you like.
contras:
License/Product Activation. I might just have to throw my XP away
once I upgrade this admittedly "cheap" computer. I naively bought
the less expensive OEM version of XP, not realising what it meant
with regard to the license. While this is arguably my own fault for
believing it was _my_ business what to do with the software I
bought, I'm so annoyed with this by now that I'll never buy
anything from Microsoft again. By all means go with the retail
version if you want to (or have to) use Windows.
Default UI settings. Plenty pretty but ultimately time-wasting
effects. Anything remotely informative, from file extensions to the
contents of important directories, is, initially, hidden (so as not
to confuse the hapless user?). Not really an issue since you can
turn all of it back on.
Insecurity. By default, the user account you creature during
installation has administrator rights. By default, plenty services
are running that serve no purpose on a non-LAN machine. By default,
Windows phones home (or elsewhere) every so often, except you won't
notice if you don't have a personal firewall installed. While that
might not be an actual security/privacy risk each time, I wish it'd
just _tell_ me what exactly it's trying to do -- this being _my_
computer and all.
Integration of Outlook Express, Media Player, Internet Explorer
with the OS. It doesn't matter if you want these around or not, you
can't get rid of them even if you _never_ use them. A waste of
harddisk space, and, I think, disrespectful toward the user. (Okay,
a point could be made that IE is required for Windows Update -- but
then, why not tell the user that they need to keep IE around if
they want semi-automated updates?)
EULA. Just read the End User License Agreement some time. It's not
funny anymore.
Games. If you like to play games, older ones in particular, you'll
likely run into troubles. The "compatibility" tab of "legacy"
apps' properties dialogues helps a little, but not always.
I guess I'm making it sound as though XP was the worst thing that
could ever happen to your computer. And it does take some
configuring to make it un-annoying, in my opinion. But, considering
I'm not a network admin or wizard hacker or anything, it serves me
very well.
~Ally
