re: Another alternative? (was:...XP...)
Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Arminius
(334 messages posted)
||On the plus side:
||2) Runs better on older hardware than WinXP.
||
|This assumes that he looked at the XP Hardware Compatibility List
|and already confirmed that all his devices *are* supported under XP.
|I have my doubts on that--re: "supported" and re: "looked".
|The fact is, the device in question *may not* work under Win2000.
Maybe he has a piece of hardware that won't work on Win2000, who knows?
It is idle speculation at this point. I was thinking in terms of his
CPU and motherboard. I assumed if his computer shipped with Win98 then
it almost certainly shipped with a Pentium II or III, Celeron or Athlon.
Win2000 would be more responsive than WinXP on an old system like that.
Second hand SDRAM is so cheap these days it is virtually a non-issue
if he needs an extra stick or two.
Later on he told us he cobbled the computer together himself.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/1253153576
The complaint about Win2000 when it was first released was lack of
drivers for various hardware items, but that problem eventually went
away and support for Win2000 among hardware maunfacturers became
standard.
||Overall, I'd say Windows 2000 has a few good years left in it.
||
|I wouldn't say that at all. Here are the facts:
|When a security hole was revealed in Win9x weeks before M$'s stated EoS date,
|M$ simply dropped support for Win9x early
|when they knew they would actually have to expend some effort to close the hole.
It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft would pull the plug on patches earlier
than originally promised. However, as a practical matter, if the security
hole had been there all those years and gone undetected it probably was not
much of a problem. I read an article several years ago that stated only 4% of
known security vulnerabilities were ever exploited. In any case, Win2000 is
more up to date than Win98 which is what the OP is using now.
|Anyone with a BitTorrent client can also get any of this unsupported M$ stuff
|without financially supporting a fundamentally corrupt business environment.
|(Paying for abandonware seems immoral to me--not to mention dumb.)
Yeah, but this ain't a warez forum. The OP didn't indicate he knew there
is a version of XP available that DOES NOT require product activation.
Even so, the OP is in a catch-22 situation. Imagine trying to download an
ISO using a 26k modem, even if the ISO is broken up into 100MB chunks as
RAR files. In theory it can be done, but it would take a long long time.
Win2000 is a sensible alternative for Win98 users who want to continue
using their old hardware and continue to use an OS they are basically
familiar with. The fact that Win2000 regularly sells for premium prices
(for an old OS) on the second hand market suggests a lot of other people
have the same idea and are creating the demand for it.
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 | |  | | |  | re: Another alternative? (was:...XP...) (Arminius: Thu, Sep 17, 2009, 9:22 pm) |
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