J,
I personally have Win98SE on my own system here at home while my system
at work has Win2K Pro. Due to the quirks and issues with ME, I just have
no interest in dealing with it.
A LOT depends on your individual end goals with the system. If you are
primarily interested in more personal type work, then go with 98SE, but
if you are primarily interested in more business type work, then go with
2K.
In many ways, 95 is to NT (both older) as 98 is to 2K (both newer),
since the 2 OSs in each group were contempory to each other, one being
more home user oriented while the other was more business/networking
oriented.
After all I am reading in my technical emails these days, WinXP is
something in the possible future, and who knows when it will get
released. The US government along with a number of states want the
courts to stop MS from being able to release XP, due to a number of
issues, including major concerns with security and similiar items.
And there is the whole registration/subscription issues that the
technical community has been up in arms over with regard to both
OfficeXP as well as WinXP. At least, with OfficeXP, you can install it
on 2 systems without having to buy another copy. With WinXP, MS is
making it so you will have to buy a new copy for EVERY computer you want
to install it on. So if you have several computers in your home, or if
you have both a home and business system, you would HAVE to buy an
individual copy of WinXP for each and every computer you own.
MS is trying to deal with what they call the casual copier, since this
whole process with not occur with corporations/government agencies that
buy multiple site licenses - that will be handed in a different way.
However, for the individual or small business user, the BIG issue is
especially how this whole process will be accomplished, even with single
computers - a profile of the system will get taken with regard to what
is on the system and a hash number generated. If you make a minor change
in the system, it will result in a new number generated that is close
enough to the old to not be a problem. BUT, if you make one or more
major changes in the system, it will look like a XP product is getting
installed on a new system and it will NOT work. You will, effectively,
have to BEG/bow down and kiss MSs feet to let you install the XP product
YOU bought and have it work again.
Upgrading your ram, putting in a new hard drive, new video card, new
sound card, new nic, or anything else could, effectively, trigger this
whole process with a XP process. And the more changes you make, the more
the chance of it happening. This is why so many tech support and similar
people are up in arms about the whole process, since they end up having
to do any number of changes on computers they work on without having to
now have to worry about this whole process and operating way of doing
things.
And then there is the wonderful new feature to both OfficeXP as well as
WinXP that MS is adding so you could, if you bought the license to do
so, of adding your own links to someones web page withOUT them even
knowing you have done so - MS has shown this feature already, since they
will do it to web pages themselves. When you view a web page of someone,
links to some sites MS thinks you would/should visit are added, so if
you click on them, you go to some MS approved site the original site
developer did not know about. So how would you like to develop a web
site, maybe costing you thousands of dollars to develop and put into
production, to have MS come along and put in a link to some pay site it
has joined hands with, directing business AWAY from your site??? THAT is
EXACTLY what has already been shown to exist in both XP products.
As been mentioned on some tech sites I have gone to, imagine what the
republicans end up doing to the democrat sites, the democrats doing to
the republican sites, or even better, how about hate groups doing to any
and all sites. How about some rabid nazi group doing this to the sites
dealing with the holocast, pediphile groups doing is to sites dealing
with helping hurt children, or any number of groups??? If you think
things are bad now with all the stuff getting released, imagine what
this capability, and the modified versions of some cracker groups, could
lead to???? And remember, the original web site developer/releaseer
would not even know this was even being done to the site - the "helper"
would not have to get the permission of the owner to add these links to
the site at all.
Many tech and support people are going to refuse to deal with the
problem to begin with - many will just NOT have XP items installed on
systems they work with at all. They have enough problems dealing with
hardware/software problems to have to deal with any number of issues
that MS is introducing with the XP line of products.
And the eventual goal of MS is to NOT even have the OS and apps on a
system at all, but rather, EVERYTHING you want to use will be out
somewhere in ether space and you SUBSCRIBE to use programs. MS wants to
totally get away from the user having any control of any kind to what
you have access to. That is one reason the new version of Visual Studio,
which is the package of development programs that MS releases for
programmers to develop and release new programs, will NOT have a number
associated with it at all, like all the versions to this date have been
(the latest version has been Visual Studio 6, which had visual basic,
visual C++, visual foxpro, and so forth). The new version will be Visual
Studio NET, to reflect MSs philosophy of getting all, eventually, out on
the net, away from the end user control.
Obviously, this will not happen overnight, but will take some time to
get to that point. BUT that is their stated goal and ultimate point of
getting to.
Ralph
J. Pitts wrote:
>
> I'm getting a new system and wondering which OS to choose. I've never
> progressed beyond 95B. It will be an Athlon 1200MHz, 256 MB memory
> 80 GB hard drive. My choice's are 98SE, ME, or 2000 Professional.
> The latter would be a $100 upgrade. Could I upgrade to XP from all of
> these. All Pros, Cons or opinions will be appreciated.
>
> thank you
> J. Pitts
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