The New Windows

Post a message

Monitor page
for changes

by ChangeDetection

Which Windows for you?

There are several relevant Windows versions.

Windows XP

What's Good

ClearType - you've got to see it on a notebook or LCD monitor.

What Breaks

Easy CD Creator 4.x and earlier don't work anymore and won't work anymore. I did not use Take Two much but that won't work either.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Disney DVD apparently had problems.

Wireless LAN Adapter may have problems.

Windows 2000

Works ok with 128Mb of RAM, but not at all what you would call speedy. Prefers at least 256Mb of RAM and keeps on going faster - 512Mb I think is kinda nice, the more the better. No point going from say 800Mhz Pentium III to a 2Ghz Pentium 4. If you can't afford to give Windows 2000 256Mb, you're putting a race horse to pull coach carriages.

Handles a lot more multiple processes than Windows 98. So you can run some resource hogs like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, your emailer, your accounting software all at the same time but please, give it 512Mb of RAM, 7,200 rpm hard disk and a CPU of at least 500Mhz.

Although Plug and Play and ACPI compatible, looks like Windows 2000 ACPI expectations are different from Windows 98 ACPI expectations. More prone to installation and compatibility problems with machines, even new ones. Better have a good techo near at hand.

More difficult to install, restore, repair than Windows 98 when things go bad.

If you install it with NTFS instead of FAT, has security to stop casual prying eyes.

more...

Windows ME

A stop-gap measure for home / SOHO users pending arrival of Windows XP. It's based on Windows 98.

Has a way to block overwriting of important Windows system files by third party, less well written programs.

Has recovery feature - tracks changes and can revert to a previous state.

Does not start up with DOS, so some programs / games will not be fully compatible.

Has Windows Movie Maker that works with those inexpensive web cams to create home movies.

Windows 98SE

This is around in a lot of places - homes, SOHO and large corporates. It features

Plug and Play (so that non techos have a chance of setting it up)

compatibility with most current (maximum 3 years old) machines and peripherals

works on 64Mb of RAM ok, not great but ok

does power saving (APM / ACPI) ok

loads fast (don't compare it with OnNow or PocketPC)

supports enough of legacy DOS to play a heap of older and newer games

runs 3 simultaneous general business type apps - Word, Email + 1 more ok

works with Office XP ok

supports USB ok

cannot protect your files from nosy people in your house / in the same room. Hitting the Esc key will bypass the native password prompt.

Windows NT 4.0 and Windows '95

Still using one of these? Well, if your machine is older and only these work, keep going. It's about time to start thinking about upgrading your machine though, because machines have changed a fair bit since 1995. Both are now what I call embarrassing products. Why?

poor or no support for USB.

no support for Microsoft Media Player 7.x

NT 4.0 is not Plug and Play (sometimes this is a Good Thing actually)

MS wants to forget them

Missing a lot of components that now come automatically loaded with newer Windows and expected to be there. Therefore Office XP does not work on '95.

Cannot recognise a lot of motherboard features - e.g. poor or no support for power management (even if you don't want to use power management, the incompatibility can cause problems with operations.)

Just a few words