Windows 9X Special Interest Group

by John S. Krill jskrill@jps.net

New Name

Why 9X? We will be supporting both Windows 95 and Windows 98. From what I have heard Windows 98 will be the last of a separate consumer OS. Windows 98 will be merged into Windows NT. Probably after NT 5.0. Sometime after the turn of the century. 3 years, 4 years? I don’t see Windows 95 leaving the seen anytime soon. In fact if you are not getting a new system I see no reason to upgrade to 98. This means there will still be a lot of 95 questions.

Should I Upgrade To Windows 98?

Look at the version numbers for both Windows 95 and 98 and you will notice that win95 is 4.00.xxxx and win98 is 4.10.xxxx. This makes win98 an evolutionary increment and not a revolutionary one. In reality win98 is hundreds, maybe thousands, of bug fixes. If you installed Internet Explorer 4.0 with the interface updates onto win95 you will be hard put to see any outward differences between the two operating systems. The startup music has been changed, thank goodness!

Internally win98 has improved memory management; those hundreds of bug fixes; and updated system tools. It also supports multiple monitors and WebTV. I would like to see a survey that can tell me how many win95 users will go to win98 so they can have TV on their computer monitor or TV on one monitor and Quicken on another monitor. I don’t think so.

Is it worth $100.00 for the upgrade version of win98? Bug fixes shouldn’t cost you anything. The improved system tools are nothing special. The improvements to memory management are helpful but still its nothing that couldn’t have been incorporated into win95. The improvements to win98 make it a more stable system. Not completely stable but more stable than win95. There is nothing in win98 that couldn’t have been incorporated into win95. Remember win98 is just an incremental upgrade over win95.

The average user should probably just skip win98.

June Meeting

We will go over Windows 98 and examine some of it’s improvements.