Ok then.......thanks. I actually wanted to know for my mother as I'm
building her a computer. I don't even think she's ever used XP but thats
what she wants. I think I have her talked into upgrading to SE.........
Ron
XP is better for the... uh... eh... common user.
Since I actually have some knowledge of 9x (actually Win95, many years
ago) internals:
A small hole in 9x memory protection has recieved much publicity. In
reality 9x memory protection rarely fails. It's not the problem.
Contrary to common beliefs, Win9x is not really, by itself,
'significantly' (mainstream desktop use) less 'stable' than NT or
2000/XP. At least in the sense that the things that brings W9x down,
in 99.9% are the same things that will bring down NT or 2000. Corrupt
priveliged code. Driver code. Basically, OS being ****ed up.
Thing is, since Win9x doesn't wear any knickers and has a very short
skirt, that sort of situation can happen very easily.
But if you install and configure your W9x carefully, and don't
'experiment' with driver installs and don't mess around with a lot of
real mode drivers, 'early' demos or shady 'cracked' software, Win9x
should run fine for months between system crashes. Mine always have
since W95.
But some people have real problems with W9x, for whatever reasons.
Multiple crashes a day. And though the same can be said for NT,
experience shows that they benefit from a change to NT or XP, so all
problems cannot be attributed to hardware ;-).
I have one Win98SE and three XPpro PCs. I love 98SE for its speed when
ram is scarce, and willingness to run older stuff. But XP is MS best
effort yet. For your mom, that's what I'd choose. And do it NTFS only.
No FAT32, no dual boot. And arrange for her to login on an account
without administrator rights, for normal use.
ancra