should I Upgrade to win98?

[Wayne M.]

I know i'm beating a tired horse, but she's a good gal.

Here's the deal;

WIN95

PII 233

160 MB RAM

4 GB harddrive

sound and video work fine for what I want.

Have USB ports.

newly installed CD-RW



The reason why I want to do WIN98 is because hardware and software are getting harder to find, for example I just got a Nikon 885 camera and the software is for win98 only. I tried to get a card (compactflash) reader for win95, and it's impossible. I found one from sandisk, and the machine balked at the install. I can't go for a new machine right now (frankly, I don't like what I see right now) and I want to wring all I can out of this one.



Thanks in advance for your suggestions!



Any other ideas for upgrading (cpu?) would be appreciated!

 

[klenger]

I doubt that you can buy Win 98 anymore. Look at getting Win XP, and you should be set for a few more years. If you later have a generic computer built, you will already have a new OS.

 

[cdpsrjc]

Wayne,



I just found a Win98 OEM CD offered for sale by www.newegg.com. Because it is OEM, it must be sold with hardware. I'd give 'em a call and find something new and nice for the PC. Perhaps for the camera? I recommend you buy the upgrade and do a windows update after install. With all the patches and additional features added over time, Win98 will take your PC into the near future nicely. I recommend Newegg highly.



good luck,

Richard

 

[Power Wagon]

Win98 SE is definitely the thing to use.



XP, ME, those will turn your machine into a slug. 98SE is stable, not a hugely bigger overhead on your processor.



You can buy 98SE in all kinds of places still. And usually pretty cheap, now.

 

[illflem]

I personally like Win98 the best of all the MS OSs. Think you are making a good move.

 

[Chipstien]

I would have to agree with Powerwagon on this one. XP turned my system into a slug. However I was going to recomend ME but PW might know more than me.

 

[WOWZY]

I upgraded to ME about 4 months ago from 98se and ME has been alot more stable than 98se was for me. Have had no "Blue screens of death" since the upgrade and have had no lock ups like I had with 98se.



I like the super fast defrag that ME has over 98se and the Picture thumbnails option are a plus for me also.



I'm not ready for XP yet, will wait till probably the first of next year to upgrade.

 

[Power Wagon]

My only thoughts about ME are that it's an "orphan". MS doesn't support it anymore, drivers for hardware aren't being written, either. USUALLY Win98 drivers work, but not always. If hardware doens't have 98 support it's either ancient or you don't want it.



Everyone has moved on from ME to XP, Win2K, etc. It's a dead horse, in my view. I'm quite positive I will never go beyond Win98, myself. My next OS will simply ditch Micro$loth anyway, and they can just forget spying on my machines.



The office and other products developed for the free OS's is getting better all the time. Hopefully, I don't find necessary things for business that need an MS operating system. As much as the wife dislikes using Netscraps on the KDE interface, I may not be able to follow my wishes, though. Maybe someone will get one heck of a good emulator written for Windows, and I can just run the software on a real OS.

 

[JohnMcIntyre]

Platform/OS comparisons.....

Originally posted by Power Wagon

Win98 SE is definitely the thing to use.



XP, ME, those will turn your machine into a slug. 98SE is stable, not a hugely bigger overhead on your processor.



You can buy 98SE in all kinds of places still. And usually pretty cheap, now.

Could not agree more with this analysis and FWIW, Windows 98 is as good as Macintosh 88 ever was!

#ad

 

[The patriot]

I liked 98 in my last machine. I cant say that the XP made my puter slower because it came loaded in a much faster machine than the ol Celeron was.

If you want stable, try NT. We had this at work, and it never crashed!!

We now have new puters there, and Windows 2000 office edition.

I'm not very computer saavy, but it seems OK.

Eric

 

[joel]

98 is pretty good - I'd do it.

I'm running 98 on my P 233 laptop with only 48 M of RAM and it works fine. I'd stay as far from ME as you possibly can. Installed it on my desktop and had to reboot virtually every day and it still didn't work right. Even did 4 complete hard drive formats and clean installs and it wouldn't work right. It never released memory from a program that I used and then closed so at times, I'd be down to 8K of available memory. That's not enough to run the damn clock with.



I'm using Win2000 now and think it's the best one so far. Very stable and pretty fast. I'd recommend either of those. I'm staying away from XP because of the registration issues where you have to phone home to MS to "permission" to activate the software.

 

[cdpsrjc]

98SE... ...





Driver support is a huge issue with OS selection. Power Wagon's previous comments about driver availability for hardware was right on the mark.



His software and (drivers) was written for Win98.



As for upgrading the processor, (does anyone know if this PII 233 is Socket 7 or Slot1?) Your motherboard and BIOS will be the limiting factor in a processor upgrade decision. Unless you build your own PCs, you'd be getter off to just buy a new one if you want more speed. The hardware upgrade costs on a older PC are not cost effective. (MHO)



Richard

 

[Todd G]

If you've only got a 233MHZ processor, then go with Windows2000. It is the most stable operating system out there. XP is better for the interface and everybody I know( even the LINUX guys ) love it, but I wouldn't run it on anything less than a 350MHZ processor and 128MB of RAM. ME lasted all of a month on my home computer. It crashed constantly and many of the hardware companies never wrote any drivers for it.



On the other hand, a government agency I used to work for was upgrading to ME from 98 on its 10,000 computers and never had any problems with crashing. They did, however, have a large IT department to support it.

 

[JR2]

You can still find 98 CD's out there if you know where to look. I still have copies of win 3. 1 if anyone is interested If you have any MS products that you want to use but don't have a registration code, I know where you can get a code generator too... .



I have a Nikon 885 and I have installed the software on Win98, win2000 and a WinNT5 machine. It worked on all of them with no problems. As far as I can tell Win2000 is the best op sys I have used. It absolutly does not crash where I use it and we run our computers for months with out turning them off or rebooting.



Good luck

 

[Steve M]

We have ME on our two laptops and have had no problems with it at all. When I went with cable and a wireless network, our desktop computer would not shut down. Then I learned about the 98 shutdown problem and the patch that's available for 98se but not 98. My wife bought the full version of ME and we installed it on the desktop. Now it works great. I don't know why but we haven't had any of the problems with ME that I keep hearing about.

As for the question. I went from '95 to '98 and we liked the improvements. And again we like the improvements from '98 to ME.

 

[LSMITH]

I am having the exact same problems as joel with ME. The memory leaks force me to reboot daily or several times a day depending on use. I cannot run for one whole day with 128M of ram without locking up. ME sucks, 98 is decent on my laptop, no problems at all after all of the patches were developed.

 

[Koa Man]

My P4/1. 3gig came with ME and it locked up and had to be rebooted two or more times a day. Got sick of it and upgraded to XP. Much more stable and it doesn't seem slow to me, but I have 640 megs of ram. I have the Win98 disc that came with my old P2 computer, along with the Win98 Plus. If anyone wants it, email me at -- email address removed -- and you can have it for the cost of a bubble envelope and postage to send it to you. I'll send it to the first one to email me.

 

[JBlock]

Sarted a new thread bny accident

I was going to recomend ME as I running both ME and XP. I like XP the best it is stable, it definately slower on Portable and the desk top, with clean install on both, I also have ME on a machine that seen 5 upgrades on the hardrive and operating system, it a dog on that one.



See the other Post "I like ME" it was planned to me a comment on this posting. Appears i may have over estimate ME. Oo.

 

[JohnMcIntyre]

Windows ME

Originally posted by Todd G

..... ME lasted all of a month on my home computer. It crashed constantly and many of the hardware companies never wrote any drivers for it.

My sympathies Todd. Over here in Europe the meaning behind the acronym for Windows Millennium Edition is More Errors.

 

[socal_rattler]

I say go to Win2000... it's the most stable Microsoft OS and will still run on your hardware.