Just to clarify things, TweakUI is available from the MS website legally.
As for 2000, it works great for the home if you’re willing to put a little effort in it. True, it doesn’t have as many drivers, but if you buy decent hardware then you won’t have problems. Do a little research. Windows XP will be coming out, and that is basically 2000 for the home user. Not much reason to go for that over 2000, unless you find it supports your hardware better. Right now it’s still slower than 2000, plus it has a bit too much fluff for my tastes.
98 vs ME? I’d go for 98. It’s tested and has good HW support, and is the best windows OS not based on the NT kernel. ME is probably just bells and whistles (kinda like XP actually). The one advantage 98 has over 2000 is DOS support, but since ME gets rid of that, what’s the point?
This is somewhere around #2 on my list of “top ten things I can’t believe that nobody knows about their computers”.
On modern motherboards, hitting the power button is a “soft” power-off. It informs the OS that you want it to shut itself down and turn off the power. If the OS is hung, it no-sells the power off.
But, if you hold the power button in for 5-15 seconds, then it issues a “hard” power-off, and just turns off the computer.
LordVor
(others in the top three include “Name-brand computers are NOT more reliable than home-built.” and “Never upgrade a Microsoft product that’s working.”)
Just to clarify things, TweakUI is available from the MS website legally.
As for 2000, it works great for the home if you’re willing to put a little effort in it. True, it doesn’t have as many drivers, but if you buy decent hardware then you won’t have problems. Do a little research. Windows XP will be coming out, and that is basically 2000 for the home user. Not much reason to go for that over 2000, unless you find it supports your hardware better. Right now it’s still slower than 2000, plus it has a bit too much fluff for my tastes.
98 vs ME? I’d go for 98. It’s tested and has good HW support, and is the best windows OS not based on the NT kernel. ME is probably just bells and whistles (kinda like XP actually). The one advantage 98 has over 2000 is DOS support, but since ME gets rid of that, what’s the point?
Doesn’t seem to be true, not in the case of my HP. On the other hand, 15 seconds is a really, really long time to sit there holding a stupid button, so you could be right (I usually wait 6 to 7 seconds). But in either case, it’s so much FASTER to unplug the sucker. Well, that’s why I still love my Apples – they don’t try to save 95 little pennies by leaving off a reset switch. THAT’S even faster than pulling the plug!
pulling the plug on your computer is a bad thing, and can actualy cause electrical damage to the system (not common, but possible)
Hold down the power button – it may seem like it takes forever, but hold it down and it will turn off.
As far as ME vs 98se vs 2000. Win95 has gone through many changes – 95a, 95b, 98, 98se, and now Win ME. Each time Microsoft attempts to improve on the previous OS, because each one changes so much that it is truly a new OS. Every time those changes occur, it is necessary for software and hardware manufactors to change as well for their product to work in the new OS. One of the reasions that ME will ultimately be more stable than 95 or 98 is because the real mode DOS was removed. That is a major reasion that 2000 is so stable. As soon as you want your OS to be compatable with everything under the sun, your going to have lock ups and crashes.
With Windows ME about 80% of all lockups are caused not by the operating system itself, but by other applications running in the OS.
One thing that MS is doing to combat this – when windows XP comes out here in the next month or so, MS is seriously considering (read: we don’t know yet) allowing only hardware drivers that are microsoft certified to be installed. You have to wait for microsoft to write the drivers for your hardware, but you know its going to work.
Yup, confimed it. Fifteen seconds seems to be the exact number of seconds it takes my stupid HP’s power switch to work. Maybe not exact, but it’s the count of 15-Mississippi.
Pulling the plug’s not a bad thing, statistically thinking. For a computer that’s plugged in and running all the time, it’s possible that a surge’ll fry the p/s or board components. Well, not enough that I’m worried about not pulling the plug, anyway.
Actually, I went to far as to rip the computer apart again, but it seems that processors aren’t in DIP packages anymore :), so I have no way to ground a reset line without the possibility of REALLY damaging the computer (via making the modification). Where the heck do people hook up reset switches? Or am I to be the victim of shoddy Windows AND shoddy HP hardware as long as I have this (admittedly free) computer?
“2000 for the home” already came out. It’s called… (drumroll please)… Windows ME.
Whistler was the early codename for Windows XP. They’ve since dropped the codename.
Anyhoo…
Our family computer came with an OEM version of ME… and it’s obnoxious as hell. Granted, this is because there’s a lot of Compaq (my dad thought he got a good deal with it… ha!) crap that we removed ASAP, but it’s a lot buggier than my friend’s “pure” ME.
My Win98, on my computer, has run VERY well. The only problems I’ve ever had were hardware conflicts, or 3rd-party software errors (damn Liveware 3.0…).
I’d say to stick with 98, and wait until XP comes out. Unless Microsoft does some MAJOR revisioning on the XP software between now and the release, it should be an excellent operating system.
Generally, I like ME better than 98 because it crashes
MUCH, MUCH, less often, and when it does, it doesn’t insult you with “To avoid seeing this again, shut down properly.” which used to infuriate me.
I agree with Mr. Blackwell, not being able to make a boot disk with FORMAT A: /sys is ridiculous. I suspect that people who feel comforted by the familiarity of a DOS command line are a shrinking demographic, though.
My main worry with ME is that it seems to have some multitasking issues-- I have an older version of Forte Agent, which seems to hijack 100% of system resources while updating newsgroups-- MP3’s skip horribly, can’t move the mouse pointer, nothing. Similar problems with using DOS-based utilities (like PKWARE, LPARSER, FRACTINT, DTA, etc, which have been beloved tools for me since the eighties,) in a window. I guess I could use 32bit apps to get around this, but I really like my old standbys…
It’s progress, but some the backwards-compatibility suffers.
Windows ME is not windows 2000 for the home. Windows ME is written on the win95 kernel, windows 2000 is written on the windows NT kernel. The home version of windows 2000 really is going to be windows XP – currently there are 3 versions of XP being planned – standard (the home edition for most users), professional (busisness type OS), and server (nuff said).
As far as OEM versions of an OS – yeah the inital load sucks. I can only speak for one company (the cow spotted type) but on the operating system backup CD’s the windows cabs are there, and if you know how, you can perform a clean install of windows w/o all that OEM @%#! – I can e-mail anyone who would like instructions on how to do so
I prefer WinZip over PKZip/PKUnzip, all functions are available without having to use the command line. I also have both the Windows and DOS versions of Fractint. The Win version is quicker but DOS has a better menu structure.