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NT can’t run games. More specifically, after you apply SP5 and/or SP6a, you can run a limited number of games. W2K suffers from the same problem, except it can run more games. XP is supposedly totally compatible, but not really. So if I mainly want to play games on my computer, I will install W98SE.
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Security is a secondary concern at home, I don’t have anything to hide from my family. If really necessary, I encrypt certain files. This is far more secure. As for network security, you are better off using a router and then a firewall on your computer.
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NT etc. is more stable, but unless you need to keep a server or something like that, W98SE is good enough. And if I need to run a server, I’ll pick *nix (Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD) over any MS operating system.
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The only time I’ll put NT etc. on a home computer is when there are multiple users for the same computer, and they all want their own separate profiles.
You can network more than 5 XP Home computers if you want, no problem. The difference is that any individual XP home machine can only support 5 simultaneous connections to its resources.
Interestingly enough, XP Pro only supports 10. As far as I am aware of, 98 doesn’t have a limit. At least not one that I have hit on a 30+ machine LAN.
Why do I still use 98SE? Because I dont feel like paying a fairlly good size chunk of change for something that I have yet needed. I figure eventually there will be some hardware or software that will require XP or whatever microsoft puts out next, but until then 98 does all I need it to do.
I’m curious as to why the OP grouped XP home with the Win9x family, when it is of NT lineage.
I use Xp Home at home and XP Pro at work; I have not yet managed to discern any practical differences. (don’t get me wrong; I’m sure there are some differences, I just don’t seem to have found them)
I got a Dell with XP Home on it & connected the network cable to my old computer with ME on it & they were all set. Sure was easy. I read Pro only has a little more code so not worth the extra bucks to me.
Stand back… I use WinME.
Every time I say that I get piled on.
Why I use it? Cos it works, I know it like the back of my hand, it doesn’t crash on me, I have yet to have a program refuse to run/install, never had a break-in on my system.
I recently downgraded to win98se on one of my older computers due to the peer pressure I was getting over my winME usage, and that reminded me about everything I hated, HATED about it.
That’s the reason why I still use winME on my 4 networked computers (two more work machines running XP). The answer to the ops question for 90% of users is, imho, “cos they don’t know there is anything else out there and they probably don’t need it”.
WinME actually suprised me (in a good way) the other day; one of our satellite offices has two PCs running ME and I went there to network them (peer to peer) - after sharing the printer on one of them, it automatically appeared in the printers folder of the other. Never seen that happen before. Still think it’s the most flaky MS OS ever (for other reasons).
I personally love XP Pro over home because of the extras you are able to get out of it. [irrelevant if you don’t use them, as already stated] however there are several advantages over home that have not been mentioned here; If you wanted a comparison of home and Pro, Here is a great comparison.
As far as compatibility issues, XP has a neat compatibility feature where you right-click on the executable and select properties. You will see a ‘Compatibility’ tab that allows you to select all the way back to '95. Best of all, it works…usually.
If I were to give one example of why to switch to XP (or the NT environment) from '9x, it would be seperate process handling. I always found it such a pain to reboot everytime a beta driver choked on me in '9x. With the NT family, you do not have to worry about that, just kill the single offending process and no reboots needed…usually.
Because of the millions [pretty sure] of new lines of code within XP, it should almost be considered NT5 IMHO.
For those '9x users who are not considered power users, heavy gamers, developers or beta testers for every new driver they can get their hands on, '9x should be fairly stable…
Oh…speaking of driver support? XP has almost unmatched driver support. No worries there.
I’ve got Win2K on my computer here at work. It freezes regularly, thankyewverymuch. It seems to mostly happen in conjunction with WordPerfect 10, but still, it gives me no reason to prefer the NT/2K line over the 95/98/ME line.
At home, my wife and I have two computers running ME, and one five year old computer running Win95. We’ve got 'em networked just fine, and happily sharing a 56K Internet connection. (OK, not so happily if we’re both downloading something big at the same time, but that’s an infrequent event.) Like I said, I’ve got reasons not to expect that Win2K would be better. And IIRC, XP had issues about overzealousness in copyright protection, so I haven’t gone there.
Oh yeah, in all cases, the OSes on my home PCs are those that came with them. Like DougC was saying, we just kept what was on it. The ‘honey-do’ list is a lot longer than the time we have to get them done, and even thinking about the question of a new OS is far, far away from even making the list.
I see the MS sometimes sells the Pro version for $39 plus shipping (About $52 altogether) with some trinkets. Even at that price I didn’t buy it. I think its for retailer evaluation but fully functional & not for resale.
That confirms it - I made the right choice (home edition)
Pro was about 60 quid more, for extras that I absolutely will never use.
:eek: I should see if GTA 3 works better with my extra memory, graphics card, and OS!
<runs home>
One isolated conflict that happens over and over does not a shoddy OS make. Right now I’m typing on my boss’s Windows 95 machine. A few moments ago, the damn thing blue screened on me because I had the audacity to open up 10 browser windows or so. Ugh. See, if an OS crashes all the time for 1,000 different reasons, it’s impossible to troubleshoot. If it’s just one thing like yours appears to be, chances are others have experienced it, too, and there’s probably a patch or a workaround.
A good way to find out is to copy and paste any error messages you may have received (especially if they’re fairly specific) into a search engine and try to find others with the problem. Usually you’ll get a bunch of message board links that can be quite helpful. If it’s a generic error message, you’d search for something like “windows 2000 wordperfect crashes” (without quotes, of course).
When MS was promoting Windows 2000, some of their print ads pointed to an independent study that showed Win9x crashed 13 times more than 2000. Of course, pointing out how shoddy their other products are never seemed like a brilliant stragegy to me (New Vanilla Coke tastes 13 times better than that nasty swill we call Coke Classic!), but then what do I know?
One of the main keys to the stability of Windows NTFS-based OSes is better memory management. When applications crash, they are far less likely to bring the OS down with them. I’m not saying it never happens, but it happens far less than in 9x. 2000 also refuses to allow programs to access hardware directly.
Another advantage of the NTFS OSes that most users will appreciate is that they don’t need to be defragmented nearly as often as FAT32.
My computer came with Win XP Home Edition installed. After about a month and at least 50 freeze-ups or crashes, I deleted it and had my brother install Windows 2000 Server. In the year since, my computer has crashed exactly once.
I couldn’t STAND WinXP. My machine was always spontaneously turning itself on and dialing up, doing God-knows-what. I’m slightly more paranoid than normal anyway, and one of my machines showing initiative was not good. Plus, I could never open a program without some motherfucking ad for a Microsoft product popping up.
I have Windows2K on this (home) machine—I never have problems. I have WindowsME on another machine and I dislike it quite a lot–not enough to change, but quite a lot.
I run ME because I occasionally have to boot in to it to check page compatibility in IE. It came with my notebook, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay an extra hundred-plus bucks to “upgrade” to an OS that I’ll use maybe once a month.
Other than that, I use Linux.
good morning friends,
as most, i run windows xp on my desktop because that is what it came with. i aslo have a desktop running me with no problems, a laptop running 98se, and a laptop running 95. all network together just fine, and everything is pretty stable.
the newer operating systems do not run some applications i need. the perfect machine for my business use is the old ibm thinkpad running windows 95. i am resposible for installation, troubleshooting and repair of computer based addressable fire alarm systems. any operating system newer than 98se will not communicate with most of my control panels.
My comp came with XP Home, and I don’t really have the initiative to upgrade it. In the 4 months I’ve had my comp I’ve had maybe one lockup occur. So for me at least, XP has been very reliable.
Oh my God! Are you serious? What are you doing on that machine? I have Win98SE, and it does that to me at least twice a day.