98SE was easily the best of the DOS-based versions of Windows, but I still remember it crashing a heck of a lot more than Windows NT 4.0/2000, which I was using at work at the same time.
Plus it had that annoying message about you not shutting it down properly. It's not like you had much of a chance when it did a BSOD.
Ah yes, Windows 98 SE (was basically Windows 99) was a very good OS.
That was the first 'smooth sailing' proper Windowed OS from MS.
They had ironed out pretty much all of the issues with '98 original.
I think I ran it for about five years without issue until I upgraded to XP.
'98 SE used to BSOD on me at least twice a day. When I got XP at first I was reluctant to upgrade, 98 being all I'd really known of Windows, but after only a couple of days, I realised I was well shot of it.
'98 SE used to BSOD on me at least twice a day. When I got XP at first I was reluctant to upgrade, 98 being all I'd really known of Windows, but after only a couple of days, I realised I was well shot of it.
Crikey, that's terrible. A lot of it was down to hardware - back then there were more vendors making PC components than there are now, and MS making Windows work without issue on thousands of combinations of hardware was a minor miracle. (That's why Apple machines were more stable than PC's)
I only think my machine BSOD'ed once in a five year period. That includes upgrading the graphics card and increasing the RAM too.
'98 SE used to BSOD on me at least twice a day. When I got XP at first I was reluctant to upgrade, 98 being all I'd really known of Windows, but after only a couple of days, I realised I was well shot of it.
They had ironed out pretty much all of the issues with '98 original.
I never noticed any difference between 98 and 98SE, the very same bugs and problems that were present in 98, were still there in 98SE. I think SE did have a much better USB support, but I wasn't using USB devices back then.
For me, 98's main stability problem were the GDI resources. There were few of them, and a leak meant a crash, so I had a monitor program installed that showed the availability of said resources with a colour code in the right corner (green, yellow or red), so I could easily identify when a (badly programmed) application was leaking and close it before it crashed the whole system. Thanks to that I had almost no BSODs, and used it without too much trouble for a few years. Once I had to reinstall the OS because of an unsolvable driver problem, and it was the first reinstall in almost 2 years. Some of my friends couldn't believe it... :lol:
I would break it now and let developers scramble to rewrite their code. Isn't that the point of developer previews? So that developers have time to fix their ****.
Many of the apps that would break probably aren't being updated but are important enough to the people using them to stop people upgrading the OS. Ultimately when a new version of Windows comes out and their favourite software breaks, people will always blame Microsoft, not the app vendor.
I've downloaded and installed the technical preview in Virtual Box (after turning off Vt-d in BIOS because it doesn't like it).
So far it looks more or less like the desktop version of Windows 8.1, except for the promotion of the Start Menu to a proper windows 7+8 hybrid; Flatter and simpler icon sets in the explorer and almost zero-border for all windows. Anyone waiting with bated breath for the Aqua interface to make a return (I'm looking at you Marko) will be disappointed. :) Oh, and windows 8 apps aren't necessarily full screen anymore! They behave just like regular windows.
Anyone waiting with bated breath for the Aqua interface to make a return (I'm looking at you Marko) will be disappointed. :)
I already knew Aero (not Aqua :lol:) wouldn't be included in the preview, although Microsoft had supposedly said that Aero would return "in some form" in Windows 9. Since Windows 9 will never be released, we'll never know! Having said that, Aero was in the preview of Windows 8, but not the final version. Maybe this is the opposite situation: not in the preview, but will be in the RTM version?
Regardless, there's a lot more to hate about Windows 8 than the mere lack of Aero, and that particular turd can't be polished by reinstating the start menu. If it was as simple as that, I'd be using Windows 8 right now, with Classic Shell, but I'm staying on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future. Unless I move over to Linux for desktop stuff, and just keep Windows for games. If I could run all the applications that I use day-to-day on Linux, I'd have already done that. As it is, I run a mixture of Debian and Windows 7 on various machines, and sometimes even both at the same time on the same machine thanks to Virtualbox :)
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Plus it had that annoying message about you not shutting it down properly. It's not like you had much of a chance when it did a BSOD.
'98 SE used to BSOD on me at least twice a day. When I got XP at first I was reluctant to upgrade, 98 being all I'd really known of Windows, but after only a couple of days, I realised I was well shot of it.
Crikey, that's terrible. A lot of it was down to hardware - back then there were more vendors making PC components than there are now, and MS making Windows work without issue on thousands of combinations of hardware was a minor miracle. (That's why Apple machines were more stable than PC's)
I only think my machine BSOD'ed once in a five year period. That includes upgrading the graphics card and increasing the RAM too.
I never noticed any difference between 98 and 98SE, the very same bugs and problems that were present in 98, were still there in 98SE. I think SE did have a much better USB support, but I wasn't using USB devices back then.
For me, 98's main stability problem were the GDI resources. There were few of them, and a leak meant a crash, so I had a monitor program installed that showed the availability of said resources with a colour code in the right corner (green, yellow or red), so I could easily identify when a (badly programmed) application was leaking and close it before it crashed the whole system. Thanks to that I had almost no BSODs, and used it without too much trouble for a few years. Once I had to reinstall the OS because of an unsolvable driver problem, and it was the first reinstall in almost 2 years. Some of my friends couldn't believe it... :lol:
I would break it now and let developers scramble to rewrite their code. Isn't that the point of developer previews? So that developers have time to fix their ****.
So far it looks more or less like the desktop version of Windows 8.1, except for the promotion of the Start Menu to a proper windows 7+8 hybrid; Flatter and simpler icon sets in the explorer and almost zero-border for all windows. Anyone waiting with bated breath for the Aqua interface to make a return (I'm looking at you Marko) will be disappointed. :) Oh, and windows 8 apps aren't necessarily full screen anymore! They behave just like regular windows.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Aqua? sod that shiny modern crap, I want the Windows standard/classic theme :p
Edit: do you mean Aero? Aqua is the OS X UI :)
You see? MS stealing so much from Apple over the years, that people get confused at what its really called :)
I've installed the Tech preview on an old Dell celeron 1.6Ghz, 2Gb ram and its pretty wizzy. Haven't found the start screen yet, thank god, and I also found how to shut down, unlike W8 when I had to go online and look it up.
Get it here ....
http://lifehacker.com/windows-10-technical-preview-now-available-for-download-1641212531
I already knew Aero (not Aqua :lol:) wouldn't be included in the preview, although Microsoft had supposedly said that Aero would return "in some form" in Windows 9. Since Windows 9 will never be released, we'll never know! Having said that, Aero was in the preview of Windows 8, but not the final version. Maybe this is the opposite situation: not in the preview, but will be in the RTM version?
Regardless, there's a lot more to hate about Windows 8 than the mere lack of Aero, and that particular turd can't be polished by reinstating the start menu. If it was as simple as that, I'd be using Windows 8 right now, with Classic Shell, but I'm staying on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future. Unless I move over to Linux for desktop stuff, and just keep Windows for games. If I could run all the applications that I use day-to-day on Linux, I'd have already done that. As it is, I run a mixture of Debian and Windows 7 on various machines, and sometimes even both at the same time on the same machine thanks to Virtualbox :)
Yes I meant Aero. :P
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.