Sailor: You don’t have to worry about Windows Office 2K. I have a friend who has a copy of a copy of original discs, has installed it on two computers, made copies for friends, never registered it, and hasn’t had the feds or MS thugs knock down his door yet.
And I use Windows 2K at work, and it works smooth as silk. Much better in terms of stability compared to 98SE. I’m going to install it at home soon and see how it works there. Long as some of my newer games work, I’ll be a happy camper. 
When I poked my head in here and saw all the pocket protectors I just knew this was the right place to ask this question.
Is there such a thing as outboard memory? Y’know- something I can plug into a serial port and more or less instantly expand my workstation’s RAM by an additional 32 or 64 megs? I ask because my NT workstation has only 32 megs (yeah my boss is cheap; tell me something I don’t know) and I run about a dozen or more memory intensive applications on top of that. Most of my time is spent on the phone troubleshooting fast packet data lines (from T1 to oc12) using cumbersome testing software and it aggrivates me that I have to wait 10-20 seconds or more when jumping between windows of different apps. God help me when I have to run two tests simultaneously. I estimate at least 50% of my troubleshooting time is spent not doing anything but waiting for my screen to redraw. I can hear the system using the virtual memory file on the hard drive during these times of extreem delay, so I’m sure an extra 32 megs of RAM would do wonders. I know that increasing the Paging file is not what I want to do (I want less paging, not more).
Outboard RAM would be great because I could lock it up when I go home (you LAN people know how RAM tends to disappear in the middle of the night). Anybody ever heard of anything like what I am describing?
I’ve been running ME since August 8th (YES, legally), and I’m impressed. Not because it’s killer, but because it doesn’t fucking suck. With 98, I had a fatal error every hour or so. 98 did NOT like me. ME’s been running over a month now, and I’ve NEVER had a crash. Shit, I don’t think I’ve had more than 1 or 2 lockups, but soon as the processor chewed through the code, it started up again.
Ehh, it’s alright.
–Tim
Opus, I am not sure I entirely understand what you want or even why you would want it but I cannot see how you can have ourboard offshore RAM unless you have a connector to the RAM bus which is unlikely. I guess you could have some kind of offboard simulated RAM like through the USB bus but that seems quite innefficient and a bad idea in general. What’s the big deal with just installing it on the mainboard where it’s supposed to go?
Also note that mainboard RAM and Video Ram are two different things so you have to decide what it is you want.
Regarding win98 vs win2000, they are different OS better suited for different purposes and not directly comparable.
Homer, what you say doesn’t necessarily mean WIN98 was the problem. maybe a reinstallation would have solved the problem. Win ME does have some safeguards built in but they may get in your way if you want to do certain things. Again, it’s up to the individual to choose.
Damn!
I can put an “Out of order” sign up instead of workng my ass off ?
KULE!
My main reason for wanting it outboard is so I can assure my boss that it’s mine. I can imagine his reaction when I leave some day and want to crack open my workstation and take a couple RAM cards home with me. Plus, as I understand it, if I go to the RAM store I can’t just ask for a bushel full of RAM. It’s got to be whatever is already being used by the PC right? (i.e. a certain number of pins, something about parity… the last time I added RAM to a machine the guy I was buying it from needed to know all sorts of things about my PC.)
I’m almost positive I need main board RAM because as I said already, NT spends 10-20 seconds paging my hard drive for virtual memory every time I do something as minor as jumping between applications.
I guess I’ll annoy my LAN man until he gives me whatever info I need to buy my own RAM.
Opus, on a laptop - yes. Desktop - nope.
Windows 2000 is fine. For that matter so is NT 4.0 w/ sp. 6 installed. We have a LOT of machines all doing fine here with NT4.
I am dreading the Win2000 switch later this year. Just because people do not handle change well.
CandyMan
opus, 32 MB RAM is obscenely low. I’d make another run at your boss, and stress the amount of productivity lost. Make him buy the stuff. Assuming thats a complete waste of time (which doesn’t say much for the boss) and you’re only looking for and extra 32-64 MB just buy it, install it and leave it be. The stuff just isn’t expensive enough to warrant the amount of energy what your hoping for requires. 32 MB (that size card is getting pretty uncommon these days) is going to only cost you around $25-30, and ~$60 for 64 MB if you keep your eyes on the Best Buy flyers. Put a label on it with your name, install it and you’re set. If it disappears you know its time to get a new job, cause it doesn’t sound like the best place in the world.
Sailor: It was definately Win98. We did a clean format every 6 months or so, and a reinstall every 2 or 3. It was 98. ME solved it, whatever it was.
–Tim
The one good thing about ME that I’ve heard is that it preserves clean copies of your DLL files. I heard a testor say he even deleted a bunch as a test, and seconds later they were automaticly restored. With lost of newer programs screwing with them, This seems to me like a VERY good thing.
Yes, but it also prevents any updates to those files. It can be good, it can be bad. depends
95, 98, me all work great, as long as you know what you are doing. I have ME at home, which has been upgraded from 98 SE, and it runs everyday, 24 hours. It’ll lockup about once a month (as to be expected being on that long). I should reboot more often to solve that.
The biggest problem with the whole 95, 98, ME lineage is that thousands of non-geek normal people are using it, downloading tons of crappy utilities, screensavers, games, etc. that will never work right no matter what operating system they are used on.
Another problem is hardware. Your hardware could be bad, or your drivers corrupt, or just plain not written well. Next time you reload windows check for new versions of drivers, chances are they will fix many of your problems.
If you pay $15 for a modem you’re going to get a $15 dollar modem.
Don’t even imply that I think ME sucks total and complete ASS because I don’t know what I am doing…
No longer being able to uninstall Media Player (can you say M$ didn’t learn SHIT from the entire IE adventure???) and not even having the latest versions of its components sucks. Period. The OS offers nothing over Win98 to justify an entire new OS. It should have just been Win98te but then M$ wouldn’t be able to rip people off for the new box would they?
You would think they would have learned from the sales of win98 (retail) being so far below expected levels.
CandyMan
If you get ME, find a file on the cd called ‘setup.txt’ read it.
After I put it on, I found out it doesn’t have support yet for the most common manf of video cards thatt I have on that computer [no way would I put it on my main computer].
It looks just like W98. ME Can use 500 megs or more & for what? Nothing really. You get a internet camera software thing [so what? you can get Microsoft Net Meeting for free] & a video editing program [So what? You get that when you get a video card or a video camera].
Plus, now I can’t get it off because I had to put it on about 10 times before it would load [most of it does] & that writes over the uninstal files. so, no uninstal. sigh. Plus, I used the update $49.00 version. So, guess what? If I want to put W98 back on, I have to first put Windows something on [or have a full version of it], then use the W95 update then use the W98 update etc. Also tried the full version of ME, which really ripped to shreds the old W98. sigh.
Trust me, wait until they come out with drivers for ME for all your stuff.