Hi guys,

I am a Windows 95 user and i have been since the day it was released. I don't upgrade because i only use my web browser and that is all, does the only task i need. But why do you continue to use it? What makes you use an OS that isn't even supported anymore? one that has a lot of BSODs, lack of new hardware support and the same is beginning to occur with software, lack of SMP support and limits on Hard drive size/ram capability/ and cpu speed? There are so many things against it yet so many of you cling on like a resistant disease lol... tell me why?

Regards, Win95Guy

There have been many threads here about this. See this one.

IMO, it's the best OS Microsoft made.

Support? Is that what you call a steady stream of patches and having to put up with WGA? Besides, 98 is supported, just not by Microsoft. Look at the member projects here.

When 98 is properly updated and tuned, BSODs are very rare. I haven't seen one on my 98FE box in months.

Microsofts policy of planned obsolescence is directly responsible for much of this. See the threads here regarding compatible hardware, motherboards, and software that still supports 98. There's more than you think. Also see the KernelEX project.

98 is faster one one good processor than XP or Vista is with 2 or more.
Regarding hard drive capacity, see Enable48BitLBA | Break the 137Gb barrier!
Regarding RAM, see Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with more than 1 GiB RAM. 98 doesn't need the huge quantities of RAM that Vista or XP does to fly. The same applies to CPU speed.

Interesting that you use the term "disease". XP and its NTFS file system have made rootkits a common computer disease, one which 9X systems are largely resistant to. 9X systems are immune to much of todays malware and is unaffected by many of the exploits that cause havoc on NT systems. When properly configured and equipped, 98 is a very secure and reliable OS that runs very well on hardware that XP can barely run on, and Vista has no chance of running on at all. 98 users don't have to put up with all the anti-piracy irritations that users of Vista and XP do. For users who value their privacy and won't tolerate an OS that wants to "call home", 98 is ideal. Unlike XP and Vista, the user can access and delete any and all usage records with no specialized software.

When my OS does everything I ask of it, runs 24/7 on hardware a new OS couldn't, and is easily secured at no cost, why should I buy anything newer?
Rick

Personally, for me, it's the architecture.

First, Windows itself included, there are very few programs proliferating my HD's root folder with unsolicited files and folders, and most of those are GNU ports anyway. Having control over the folder structure starting at the root is quite important to me. Anyone who says I shouldn't care where my files are stored should just switch to a Mac.

That and native Win32 support are probably the only reasons I haven't switch to linux yet. Though recent experience demonstrates linux is just now topping 9x in driver support (by "just now" I mean "just this week, with the most recent kernel update"), with 9x's end-of-term having much of the responsibility for that (as opposed to linux kernel development).

Now, with regard to the above, switching to XP would, indeed, only cost me two extra folders on the root, and vastly increase software support (at least until the next KEx). With some work, I could also remove all the unnecessary components that comprise of the disadvantage to using XP, e.g. genuine, firewall, SP2, etc...

I would still lose something I'm not ready to lose: Guaranteed startup stability console. That good old DOS prompt that tells me that even if the screen settings go haywire and even if win.com suddenly disappears, I can still restore my system without a boot disk. 9x has it, Linux has it, but the so-called "modern" Windows versions utterly lack it.

Well, setting all of these aside, even if I chose to upgrade now, I would only be forced to continue upgrading as new versions of Windows continue to appear. Right now I have my good spot, and I can stay in it for the next few years.

Besides, all of these "down sides" you've mentioned? Haven't seen any of them for at least a couple of months, if not years. My system is as stable as I can imagine a system being...
I've reached the point where I'm searching for features, not fixes.

Yep, my 98SE system is stable and I don't see many BSODs these days thanks to the support from MSFN!
Besides, even XP is sluggish on my dual PIII, and on the same box, 98SE runs better with just one CPU.


Actually, Windows XP has the command-line Recovery Console that can be installed locally with Windows.
If it's not installed locally, then it can be accessed off the OS CD (and installed locally if wanted).
I've recovered many Windows NT, 2000, and XP BSOD at startup failures by booting from an XP CD and using the Recovery Console.
...But 95/98 DOS is fully featured!

I use Windows 95 because that's what I've always used on this computer, and it still works fine for my needs.

Not if you don't install the IE4 shell.

None of that matters if your computer came with Win9x and works fine with it. Now, peripherals can be a problem, but if you needed a printer and/or scanner, you probably already own them (I do). Most of the remaining hardware you'd want to use consists of flash memory which can be made to work.

By the way, I consider SMP support to be for servers, and not home use. This SMP business is just part of the perpetual upgrade cycle, trying to sell use newer CPUs over and over because increasing clock speed is getting hard. I wish they'd sell on architecture instead. A Core 2 Duo at 1.8 Ghz using only one core is faster than a Pentium IV at the same clock speed.

Software support can be an issue, but it hasn't really been a problem for me. I've always got my other computers as fallback anyway.

I use 98SE on older hardware. For newer computers XP is preferable, despite its many disadvantages.

Likable features of 9x: it's more responsive, faster, uses less resources. It's much easier to fix (no NTFS, simpler registry backup/restore, etc.). There's less unknowns running in the background doing who knows what and sometimes causing problems. I also like being able to rename directories even when there are open handles to files inside. :)

There are some things which are "less broken" in 9x compared with XP, but these can probably be replaced with 3rd party alternatives or fixed that way or another. I just still haven't invested enough time to get there on XP.

Booting it from the CD is so excruciating (and so 1980). And it's not very useful at all. Some Linux LiveCDs are probably a better choice for fixing XP.

Here you are wrong. SMP is good for home use. It allows for better multitasking on the piece of crap known as Vista. And there are single core Conroe processors. They're (still) called Celerons.



XP doesn't have any big disadvantages except not having DOS and 16 bit components. This is the reason for most of the compatibility problems. However, having gone through the trouble to patch an older game to run in XP, certainly some things are broken, but what's more irritating is that they broke some of them in updates, the original SP2 release was better. And WGA? Wots dat????

Vista 64-bit is okay, however they broke most of the compatibility that somehow remained intact in the 32-bit version which is SLOW. And having to deal with permissions when modifying the system folders is such a b***h. I run Vista 64 as my main OS on the C2D rig in sig, but i end up doing most of the work in a virtual machine running 32-bit XP...



So true.

PS. XP is VERY responsive on my dual-PIII 700 @ 933MHz / 1GB SDRAM / 9800 Pro / Sil 3112A PCI SATA + WD 320GB. However i downgraded the XP in my Portege laptop to Me (98 had serious stuttering issues when accessing the network), and it'll stay that way. Very poor memory performance (ALi chipset, bleh) and better compatibility with the crap i play on this laptop makes Me a much better choice.

One PIII is not enough for XP. Two PIIIs at 800MHz or higher, yes. The C2D/C2Q chips are based on the PIII Tualatin core btw.

But... Here's the reason i still love 9x:



It lets me delete the recycle bin!!! And yea i did that for real once.

@herbalist:

Why do you think it is the best OS Microsoft made? You make a good point about support where you say
you have MSFN because i think they would provide better support than what Microsoft ever could have.

How do you get Windows 98 'properly tuned'? That sounds good not having BSODs for months at a time!
But why are u using 98FE and not SE?

I fully understand what you mean when you say Microsoft is pushing upgrading onto us... it's a constant
pressure. I honestly believe those XP only applications would run flawlessly on W2K 99.9% of the time
given the chance to run on it... But nooo lol.

Nice to see Windows 98 has got large hard drive support working... but it would be far better to see
someone get SMP working. What is the purpose of having large ram support on 98? Mainly games would
need this much ram and that's games like Crysis which hugely benefit from SMP or atleast eg. 3.8ghz
Pentium IVs... Can Windows 98 use that processor? Obviously HT wouldn't work.

@ Slugfiller:

It sounds like what you're after you could get from XP and easily remove the components you don't like
plus add in the recovery console to the install so you can use the same command line based tool to fix
your OS if anything happens to it.

@ RetroOS:

The same box with Windows 98 would be wasting half the CPU power available to any other OS that supports
SMP

@ BenoitRen:

If anyone is still using a PC that came with 9X then it is surely ready to die if not soon... some parts you
simply cannot replace without scavenging on Ebay for parts of the same age. It would seem more economical to
buy new stuff wouldn't it? SMP is great for home users who like to multitask... and lots of people do it!
Playing music while writing an email and talking on IM while your AV runs it's real-time scanner and so on...

@ Shae:

Is 9X really more responsive than other Kernels? Is that like a fact and has a reason behind it to back it?
I find that very interesting and in a good way because i love a good fast responsive machine!

@ Th3_uN1Qu3

It seems that you are one of the few people who understand that the Conroe range of CPUs isn't better than
the previous just because of Multi-Cores on the cpu but the cpu architecture itself being more efficient
making a 1.8ghz cpu rival the best of the Pentium Ivs that were released.

With XP you can obtain free programs that emulate DOS and can run 16-bit apps fine like DOSBOX. There
is also compatibility mode. Yeah Service Packs can be a pain but that is for all OSes. WGA? wouldn't
be a problem if you were legit although there is 101 ways around this WGA you speak of. If someone wanted
they could completely take out everything they don't like about XP and add everything they want into it by
using a tool like nLite to make their own custom CD so they wouldn't have to bother with any of this ever
again.

See how you can delete the recycle bin? Windows NT5 and onwards (W2K and newer) has a better for of Windows
SYstem File protection that is great for home users so they don't deystroy their OS as easily as the probably
could with Windows 98's system file protection.

Oh and the C2D and C2Q chips aren't based on the Pentium 3 Tualatin... It goes like this:
Pentium 3 Tualatin > Pentium M > Core > Core 2

So yeah you were right but you were basically saying that the Core 2 is based on P6 architecture meaning any
example could have been used as far back as the Pentium Pro (Excluding Netburst based CPU architecture).

Win95Guy

In response to the thread herbalist linked me i found someone called Fredledingue saying this:



When i read this i agree with what he says... But i also think of the good in What Microsoft may or may not be intentionally doing... Pushing the world of computing forward when it comes to hardware and the technology we have available to us today. If you think about it deeply... as computers evolve and become more and more integrated in our daily lives then we will to evolve with the technology presented to us and what is available. Oh and in 2004 when Microsoft was going to cut 98/ME support, they didn't because 27% of pageviews on google were from Windows 98 still... let alone ME. So they extended it until some date in 06 when the number dropper to just 2.7%

I think he should think about those figures before speaking of the reluctant xp to vista upgraders because what happened with 98 will happen with XP in time. And many of those XP users are likely those 98 users anyway.

Win95Guy

I don't have a problem with real progress. When change is for the sake of profits and doesn't represent any real benefit to the user, it's a whole different story. As for the ability to integrate into our daily lives, what can XP or Vista do that 9X wouldn't be able to handle? Many of us don't like the direction windows is going. IMO, an OS should be a platform for the users software, no more.

BTW, don't take those OS usage percentages as accurate. Many 9X users use browser extensions or other apps to spoof the browser and OS data sites obtain from us. It's partially a privacy/security issue and partially to deal with sites which try to force users to "upgrade".

The 9X systems are the last ones over which the user has full control. Each new version of Windows stores more usage records and takes more control away from the user than the one before. With 98, one adjustment closes all of the open ports. That's much harder to do on XP. Most anything malware can do to a 9X box can be fixed with DOS. With XP, to gain that kind of access, a linux CD, Barts PE, or something similar is necessary. How's that an improvement?

I do have both FE and SE installed. So far, I haven't got as much performance from SE as I get from FE. The difference isn't much, but it's enough that I prefer FE. I use SE as more of a testbox. As for how to "tune" 98, that subject would be several threads in itself. Many threads here cover a lot of the details, like optimizing memory usage, swap file settings, etc. Most 98 boxes came with a lot of junk installed, just like XP does today. Much of it has autostart entries. The big problem is the hardware these came with. Much of 98s alleged instability was due to the weak hardware it was installed on, combined with the ever growing demands placed on it by new software. Microsoft's own software is some of the worst for this.

One of the best things you can do for 98 is to stop using Internet Explorer. I can't make this box run day after day if I browse with IE6, but I can with SeaMonkey. Security suites are another problem. Most are too bloated for 9X systems and much of what they do isn't needed on a 98 box. There's better ways to secure a 9X box that are more effective and don't add several more autostart processes at the same time. DOS batch files top that list.

When I first got this PC, I knew nothing about computers, save that you "needed" an AV to protect them. A co-worker steered me to Norton. I fell for the "one suite does it all" pitch and installed NIS 2002. It took almost 5 minutes to boot this thing up with Norton. One hour of browsing with IE6 would run it out of resources. One malicious site killed Norton and infected me, the only time this box ever got infected without my choice. Dumping Norton for a separate AV and firewall and switching to Mozilla enabled it to run all day. An upgrade from 64 to 160MB RAM, a good tuneup, and dumping the AV entirely enabled it to run for days with no problems. The same PC now boots up in 45 seconds.

98 does have memory usage issues in its design. It wouldn't surprise me if someone here figured out how to fix that too. Until then, getting long run times from 98 means using software that makes efficient use of memory. With SeaMonkey, I can browse for a while, then shut it off and have almost the same amount of free resources I started with. Not so with IE6.

Maybe Vista or XP need multiple processors to do that. 98 doesn't.
Screenshot
This is with a 366MHZ Celeron and 64MB RAM.
Rick

IIRC the XP recovery console is extremely limited in functionality. It's tough enough just copying a file from folder A to folder B in it.

With DOS, I get something that is intended to be a full operating system, and I get all the command line tools and 16-bit software I could possibly need. I always keep Norton Commander on-hand, making me hardly miss the absence of the GUI. Log reading, text file editing, copying, zip and cab extraction, etc etc... I have a complete toolset.

With Linux, the root console gives such complete support for non-X programs, that you wouldn't believe it doesn't load any kernel modules. With nano I can easily (well, relatively...) edit the configuration files, fixing any malconfiguration or error, something I can only dream about in Windows. It would have been an awesome feature, had it not been the only way to get the system working (forget X-based, even a curses-based configuration dialog would have been sufficiently awesome).

XP's recovery console is no replacement for cascaded kernel responsibility. In XP, if one driver goes, everything goes. This just gets worse with every new release.

Sure, but that's because Vista is a hog. Single-core has always done multi-tasking well on modern OSs.

Ready to die? Yeah, right. Still works great. I bet even our dinosaur (AT286) would still work great if I replaced the BIOS battery. The only parts I had to replace so far was hard drive that got too many bad sectors and a PSU that failed. Those are still readily replaceable, especially the latter.

Single-core already handled that fine.

Which is also much slower.

Think again. There are a lot of false positives.

Hmmmm i see... ok

Pentium 4 (Netburst architecture) was the biggest mistake Intel made. They were slow and ran very hot. Dual PIIIs @ 1GHz+ wipe the floor with any P4. I know that the Tualatin evolved in the Pent M and later in the Core, but i simplified it a little.

DOSBox is very useful. I do prefer a P1 with 32MB RAM and an AWE64 soundcard instead, but that's just me. But i'm talking about 16-bit Windows programs. And no, ntvdm.exe doesn't do the trick, especially when you have a game using mixed 32-bit and 16-bit DLLs. Compatibility mode? Bwahaha, what a joke. When it does work it makes the program throw random errors instead of not starting at all. Really awesome.

As about deleting the recycle bin, in 2k/XP you can delete the boot loader with 3 lines in a bat file without anyone noticing. On next reboot there's no more winblows. In what way did security evolve in XP?



The memory leak issue isn't that bad. For some reason or another i have to reboot at least once a day so i don't worry about it. However you are wrong about SMP, and... uh... Try Youtube or another flash video site on that Celeron. My laptop in sig can run them in their window without hiccups, but smooth fullscreen is only possible if i don't have anything else CPU intensive running at that moment.

A little example of SMP. Yahoo Messenger has the nasty habit of locking up when transferring files at high speed (over 2MB/s). With my dual-PIII i can set Realtime priority and assign it to one of the CPUs, and i still have another one available to surf the web or play games. On a single core system Yahoo Messenger would kill all CPU resources, forcing you to wait till the transfer is done.



I wished i was in Linux when i saw Vista's permission stuff. I want root command line. And i sure miss DOS alright. I remember being 6 and learning what I/O, IRQ and DMA meant so i could configure my soundcard for DOS games in Win95. I keep a 586 box around just for messing about in DR-DOS.

As for XP's drivers, this is why they removed the Vista audio stack from the kernel space to the user space. However, this didn't make it more stable than XP, just created more trouble...



See above.

I really loved the Tualatin revision a lot too... but there is no way a dual tualatin rig could beat Pentium 4s as you said. The early willamette ones yes, and maybe some northwood due to SMP but when you get a 3.8ghz one with HT then that kicks a**. Netburst was very inefficient due to power leakage meaning more had to be pumped in and more heat was produced. The Pentium D was basically a Dual Core Pentium 4. They were nice i think, and i own a 3.73gh extreme edition version of them in one of my PCs. I wouldn't mind dual Xeon 5080 cpus... they are practically the SMP versions of this cpu allowing for two in one machine... 4 cores of netburst would yes raise your power bill and heat your room in winter, but also perform pretty nicely

Pentium 4>Pentium 3 but not clock for clock...

But will they beat even the cheapest C2D? I don't think so.

That's an unfair proposal. Flash is a CPU hog even on recent hardware. It's not even hardware-accelerated.

Did you actually test this, or is this just an assumption? This sure isn't true in Windows XP, which has a bit better multi-tasking than Win9x. I tend to think that an application being able to take over the CPU is a flaw in the OS, not because single-core is bad.

I'm willing to bet that 4 cores of Netburst stock clock 3.73ghz could beat the cheapest C2D available... considering they clock at 1.06ghz and come in single core variants... i would call that 'raping' the Core2 in that case

But you said Core2 Duo not solo... i'm still sure 4 cores of 3.73ghz netburst would beat 2 cores of the cheapest C2D

This is pretty obvious though... it's like comparing a Pentium M 2.26ghz P6 architecture against a 1.3ghz Pentium 4 which was the P6 predessesor. The high end of the previous architecture will usually outperform the low end of the new architecture but maybe not efficiently... netburst doesn't know the meaning of efficient lol.

How did this thread go from:
"why do you still use 9X"
to:
"How many of which processor is better?"
98 wasn't designed to use multiple processors. If that's the criteria for comparing 98, then this thread is pointless.
No, I can't do heavy multitasking on a single 366mhz Celeron. I can run a P2P app with multiple transfers and an IM in the background while still performing normal internet activities. I'd like to see XP or Vista do that or anything else of consequence on 366mhz and 160MB RAM. Getting work out of a high power system is no big deal. Getting the same work from hardware that won't run a modern bloated OS is more of a challenge. On conventional single processor hardware, 9X systems will get more usable work out of it than an NT system. An OS is supposed to harness the hardware and make its power available to the users software, not use up as much of it as possible.

Regarding Yahoo and high speed file transfers, I can't verify that with 864/160 DSL service, but back when I used Yahoo (now a Miranda user), I had no problems transferring files and still browsing or doing something else.
Rick

Because the system needs less files and so the OS installs faster than Win2k,XP....
And I can run Win98SE very fast with 256 MB RAM, if it crashes I'm Immedietly on the Desktop again, on XP I need to wait many minutes ...
Also because my old Win98 computer had never to be installed again later when I knew 98 very well. Thought the old machine was made irreperable later by breaking the bios battery slot....

The good things are u still get updates 4 Internet Explorer 6 and they can be installed on WIn98SE and that IE6,WMP9, and DirectX 9.0c are all running on Win98.
Since KernelEX there comes also many movement, as now FireFox 3 also can run 98 over KernelEX.

To finish in a sentence, many of the common used progs are capable to run Win98 so why run XP or Vista with 256 MB RAM, you loose speed.

This would be my dream come true.

As for the need to constantly upgrade to a faster computer; according to this site in 10 to 15 years this could be over.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/09/idf-gordon-mo-1.html

What do you mean by "recent hardware" ? As i said my laptop with PIII @ 933 is fine with most flash video sites.

As for yahfoo, everybody i know with an internet connection has it. I experienced the lockup many, many, many times on my laptop when i used to run XP on it. While the dual-PIII has no trouble with it.

Win98SE "Preferred O.S."= A ...Lean and Mean Revitalized-Updated-Superior 98SE O.S. Machine. .......1.5gb full install with all updates ,mail,messenger,t.v.,cd-player/re-corder,camera,photo-shop,no bloatware ,simple ,everyday use ,...trade-off on 3 different MoBo's on a rotation user/testing basis.... 1 major crash and 2 re-installs due to testing new updates in 3 month's time....not bad for a 10 year old O.S. system on 10 year old MoBo's..huh? <*It reads to me when i sleep,too-yet will not do dishes though? > Who needs a new 1,000,000,000mb/hdd-with "Warpspeed/ghz; if they could just put it in a "nutshell" and carry their Operating System in their pocket on a 4gb/usb-flashdrive when they travel as i do:)

Wow that's impressive! i hope you are doing that via USB2 though... How does that even work though? lol

However, that is called Puppy Linux...

My fault. My comments about SMP...

So you only mean Flash video, then? I guess that could work. But Flash in itself is still a hog, and can still bring a recent CPU to its knees. Fact is that if Flash was designed better and more efficient, it would also run well on about 366 Mhz.

Welcome to Europe, I say. "Yahoo!"? What's that? It's all MSN here.

Win98 can fit on a floppy.

That's true. Adobe has done nothing but bloat lately. But we can't change it ourselves as everybody uses it...



If you didn't know, let me inform you that Romania is in the south-east of Europe.



DOS 7.10 can, the GUI itself never.

I very seldom watch flash videos. Normally, I block flash content. Most of the time, it displays ads or something equally useless. There's very little content that's worth watching, but I went to YouTube just to see what this box will do. In full screen, the video isn't as smooth as I'd like but was very watchable. Yes, a 366 Celeron will play a full screen flash video running 98FE, with 18 processes running. FYI, this box was last rebooted on Friday afternoon, 44 hours ago. Still has 62% free resources. 98SE may be regarded are the more stable OS, but FE can be just as stable and reliable, and on my hardware, a bit faster. If I'd get around to giving it that cleanup it needs, it would probably do even better. It's getting a bit bloated, 2.86GB at the moment. The desktop alone is a 350MB+ mess.

Regarding Yahoo, if Yahoo gives you trouble on a 9X box, maybe you should give Miranda a try. They have a 9X version that works quite well. I use it for Yahoo and MSN. Much better than running 2 separate IM programs.

On the original subject, "why use 9X", for me the primary reasons are security and privacy. These are best achieved by having control over the OS and the software you use. Control requires total access that you don't have with an NT system. The more I look at the NTFS file system, the more convinced I get that it was designed to hide things from the user, processes, files, usage records, etc. Microsofts attempt to lock the kernel on Vista has only reinforced that belief. On 98 units, DOS lets you access everything. A 98 box doesn't complain if the OS components don't have internet access. It can be secured very well with a couple of freeware apps and a little tweaking. A simple batch file can keep your registry exactly the way you want it, fully optimized, emptied of usage records. What combination of apps are needed to accomplish that on XP? I can let someone else use this PC and not worry about what they might open, where they go, or what exploit they might run into. To me, a computer is a tool. For a tool to do what you want, you need to have control over it. If you don't have the final say over what it's doing, it may do more than you expect. For me, that's more than enough reason to not "upgrade." Little to gain and a lot to lose.
Rick

makes me with it supported SMP etc so i could throw it at any of my new PCs. Hey since it doesn't support SMP, does is not support a second core on a dual core graphics card?

I have used Miranda in the past. There are so many things wrong with it that i don't know where to start. Sure, it is small and fast, and the yahfoo chat client is a slow piece of junk, but at least it does what i need it to do.




What, you want a dual-chip ATi Rage? It should work with that.

How long has it been since you've tried it? I'm using Miranda version 0.7.4, Yahoo Protocol support via libyahoo2 library. [Built: Apr 6 2008 18:31:48]. It usually logs in and connects in 2-3 seconds. Miranda updates quite often. I installed it in late February and I'm already 3 versions behind.

Eh, a country that has only recently joined.

Yes it can. Take a look at Mindows.

By the way, I've discovered a couple days ago that youconvertit.com exists for converting Flash videos into something I can watch. I knew of vixy.com, but that only converted to formats that demand a lot of your CPU.

It has nothing to do with the login time, Miranda logins faster than the yahoo messy. However, photo sharing doesn't work, file transfers only work with certain users, HyperIM (powerful status manager for a lot of IM clients) started supporting Miranda only recently, and while i can see other users' display images, they can't see mine.

It's been more than an year since i last used it but i doubt much has changed. I may try it again but don't count on it.

@ BenoitRen: It's not like MSN is the official chat client of the European Union. Cut it out please.

Really true. I have Win2000 and XP installed on dual boot, but only use them occasionally. IMO XP and Vista dedicate most of its resources not to do what you would like it to do but to avoid the system doing most things without external permits, be it from the Administrator, Microsoft, DRM, or the software providers. Backdoors, controls, and controls and more controls, most of them unwanted.

I can't stress enough how MSN is widely used in Europe, that's all.

When I reinstalled my windows98 afresh, before it even touched the internet, I made a copy of all the files (program files, and windows basicaly) on a CD-R. Uncompressed it took less than half the CD-D, program files included. Ok now, that I have installed MS Office and any other stuffs, I'm near a Giga, but the point is that my basic installation and basic softwares can be backed on a CD-R. Uncompressed.

Then if something happen I can reboot in dos mode and with a one-line comand, using xcopy I can restore my whole system. It would take less than 20 minutes to do so.

I can also insert anything I want in autoexec.bat.

I stopped using antiviruses two years ago because they couldn't find anything ever. I run spybot once in a blue moon, and at worse, he finds three cookies.

I loaded Win2000 and XP in dual mode. Even having both I always use Win98 because all the programs I need run perfect and I feel more comfortable: guaranteed startup stability console has no price. I use Win98 to restore both from scratch instead. Having this experience, in this moment I would not even loose my time loading any of them two. I have modified many things with the help of this forum and don't need really anything more. Maybe I'll delete both 2000 and XP.

Hello,

I do happen to like win98 & winxp, however, on this computer a 1ghz P-III cpu 512meg ram rig, 98 is very fast and
suits my needs very well. Ialso have a newer p-4 2.8ghz also running win98 and for video editing and music work as well,
windows 98se does quite well, thank you. Some people have said that you can't run usb 2.0 on 98 err yes you can
some motherboards come with the drivers. And of course there is windows xp on the rest of our computers.

i have single core single threaded cpu - Intel Pentium III-S "Tualatin". therefore any higher OS is waste of effort.

I need Win32 based environment with DOS support, with widest HW support possible. WDM standard is the most spreaded driver standard and windows 98SE is the best for me.

This configuration gives me full compatibility from year 1980 to year 2004 (Radeon x850), and software i can run is much newer - such as Oblivion and Prey from 2006. XP needs emulator for this spectrum of applications, i need upgraded kernel (kex).

Most dos based apps (optimized for Pentium Pro and later) can run flawlessly, all Win16-bit apps from Windows 3.11 and earlier too, and also all true Win32 apps can run and Win32xp surely will run when KEX will reach version 1.0.0

Also I still think that KEX is better than dos emulation which should be never perfect.

In my thinking any program which want to contact producer or anybody else without asking computer user is SPYWARE.

Using this logic Windows XP and Windows Vista are spyware.

I can block Windows XP from contacting Microsoft so I can use XP, but I can't block Vista so I will never use Vista or any other similar OS.

In this logic only Windows 98 is 100 % OK program.

Vista can be blocked too if you're that paranoid... The x64 version runs well given enough RAM and CPU power, and loads things faster than XP. However, it has a s***load of compatibility issues, bad enough to make me do most of my work in a 32-bit XP virtual machine. 32-bit Vista is more compatible but SLOW, besides, being 32-bit it can only use half of my RAM.

If i wasn't a gamer, i'd be running Ubuntu Linux now. Besides, Vista is a lot like Linux, you can't do this, you can't do that, that doesn't work, that needs to be changed to be made compatible, that needs to be removed as it has bad drivers, and so on.

There is one BIG difference though: In Linux you can do ANYTHING using the command line as root. Vista's command prompt is basically useless as it denies access to pretty much everything you'd need it for, even though you are admin.

Why do you consider this paranoid? When user software does this, it's classified as spyware. Why should it be different for an OS? When you look at the behavior of their anti-piracy and WGA, it definitely qualifies as spyware, especially when it messes up. A user shouldn't have to compete with the vendor for control over the OS, or repeatedly prove that they didn't steal it, or fight the anti-piracy when you upgrade hardware, drivers, etc. That's one of the best things about 98. The user has control of it, not Microsoft.
Rick

I never ever ever had to activate XP or Vista. However, this way is not very legit. But you are right. If you have to run illegal software to be in full control of it there's definitely something wrong.

I’ve noticed on this subject that the general wisdom is XP doesn’t run well on PIII era machines. I have two Celeron-S 1.4 ghz machines, one with XP and one with ME and both run well. ME is noticeably faster but SP3 and the latest Catalyst drivers have closed the gap. I have some apps that won’t run on 9x and some that won’t run on XP so right now I need both. XP is very slow to start, slower than even 2000, but once it’s up and running it moves right along. I was given these two computers because they “won’t run XP” and this was from the IT department of a Fortune 500 company. I have a 3ghz P4 laptop and from a real world user perspective the Celeron desktops are faster (benchmarks would say something different though.)

Either I’ve Forrest Gumped my way into the perfect hardware/software combination or there is a lot of misinformation in this area.

No Forrested Gump at all! I use a desktop with an AMD motherboard built yr 2001 and updated firmware yr 2003 , 512 Mb memory and 900 Mhz processor, and it is so fast using Win98 as XP or Win2000 (double boot).

You are right: misinformation pays!

BTW I normally run Win98.

The Celeron-S are Tualatin cores, which beat low-end P4s. That's why they run so smooth. On a PIII under 933MHz XP won't run well. On my dual-PIII 700MHz chips overclocked to 933MHz on a Tyan Tiger 100, with 1GB SDRAM and a 320GB drive hooked via a PCI SATA card, it flies.

I don't know about the rest of you, but i for one am used to "instantaneous computing". It's not that XP doesn't run on a >933MHz PIII, it's that it won't do it smoothly. However, it does run well on two PIIIs.

I started reading, and gave up...

my reason for holding onto 98? I like knowing that my hardware is running full bore. If I got a 2.8Ghz cpu, I want to be able to USE the whole 2.8Ghz for a single task.

try doing that in xp. you got 15 things *always* running.

Open Process Explorer. You have quite a number of tasks running in your 98 too. The ctrl-alt-del menu only shows applications. And XP can keep its major functions with just 8 processes. However 98 is still faster, no doubt about it. If you can still use it, keep using it.

A wise advice.
An old proverb says: "Limit your needs and you will limit your worries". I have enough with Win98.

Heh heh.

I just wiped Vista and installed 98SE! Nice semi old computer with the old Via Hyperion 4-in-1 4.56v. Going back to that old Via set seems to have solved both of my long standing problems of needing to manually install an older vxd AGP driver and my Error loading device IOS popping up eventually no matter what and ruining Windows. Anything newer was less and less 9x compatible regardless of the ones listed at viaarena.com.

I've been using Debian Linux with a Vista dual-boot and never would go into Windows because of it being so annoyingly intrusive upon my time (hours of updating and satisfying its "Security Manager," hard drive churning for its previous file versions System Restore logging, etc.) Couldn't stand the thing.

And I've still got more Windows 98 era software that runs better or at least runs on 98 than it did on XP or Vista, though I had managed to get most stuff going even on Vista.

I'm also using the Mozilla SeaMonkey for the first time upon noticing that Firefox is warning of 9x incompatibility in a few months on Firefox 2. It's like an old friend! As close to the old Netscape as one can get these days. Essentially that's what it is, just stripped of the AOL stuff that appeared when they bought out Netscape.

Virtualbox is just too darned slow running a 98 guest on Linux or I might not have bothered. Glad I did though. 98SE is the only Windows I've actually enjoyed running over the years.