Win98 Users SOL

Bloodshedder said:

Not true in the slightest.

NiGHTMARE said:

Windows '98

Those articles said:

Windows '98 Second Edition

NiGHTMARE now says:
Absolutely true in the fullest.

Uh... NiGHTMARE, you are utterly mistaken. The mention of Windows 98 SE is to say the period applies up to 7 years from SE's release; the support extension perfectly applies to all three versions, though.

Buying a Windows license every 2-3 years is unneccesary and expensive. You pay 200 bucks just to get what you already had, plus a few bug fixes and fancy background images and menu effects...
Linux is faster (if you compile stuff yourself), got better memory management, (extremely) few bugs and it's free...
I can't understand why people want Windows...

Ubik said:

Oh, quit bitching. XP is seventeen orders of magnitude better and more stable than 98 anyway.

Like hell. Do you know the minimum requirements for the XP system? That's one thing that puts on much more equal terms. And antoher thing, get the unofficial SP for Windows 98 SE and find out how stable it runs.

The only reason I'm not using 2000 on my laptop is because of the requirements. 2000 would run like crap on a Pentium MMX with 64MB of RAM. But it plays ZDoom fine. And unless I have like 512MB of RAM in a system and top level processor there's NO ------- WAY I'll install XP.

If you want someting more stable than 98SE all patched up, use 2000 unless you actually have one of those Pentium 4 with hyperthreading and plenty of RAM. Geesh. XP scrapes the floor with anything less, even though you could install it on my laptop. (wait, no actually my laptop's HDD is too small!)

Vroomfondel said:

I can't understand why people want Windows...

Ctrl-Alt-Delete online comics actually answers that. The mainstream of games ins't supported by Linux. Sure, Linux has free alternatives, and is making the move to the gaming section, but until it's better known in that area people are still gonna want Windows, even if it's just a dual boot.

DoomRater said:

Like hell. Do you know the minimum requirements for the XP system?... ...XP scrapes the floor with anything less, even though you could install it on my laptop. (wait, no actually my laptop's HDD is too small!)

If you have a computer that is capable of running Doom 3 with no problems, then it should easily be able to run Windows XP. If you're going to upgrade to a 'Doom 3 machine', you might as well throw in Windows XP as well.

Ichor said:

If you have a computer that is capable of running Doom 3 with no problems, then it should easily be able to run Windows XP. If you're going to upgrade to a 'Doom 3 machine', you might as well throw in Windows XP as well.

Well, I don't have the money for it, and besides, I would have to make sure I actually GET Windows XP. You know, the Professional Edition. (If there were ever rumors about XP being unstable it's Home Edition's fault! piece of junk OS, it's only slightly better than ME cuz it's more secure)

Anyway, until I get more money anyway I'm not building a Doom 3 machine. I WANT WATER COOLING TOO

You only need the professional editing in big networks.

boris said:

You only need the professional editing in big networks.

But, the home edition sucks... So that leaves us with the "insert system disk" POST message ;)

Vroomfondel said:

I can't understand why people want Windows...

Well, let's see. I've tried four different versions of Linux on one or more of three different computers. ALL of them failed in some way. Two of them locked up during setup. One wouldn't go into resolutions over 640x480. One wouldn't detect my sound card. Another wouldn't detect my modem. Windows XP, by comparison, runs all but flawlessly and detects all hardware I've fed it with ease. Does that help clarify things?

Vroomfondel said:

But, the home edition sucks...

Can you give any facts? I take it you need remote desktop, multi-processor support, automated system recovery, dynamic disk support, IIS, file level access control, active directory, group policies, roaming profiles, multi-language support etc. at home?

The only disadvantage I can see is that it's not 1337 to use the home edition.

boris said:

Can you give any facts? I take it you need remote desktop, multi-processor support, automated system recovery, dynamic disk support, IIS, file level access control, active directory, group policies, roaming profiles, multi-language support etc. at home?

The only disadvantage I can see is that it's not 1337 to use the home edition.

Of the above, I use remote desktop, dynamic disk support, file level access control, active directory, group policies, and multi-language support at home.

But you're not the average user.

True.

Ubik said:

Oh, quit bitching. XP is seventeen orders of magnitude better and more stable than 98 anyway.

Indeed.

DoomRater said:

Like hell. Do you know the minimum requirements for the XP system? That's one thing that puts on much more equal terms. And antoher thing, get the unofficial SP for Windows 98 SE and find out how stable it runs.

The only reason I'm not using 2000 on my laptop is because of the requirements. 2000 would run like crap on a Pentium MMX with 64MB of RAM. But it plays ZDoom fine. And unless I have like 512MB of RAM in a system and top level processor there's NO ------- WAY I'll install XP.

If you want someting more stable than 98SE all patched up, use 2000 unless you actually have one of those Pentium 4 with hyperthreading and plenty of RAM. Geesh. XP scrapes the floor with anything less, even though you could install it on my laptop. (wait, no actually my laptop's HDD is too small!)

Hmmmmm . . . XP actually ran faster on our celeron 900 (r.i.p.) than 98 did. Booted faster, more responsive interface, etc. I was shocked. Granted, the 98 install was getting pretty flaky/unstable.

Because, like you implied, Windows 98's resources were hogged down and weakened in that case... you can get Windows 98 to run like a total piece of crap if you put some brainless effort to it.

DoomRater said:

The only reason I'm not using 2000 on my laptop is because of the requirements. 2000 would run like crap on a Pentium MMX with 64MB of RAM. But it plays ZDoom fine. And unless I have like 512MB of RAM in a system and top level processor there's NO ------- WAY I'll install XP.

If you want someting more stable than 98SE all patched up, use 2000 unless you actually have one of those Pentium 4 with hyperthreading and plenty of RAM. Geesh. XP scrapes the floor with anything less, even though you could install it on my laptop. (wait, no actually my laptop's HDD is too small!)

I've seen XP run more than adequately on as little as a Duron 1300 with 128MB RAM. Not good enough for me personally, but perfectly fine for the average user. My laptop's running a Celeron 2.4ghz with 192 MB RAM. Runs perfectly fine. Those specs you quote aren't remotely accurate.

myk said:

Because, like you implied, Windows 98's resources were hogged down and weakened in that case... you can get Windows 98 to run like a total piece of crap if you put some brainless effort to it.

You don't even need to do that. Win98 may perform quite good when it's freshly installed but you can be sure that 6 months later it won't anymore if you repeatedly install and deinstall software - like rented games for example. I'm just glad I don't have to bother with it ever again.

@DoomRater: Please keep your misinformed opinion to yourself. It's obvious you hate WinXP and you are not willing to discuss about it in an unbiased fashion. In short, most of the stuff you uttered here is total nonsense. I once installed XP on a 900MHz Duron and it ran better than Win98. Too bad I couldn't keep it because I had to use some very old software on that machine that was incompatible so I had to stick with Win98... :(

Graf Zahl said:
You don't even need to do that. Win98 may perform quite good when it's freshly installed but you can be sure that 6 months later it won't anymore if you repeatedly install and deinstall software - like rented games for example. I'm just glad I don't have to bother with it ever again.

If you overload it with crap that stresses the resources... at work I deal with this issue all the time. I personally run it pretty light; it's been installed for over 3 years and it's fine, with resources most of the time at 80% or more while idle.

But yes, Windows XP can be pretty much abused, and as long as you don't break it, it won't wear out like Windows 98 does.

Just about any OS can become crap if you don't maintain it properly (WinXP especially due to the large number of security attacks aimed at it, which can easily be taken care of by updating. Windows ME is just utter shit.) In my experience as a computer repairman I have seen no difference in stability between Home and Pro. The main difference is Home cannot use domains and has fewer security options.

In all honesty, we all should have realized a while ago that support for Win98 in new games wouldn't last forever (you don't see any new games with support for 95 or DOS6.2) The fact is, one of the main things holding games back has always been compatability with older systems. And since Microsoft has basically ended support for 98, it's only natural that games coming in the following months will start to phase out or drop 98 support completely (I suspect HL2 will be the same way.)

Don't get me wrong, I still think 98 is a good OS (I have a dual boot system to play older games since XP has no REAL DOS support), but we cannot expect software companies to support an aging operating system indefinately.

Howabout all the people bitching about it not being able to run on Win98 just get with the fucking program and catch up with the rest of us, that's what I say.

Melfice said:

Howabout all the people bitching about it not being able to run on Win98 just get with the fucking program and catch up with the rest of us, that's what I say.

A lot of people aren't willing to pay £100s for new software/hardware everytime a new game comes out. How do games producers expect the casual gamer to be interested in their products if they have to spend all this money on new hardware and software everytime a new generation of games comes out? I really don't see what the PC games market has to offer to casual gamers, who have other things to spend their disposable income on too.

Old hardware is too weak to run doom 3 anyway. It's strange: If a new game requires better hardware nobody is complaining but if it requires a newer OS everybody is bitching as if the world ends. Why?

myk said:

Because, like you implied, Windows 98's resources were hogged down and weakened in that case... you can get Windows 98 to run like a total piece of crap if you put some brainless effort to it.

Actually, no effort at all was required--when you share a computer with others, including children, and everyone is installing stuff when you're not around, it happens.

Anyway, whatever dogmatic 98-holdouts will say, progress goes on. They can keep running old hardware and an old os, and they can gripe that the rest of the world has moved on, and then I guess they can start living in a shack in the woods and mail bombs to the people who make the new hardware and the new os's. I'm sure somewhere there's someone complaining that there's no good DOS games coming out anymore.

The Flange Peddler said:

A lot of people aren't willing to pay £100s for new software/hardware everytime a new game comes out. How do games producers expect the casual gamer to be interested in their products if they have to spend all this money on new hardware and software everytime a new generation of games comes out? I really don't see what the PC games market has to offer to casual gamers, who have other things to spend their disposable income on too.

. . . which is why I have been getting into consoles as of late.

boris said:

Can you give any facts? I take it you need remote desktop, multi-processor support, automated system recovery, dynamic disk support, IIS, file level access control, active directory, group policies, roaming profiles, multi-language support etc. at home?

The only disadvantage I can see is that it's not 1337 to use the home edition.

Um, random system lockups? How about no control over how users are set up (either admin or regular user)? These are pretty serious issues, hell, even A+ technians don't (or pretend to) talk about Home edition just because it's so horrible.

Do yourself a favor and never mention that horrid OS again. A+ people tend to look down upon guys who use it.

Graf Zahl said:

Old hardware is too weak to run doom 3 anyway. It's strange: If a new game requires better hardware nobody is complaining but if it requires a newer OS everybody is bitching as if the world ends. Why?

People don't know/don't want to migrate to a new OS. Y'know, losing most of their custom settings every time they switch? It can be a pain sometimes.

Then again, I know someone who switches OS'es every month or so just because he likes installing operating systems. o_O

I don't give a fuck about "A+" people. A lot of those people are full of shit. Any why should the home edition be less stable than the pro version? That just doesn't make sense.

Graf Zahl said:

@DoomRater: Please keep your misinformed opinion to yourself. It's obvious you hate WinXP and you are not willing to discuss about it in an unbiased fashion. In short, most of the stuff you uttered here is total nonsense. I once installed XP on a 900MHz Duron and it ran better than Win98. Too bad I couldn't keep it because I had to use some very old software on that machine that was incompatible so I had to stick with Win98... :(

By the way, did I meniton I'm A+ certified? I dunno if you are, but I went to school for this stuff. XP's looked down upon unless you have a crapload of RAM. That's how it is with the techs.