Ninety Eight Lite
Ninety Eight LiteRemoves all that lard from Windows 98. A blessing for professional users who don't want all that interface gook - it can even completely remove IE. Slashed the amount of RAM gobbled at startup by Win 98 from 140 to 40 mb on my box. Yeah baby!
-- RodneyRyan?
Why would anyone in their right mind be running any form of Win9X anyway? It's like quicksand, trying to run this stuff on top of DOS. I've been running NT since 1993 and haven't looked back. -- sg
[Sam, welcome to the MS-bashers ball!]
Games, price, marketing, and OEM availability are the main factors for many home users, but professionally, all but the price factor probably vanish. -- DavidSaff
Well, Windows 2000 solves the games issue. It has Direct X 7 and the only reason a game wouldn't run is if some brain dead Games Programmer looked specifically for 9X. All my games like Half Life work better. It's only the people at EA that hard-code a check for 9X that is a problem. The price for 2000 Professional is roughly the same, maybe a little bit more but worth it. Many OEMs pre-install 2000 now. It runs Quicken, all the games, in short, there's nothing I haven't been able to run other than follish EA sports games. -- sg
There is also the driver issue... neither my scanner nor my DSL modem have Win2000 drivers, so it's either Win98 or NT4. But since I also have USB stuff without NT drivers, that leaves Win98. -- AdamVandenberg
Adam, USB support is in 2000. It should just recognize the devices automatically. That's what it did with my CD burner and UPS. -- sg
(But my scanner isn't USB, and isn't supported in 2000. USB support isn't in NT :( )
Well, I guess you're SOL-). Happy crashing!
That's a really poor attitude. That's exactly the kind of attitude that keeps people away from software. But then again, SoftwareIsReallyPointless. -- SunirShah
I actually experience extremely low instability on Win98, compared to awful things I hear about. And that's with IE5 installed (why I'd want to disable that is beyond me!) -- amv
On even the fastest hardware, the myriad desktop JigglingBaloney effects can be hopelessly slow due to otherwise minor system bottlenecks, like a slow drive controller. And they can be slower than very fast operators like.
Once again the results of giving UI engineers only the most expensive hardware shines thru. -- PCP
That's a really poor attitude
I just love your posts. What am I supposed to do about it? I didn't write it. -- sg
I apologize for the misattribution. It still is a poor attitude to push development problems onto users, especially at cost to them. -- SunirShah
I love your theoretical school stuff. Win9x is a Microsoft product, not mine. I didn't have anything to do with it. I'm not pushing anything. I'm merely stating what is.
-- sg
Why am I using 98 and not Redhat? The answer has to do with crappy software coupled with draconian business practices.
I am locked into using Quickbooks. The version of Quickbooks that I am using requires IE for reasons not useful or relevant to anyone but Intuit and Microsoft. Gag! Since I cannot remove IE for this reason only, I have 2 versions of 98 installed on my computer on different partitions - one is a lard filled default installation including IE that I boot into only when running Quickbooks, and the other is the trimmed down 98 lite version with IE completely removed that I use to check my email and access the web with. 98 boots at light speed compared to NT which is why I use 98 and not NT - faster boot speed! Additionally, since this is my home system used only for accounting and email, there is no reason to shell out extra $ and headaches to install NT. The system came with 98 and that meets my needs, especially since I reboot at least a couple of times a night.
And why does Quickbooks specifically require IE and not just any web browser? Because Microsoft and Intiut are in agreement that market domination is much more important than writing good software.
-- RodneyRyan?
Well, I'm going to get bashed, but you are using Win98 and not RedHat because Redhat and Linux are not ready for the desktop. Even LinuxMagazine? admitted this quite frankly in an editorial I read last night. They need one standard and they need a lot of work. So far, KDE is a complete 100% rip-off of the Windows UI, down to almost every detail. KDE2 is even more so. When the Linux desktop gets real, maybe Quicken will consider it. There's nothing about market domination. Intuit are not fans of MicroSoft! Also, when Netscape stops crashing everywhere, maybe people will consider it again. The last good release was 3.51. After that, it's just real sloppy engineering and whining. -- sg
I know a lot of people who use Linux. Many of them use it on the desktop. Some of them use it as their sole OS (I currently use it as sole OS, but in a few weeks I'll have a win95 GameBox built). Of all those people I know who use linux in some capacity, I only know one person who uses KDE. The rest of us use GNOME. A little bit behind in some areas, but moving faster than anything else out there.
And if you read the paragraph above, you'll see why.
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(last edited July 23, 2003)
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