OK, so I see the new Windows OS is coming out 9/14/00. I’m sure some of you folks with “ins” (looking in BurnMeUp’s direction) have already tested or used the new OS, and I was wondering if anyone thinks its worth the upgrade.
I’ve been pretty unhappy with Win98 2nd ed., and for $50 (pretty cheap buy OS upgrade standards) I’m tempted to make the investment, but once i do its pretty much no turning back (I’m not that skilled at installing and uninstalling OS’, never tackled it before).
I haven’t taken the time to do much research yet, and I don’t really know what upgrades there are in the new OS, so I’m polling for opinions here.
Do you plan on upgrading?
What are the notable new features in Me?
Have you used Me yet?
Did you like it?
Is it much different to use than 95/98?
Now, I’m sure this is going to get some Linux/MacOS boosters chiming in, but its not something I’m really interested in, so save it.
I have it at work. Seems to run fine…then again, I have a kickass computer here, so that may help. Also, I had a clean install done…don’t know if upgrading would be harder. It probably would…
I have no experience with the new windows millenium to share but I will say that often upgrades cause more problems than they solve. Also, on this particular computer I have been running Win95 OSR2 for about 2.5 years now and have reinstalled the same excat OS many times. Sometimes it comes out pretty well and will go for months with majorproblems. Other times it comes out very unstable and just keeps crashing. I have no idea what the difference may be.
Before spending money on a new version of WIN you may want to try reinstalling what you have from scratch. It may make a difference.
Its supposed to be faster. I don’t know if that means you get blue screens faster. $45.99 at Costco $49 at buy.com [might be a rebate on it where you get some other software cheaper]. Those are ME UPdates , not full version [$170.00?]
Seems to me that its just SE with some more software in it or just a polished SE2. More like just a way to get more money from people.
Its a huge kluge, it doesn’t offer ANYTHING that Win98se doesn’t, in fact, if you take Win98se and use the Windows Update you will have a more current version of Windows Media Player (whippee… I don’t like the new version), and IE (whippee… Netscape user here). Don’t bother.
I’m typing this on a Windows 2000 computer in the college computer lab.
Looking around, I see HALF of the available computers are “out of order.” Plus the first computer I tried was totally locked up at the logon screen. Granted, it may be computer hardware problems, but half the computers?
Plus there’s this web window in the middle of the desktop that, if you’ll forgive my expression, blows it. You can’t move it, resize it, or close it.
sailor, I don’t want to hijack my own thread here, but my machine came with 98SE pre-installed, and to be honest I’m not sure how the hell to reinstall it without the Microsoft disks. Not that I’ve bothered to read my manual…
Anyways, I don’t have any major catastrophies, just slow performance in what should be very quick tasks (opening a local folder, etc.) on a machine with 256MB and 400MHz processor. And the typical Windows freeze-ups. How much do you lose when you re-install? Do I need to track all my software down again, or re-install any of it? What about all my shortcuts and IE bookmarks and cookies? Before I tackle a re-install where can I read up on what to expect?
If you only have one CD with yer computer that’s a main backup CD, and NOT a separate copy of Windows, DO NOT REINSTALL.
Why, you ask? Because you’ll lose everything. A system CD basically will revert your PC to the condition you received it in. Any programs you’ve installed since? Gone. All your custom settings? Gone.
Ok, so you want to reload your machine? Should be easy, well, if I knew what it was. Do you have a QUICK RESTORE from a COMPAQ or something to that effect?
You can also look in your C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\
Ask friends, someone will let you borrow thier Win98se CD overnight.
If its a name brand cookie cutter machine, you will have to use thier quick restore (drivers for proprietary stuff, etc.). That means (as someone warned) you will lose everything. Good thing is, it will run as quick as the day you bought it. Personally, I would do this option. I format and reinstall windows probably every 3 months on average.
I can’t believe people here are saying they reformat and reinstall every couple of months. I’m sorry, if that ever happened to me, I’d move to Linux. You shouldn’t have to reinstall periodically. Then again, Microsoft is so bloated and buggy, I’m not surprised.
knocks on wood that her system stays up and running
Omniscient, my laptop also came with those restore disks and they suck but what can you do? I guess the only alternative is to buy the OS separately… that would be one point in favor of upgrading I guess.
Falcon, Windoze is very quirky in my experience. Every time I reinstall I start from scratch, reformatting the disk, and follow the same steps. Some times the system is much more stable than others. Who knows…
This is the longest time I have gone without reinstalling, quite a few months now. Strangely, it is after a major disaster that wiped out half my hard disk. I was installing a game and something crashed and wiped out a load of files from my HD, entire directories disappeared inclusing ICQ, Internet Explorer and many others. I thought the time had come to reinstall but this happened a few weeks ago, I have patiently been restoring files from backups, here and there, and the system seems to be OK.
The only thing that seems to make it a bit unstable is the LAN but I tend not to use it much anyway.
In any case, Linux may have it’s good side but ease of installation and maintenance is not one of them. It is not for those who do not wish to spend a ton of time tinkering and fidgeting with their computers and learning a lot in the process.
On a tangent I just read MS makes you register the new office 2000 or it will not work. No way around it. They say it is to prevent piracy. You can install it on two computers, a desktop and a laptop and after that you cannot install in on a third machine as it will not allow it to be registered… I wonder how long it will take a hacker to crack the code…
Every release of NT since then is “broken” in one way or another. The DOS/Windows lineage (which includes Win95, Win98, and WinME) isn’t broken, of course, because it was never any good to begin with.
Omniscient, MS has been talking about dropping the win95/98 series for a while now and I believe they did intent to have WIN2000 replace it but in the end they have continued them both as separate families. They keep saying this is the last update to the win95/98 series though.