On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Chandra.R wrote:
>
> Anda pernah instal WinME atau W2K nggak ?
> Kalo belum pernah, jangan bilang Win nggak bisa buat partisi otomatis.
> Kalo dlm hal userfriendly saya akui Win masih lebih baik dari Linux ;
> saya kira PC World diakui reputasinya di dunia, & W2K terpilih jadi
> OS yg terbaik, sdgkan Corel jadi juara harapan, krn merupakan OS
> Linux yg paling userfriendly.
>
Sekedar info, BUKAN UNTUK THREAD IGNITION!
September 7, 2000
New Windows ME Is Released,
But Microsoft Can Do Better
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
MICROSOFT IS INTRODUCING this month a new version of Windows
designed for consumers, with the cutesy name of "Windows Me,"
short for
"Windows Millennium Edition." But don't get excited about it. It's
no big deal,
and in my tests, it caused more problems than it solved.
Normally, the introduction of a new version of the near-ubiquitous
Windows
operating system is an epic event in computerdom. In the past,
consumers have
actually lined up at stores at midnight to be the first to buy new
editions of
Windows.
Windows Me, however, is nothing like that. In fact, it's the
final, sputtering
iteration of the aging consumer Windows product line that last saw
a really
significant release five years ago, when Windows 95 came out.
Since then,
we've had only the scandalously unreliable Windows 98. If
Microsoft's plans
hold up, this whole lineage will be scrapped as early as next year
in favor of a
consumer version of Microsoft's far superior corporate product,
Windows 2000.
Many, if not most, of the new home computers introduced between
now and the
holiday season this year will come with Windows Me already
installed. On a
pristine machine, where it is carefully integrated by the
manufacturer with
whatever software and hardware are included, I presume Windows Me
will be
OK, maybe even marginally more stable than Windows 98.
THE BIG QUESTION is whether owners of existing Windows PCs should
buy
and install the $60 upgrade version of Windows Me, due in stores a
week from
Thursday. Based on my tests, the answer is: No way. Although
Windows Me
boasts a few nice features, I'd wait for that promised consumer
version of
Windows 2000.
I installed Windows Me on two PCs, a new and largely unused IBM
ThinkPad
T20 and a heavily used Toshiba Portege, filled with third-party
software and
data files. Installation went fine on both machines, taking under
an hour for each.
On the virginal IBM, everything seemed to
work
fine with Windows Me. But on the Toshiba,
which
is much more typical of a well-used PC
that might
get upgraded, I had major problems once
Windows Me was installed. The worst problem
was that when I connected to the Internet,
programs that normally detect and make use
of an
existing Internet connection, especially
America
Online, suddenly couldn't detect the
connection.
I surmise that this is due to the fact
that Microsoft
changed the Internet connection plumbing in
Windows Me, supposedly to make it faster
and
more stable. The company concedes the new
Windows disables current versions of some
Internet-related programs, notably all of
the
popular personal firewall programs used to
protect
home computers against Internet hackers.
Microsoft says pending updates to these programs will fix the
problem.
In addition to that, I had various audio problems while playing
music CDs. I also
suffered one mysterious, spontaneous reboot and a situation where
I got locked
into an endless loop while the system tried, and failed, to check
my hard disk for
errors after a crash. And this all happened in just three or four
hours.
Even if you fare better than that, the benefits of Windows Me are
slender.
It does have one nice improvement that should make it somewhat
more reliable:
As in Windows 2000, Windows Me won't allow programs you install to
replace
certain crucial system files with custom versions that may cause
problems. This
eliminates one, but by no means all, of the instabilities that
plague Windows 98.
WINDOWS ME ALSO has a good feature called System Restore, that lets
you recreate your system files and program files -- but not your
personal data
-- as they were at certain past points, so you can reverse the
effects of a bad
software installation or some other disaster. That's nice, but you
can get the
same benefit, and more, from a $70 software product called GoBack
(www.goback.com) that runs on plain old Windows 95 or 98.
Among other good features is a standard My Pictures folder that
has been
enhanced so that you can automatically preview, rotate, print or
view as a slide
show any pictures stored there. There's also a wizard that makes
downloading
pictures from a digital camera much easier.
In addition, there's a built-in rudimentary video editor for
making digital versions
of home movies. It's not nearly as nice as Apple's built-in video
editor, iMovie,
and it requires you to buy extra hardware in order to work. But,
unlike iMovie, it
can handle older analog videos.
Several other features, such as new versions of its Web browser
and e-mail
program and a new digital-music jukebox player, are all separately
available
free and work fine on Windows 98. They're not integral to Windows
Me.
At one time, Microsoft had far more ambitious plans for this
Millennium release.
It was supposed to have a dramatically simpler interface and to
have such major
stability improvements that the tentative marketing slogan for the
product was:
"It Just Works." That bold claim was dropped and the plans scaled
way back to
leave a minor Windows upgrade I can't recommend for existing PCs.
Microsoft owes its home users more. This is a fabulously wealthy
company with
armies of brainy employees. It can do much better.
_______________________
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20000907.html
--
Thanks n regards,
Romie Djapri
Linuxcom
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