Pulling My Hair Out
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When I read quotes like the one below, it makes me really want to pull my hair out and scream at someone. I was browsing the web, looking for news and some technology related editorial content :), when I read this:
As much as I agree with you about Office and Microsoft in general I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that can say with a straight face that Windows 98 remotely compares to the 2000/XP line. Anybody remember 95/98? I remember that I could never keep it running more then a day or two. I remember that having to kill mIRC would often take Windows down with it (WTF???). I remember running out of "system resources" long before I ran out of RAM (what good is RAM if there are artificial limits on "resources"?).
As you might be able to guess, it's from this discussion on Slashdot relating to why Microsoft doesn't patch everything. At least there were a few people that noted that no one patches all their bugs, but patching isn't what I wanted to write about.
I am stunned by how anti-Microsoft people are and what stories I hear. I won't want to disparage someone and call them a liar, but if you cannot run Windows 98 for longer than a day or two perhaps your skills should be called into question?
I have run every version of Windows since 3.1 and they have all been relatively stable. Not that I haven't had to reboot more in earlier versions or that I didn't have issues, but Windows 95 and 98 ran great for my at a couple companies. Not the months of uptime I get now with XP, but weeks at a time. Being one of those people that hates to reboot my machine, I'd leave my machine up for weeks and it would work, including while I was developing Visual FoxPro apps against SQL Server!!
What's even more amazing is that I hear the same stories about Windows 2000, especially servers, and XP. Look Microsoft isn't the most stable product in the world. Those embedded systems, like the one that runs my TiVo (I know it's Linux), seem to be much more stable, but c'mon, a day?!?!?!
Ah well, what more should I expect from Slashdot.
Steve Jones
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I could not have said that better .... Touche'
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Totally agree. Hey, the organisation i worked at just 6 months ago is still running some 98 boxes and they were just fine.
Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional -
I remember those days well.
At work, running the same few applications day in, day out, stability was not a problem; but as soon as I got home, started running a variety of resource heavy games, and several non-Microsoft apps (often the latest and greatest version of course), things went utterly pear shaped.
The problem wasn't that things would crash, but that when they did they would take the entire operating system with them.
Just because you didn't experience the same problems as somebody else doesn't make them wrong you know?
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Totally agree.
My first use of Windows was with 3.0
and have worked on each version since (even dabbled with OS2 and REXX for a while 
)Before starting on Windows I worked in DOS (remember 3.3 anyone
) and the same things were said about the different versions of DOS. Things don't change much 
Now those were the days
(nostalgia 
), 640K for programs and the wonderful Extended/Expanded memory plus the magic art of squeezing the most out of himem. 
Windows users never had it so good.
Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon. -
Pardon me may I say that it must have been a case of extremely "crappy" hardware added to that equation. Ofcourse those old systems had issues indeed but to that extent (of reboots daily) the user must have been a lame amateur. I've run M$ operating systems since DOS and now 2003. There has been some tremendous improvement and looking at the future and the fact that M$ have acknowledged Linux and setup a lab for it (albeit the claims its for compartibility and support purposes only), they'll gain something from that paradigm and maybe decrease the number of restarts... I'm a person in the middle due to support commitments and job requirements where I have to run both Windows and *nix and stability wise *nix whips the pants of Windows but Windows is catching up and once that happens, *nix will suffer because ease of use for lazy/novice admins and non technical people on Windows whips the pants of *nix...
Kindest Regards,Ani inaLife is mix of bad days and worse days. how you make the worst, bad determines who you end up as...
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Firstly David Burrows thank you for making me feel like an old goat. Having said that how many newbies have no clue when you go into DOS to diagnose something..... Love to confuse them.
Back to the topic I normally tell people that if Microsoft is so bad go to Linux and try to work that out. Try to get advanced support on Linux?(This could only be a problem in SA). I agree MS has problems but there are solutions to most of those problems. Ok so some also have multiple solutions that break other things. But if it was that easy to make an os or a program without bugs then maybe those that mock ms or linux or other os or programs should try develop their own perfect program.....
Good topic but I think we have just opened a tin of worms.....
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thank you for making me feel like an old goat ooops!
Good topic but I think we have just opened a tin of worms..... yep
I wonder if these are the same people that treat 'patching' Windows like "Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted"Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon. -
Not 100% on-topic, but related...I actually know people who can't keep Windows XP running reliably for more than a few weeks. Of course, they tend to have a thousand awful, insecure, uncooperative applications in play. My wife's parents, for example, had a perfectly stable system that lasted five months without a hitch until their son returned from college and installed a slew of questionable applications, followed by cracked software, and followed ultimately by them getting smashed by a Trojan. What fascinates me is that this system had a virus checker (Norton), had a firewall (Zone Alarm), etc., and still crumbled -- because my brother-in-law turned it all off so he could let one of his chosen applications fetch music for him faster. It proves that even with a well secured system, once human beings begin to exercise their right to be stupid, all bets are off. (Even observing the cause hasn't prevented them from having a stable system, as they simply won't stop the behvaiour sthat cause it to be so.)
More on topic, I have for years been irritated by the anti-MS crowd for many reasons, but the most aggravating one is that so many of them seem to have so much time to complain so loudly about an operating system that they apparently don't run. If Windows doesn't please them, and they contend Linux (or insert any other O/S here) does, then why do they care? I run several versions of Windows, several flavours of Linux, and even several generations of Apple O/S products across various client sites, and I can generate a fairly long list of complaints about each, but can't proclaim one better for all things (though, for those keeping score, Windows 2003 Server comes damn close).
It strikes me that this anti-MS stance is entrenched for all the wrong reasons, and is part of the reason we don't see progress on some fronts. All that wasted energy....
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Steve,
Your not the only semi-happy MS user. My company has used Windows since Win 3.1 and the OS has gotten better with each new version. About 3 years ago we ran all our systems on Win 98 and NT servers and they were up all the time. I support 200 users and although I had the occassional Windows blue screens our systems were up most of the time.
Now we are on Win 2000 and XP, 2000 server and it runs even better.
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Come on, I can't believe that this article actually DEFENDS Win98! I admit that 98se was a better product as was ME, but it was NOT my any stretch of the imagination were any of them a stable operating system. I am a microsoft supporter, but I just don't agree that Win98/98se/ME were good products.
Win95 was a trememdous improvement over 3.11 and I have to give them some slack on being stable. It was a giant step forward. If someone brags that they can keep from rebooting an operating system for a week, then that is not a stable operating system.
The simple fact that you couldn't run the Disk Defragementer without killing a bunch of processes should be a red flag that this operating system shouldn't have been released.(The defragmenter would continually restart if it was the only program running) What a joke of an OS!
Just for the record, I loved NT, 2000, XP, but I do agree that Win98 doesn't remotely compare to the 2000/XP line. I am sure that there are people out there who actually got Win98 to be stable for up to a week or two, but that just proves that it wasn't a stable operating system.
Live to Throw
Throw to Live
Will Summers -
If this guy is running mIRC, then there are a lot of questions I would ask before taking his post too seriously.
1) How many warez/hacker/xxx chatrooms is this guy in?
2) How many viruses is he hosting?
3) Did he buy Windows 98 legimately or did he download it using mIRC?
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I usually assume that anti Microsoft posts are from someone who has an axe to grind.
It's a rare day that I come to the office and find that I am unable to perform my job because of problems due to any version of Windows. We still have an Win 98 machine here that is used to support some legacy applications and it still runs fine without a daily reboot.
In fact, I only just retired my personal Win 98 machine, mostly because the hardware was too slow, not because of the OS.
Regards, Scott
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I think most of the Anti-MS backlash comes from people who find Microsoft's business practices to be questionable. I don't like a lot of things that Microsoft does to beat down their competitors myself but there is no doubt that they are responsible for the advances in computing that we have today. If all we had was *nix products to choose from then we probably would be at least ten years behind where we are now. Both Windows and *nix are advancing now but it is mainly due to competition that they are both advancing as rapidly as they are.
I have worked with Linux on several occasions, the most recent was with Red Hat 9. I liked some things about it but I am much more used to Windows standards and the applications I was using on Linux seemed to be immature. They were a lot better than they were four or five years ago when I tried out Linux in a serious manner for the first time. I don't care for the Linux platform very much but I don't go bashing it. I appreciate the Linux community's effort to push Microsoft aside because it helps both sides progress.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
"I have run every version of Windows since 3.1 and they have all been relatively stable."
Uhh, I'm not sure what you were running on it, but I'd have to say "not much". Particularly when you say "every" version, since that takes into account WinME. Windows, particularly the 16-bit and hybrid 16/32 varieties, has been awful. Sure, there are times when someone who's done nothing but Wing Commander and Excel can say it stayed up a week without a spontaneous reboot, but stable? Puhhh-lease. That's the kind of talk that gets someone labeled an apologist.
Of course, "relatively" stable could mean "Well, I've never used anything but DOS or Windows, so I've seen a steady progression of 'better,' so sure, it's relatively stable."
T
Kindest Regards,Thomas J. Theobald
midwayusa.comUmpteen zillion products and counting for your favorite shooting sports...(and all run with SQL Server and Delphi)...come visit us at the website above!
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