The Demise...

[tjs]

I have also pointed out elsewhere, that (using my web logs), 98 is still the most popular O/S in use with my 'user base'...

Really? Out of curiosity, I just checked our webserver access log. Out of 1,300,368 hits, just 26,143 of them were from Windows 98 systems (about 2%). The majority (65%) were using Windows XP and the next largest group was Windows 2000 (10%). Interestingly, about 300K of those 1.3M hits weren't users; mostly spiders, I'm guessing. If you factor those out, that pushes XP up to about 83% and Windows 2000 about 14%.

Mike,

I guess it just goes to show how meaningless some of these figures can be...just checked our logs as follows:

Operating systems (OS):

Win 98 (41%)
Windows XP (33%)
Win 2000 (15%)
Win 95 (3%)
Win NT (2%)
Unknown (1%)
Mac (0%)
Win 3.xÂÃ,  (0%)
Linux (0%)
Unix (0%)
WebTVÂÃ,  (0%)
Amiga (0%)

Mind you, it has to be said that we have not had anywhere near the number of hits that you have (but ours are only based on a counter on the Home page... i.e. direct connections to any other page will not get counted).

What's the old saying..."99% of statistics are proved to be wrong" (or something like that)ÂÃ, 

Cheers.

tjs

[seberbach]

I personally prefer Win2k above others. It's very stable without all the frills of XP.

The most stable machines I have run Windows 2K with FAT32. They only reboot for MS updates.  Of course, they are somewhat stripped out, so that not much seldom used software and registry entries remains. I found that keeping each setup simple (which takes a lot of work at first, when cleaning up an old installation) is a good way to achieve stability.  That means dedicated machine for games, dedicated machine for photo and multimedia, dedicated machine for development, etc.

So I use "simple2K" as a host for VMWare, and set up a few minimal systems for different purposes.  The simplicity compensates for the lack of speed and then some.

Full backups of all machines( programs and OS, but not data, video, music, photos, which is on other disks) each on a DVD. (except for multimedia and games)

I do like XP with NTFS for a "set it up and forget it" family or business box which will be used for all purposes.  I guess that was what is designed for....
I find myself recommending it for everybody else but me.

Since Intel and AMD plan to support virtual machines in the chip hardware, I believe others are seeing the same thing coming as I do.

Steve

[tjs]

I personally prefer Win2k above others. It's very stable without all the frills of XP.

The most stable machines I have run Windows 2K with FAT32. They only reboot for MS updates.ÂÃ,  Of course, they are somewhat stripped out, so that not much seldom used software and registry entries remains. I found that keeping each setup simple (which takes a lot of work at first, when cleaning up an old installation) is a good way to achieve stability.ÂÃ,  That means dedicated machine for games, dedicated machine for photo and multimedia, dedicated machine for development, etc.

So I use "simple2K" as a host for VMWare, and set up a few minimal systems for different purposes.ÂÃ,  The simplicity compensates for the lack of speed and then some.

Full backups of all machines( programs and OS, but not data, video, music, photos, which is on other disks) each on a DVD. (except for multimedia and games)

I do like XP with NTFS for a "set it up and forget it" family or business box which will be used for all purposes.ÂÃ,  I guess that was what is designed for....
I find myself recommending it for everybody else but me.

Since Intel and AMD plan to support virtual machines in the chip hardware, I believe others are seeing the same thing coming as I do.

Steve

Hi Steve,

On my old Win 98 system, I used a scheme of 'drive caddies'...one minute I was on (say 95), next (well, perhaps not a minute), I'd have powered down, swapped the drive caddy to (say) XP, rebooted and hey presto, a Chameleon like machine was bornÂÃ, 

I also ran a registered copy of VMware on this machine (Win 98 version)...a bit 'sluggish' though.

However, around a year ago (and for reasons I promise not to bore you with), I switched to an XP box.

As you probably know, M$ bought what has turned out to be IMHO, the very splendid 'Virtual PC', and this has replaced all my 'drive swapping and re-boots' on XPÂÃ, 

I now have, on demand, virtually instant access to:

95/98/98SE
Me (argh....)
2000 SP4
NT4 (argh...)
Dear old Win 3.11
MS-DOS (why, I hear you cry)ÂÃ, 
A 'clean' XP install

Of course, nothing will ever replace the real thing, but this stuff seems to get close.

Unusually for M$, it's also cheaper than the opposition (as far as I know).

Cheers.

tjs.

[GWS]

tjs,

that's interesting .. :)ÂÃ, 

In the Virtual PC arrangement, presumably you load the various OS's from CD's, and they exist independently of each other. So the 'setup' on the older OS's would discover strange new devicesÂÃ,  :oÂÃ,  How do they cope with that ..ÂÃ, 

If originally intended for various drivers - can the older systems somehow make use of the modern drivers for video and sound - or are they more or less blind and dumb ..ÂÃ,  :(ÂÃ,  Older systems wouldn't know what a digital joystick was either.

I've never been able to find a driver for a PCI soundcard for example, that would run for anything older than Win98SE.

Graham

[Bruce Peaslee]

Graham,

Nice bike.

[GWS]

Hi Bruce,

I got it all shined up for an antique car and bike show on Monday .. then the heavens opened, and it was called off ..

Still, it's nice and clean to go for a ride round the country lanes now ..

Graham

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

"valve" lol. 

I still have my halicrafters to listen to world wide broadcasts.

[GWS]

He .. He .. :)ÂÃ,  Yep, they glow in the dark and are warm and cuddly .. and I'm EMP proofÂÃ, 

I gave it a set of new valves - not because the old ones were faulty - I just thought I'd get it on peak form.ÂÃ,  It will probably outlast me now ..

The Eddystone 940 still fetches between $300 - $500 on Ebay when they come up for sale

Don't see much of Hallicrafters over hear.ÂÃ,  The US made really good radios.ÂÃ,  I had a Racal once - tremendously heavy - it buckled my bench ..ÂÃ, 

Graham

[tjs]

tjs,

that's interesting .. :)ÂÃ, 

In the Virtual PC arrangement, presumably you load the various OS's from CD's, and they exist independently of each other. So the 'setup' on the older OS's would discover strange new devicesÂÃ,  :oÂÃ,  How do they cope with that ..ÂÃ, 

If originally intended for various drivers - can the older systems somehow make use of the modern drivers for video and sound - or are they more or less blind and dumb ..ÂÃ,  :(ÂÃ,  Older systems wouldn't know what a digital joystick was either.

I've never been able to find a driver for a PCI soundcard for example, that would run for anything older than Win98SE.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I'm not going to set myself up as any sort of Virtual PC Guru, but in essence, you are correct.

What happens is that you 'install' each O/S from CD (and even floppies), and XP (through Virtual PC and what amounts to just a file on your hard drive per O/S 'installed'), provides what ever hardware support it can (including a pseudo SoundBlaster card support and Super VGA).

Of course, there are limitations at present (i.e. no native support for USB...but it will support a USB drive as a 'Shared' resource'..if that makes sense).

Cheers.

tjs.

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

I also had a Heathkit for a while, forget the model number as I sold it on ebay.  Transistors instead of tubes and it never seemed to have the same range as the hallicrafters.

[GWS]

I'm very tempted to try it tjs .. I've been looking at vmware5.5, and it seems very good and costs about $200.

If I understand correctly, vmware supplies it's own legacy drivers .. amazing.

Only problem for me is, the host OS needs to start with XP or Win2000.ÂÃ,  I'm not a fan of XP, and I've never tried 2000.ÂÃ,  Still, if you can immediately transfer to one of the older OS's that would be OK.

I'd love to see Win3.11 up and running again ..

I couldn't see any comments about running games - maybe the DirectX emulation is not up to it.  A USB joystick is OK they reckon.

all the best,

Graham

[tjs]

I'm very tempted to try it tjs .. I've been looking at vmware5.5, and it seems very good and costs about $200.

If I understand correctly, vmware supplies it's own legacy drivers .. amazing.

Only problem for me is, the host OS needs to start with XP or Win2000.ÂÃ,  I'm not a fan of XP, and I've never tried 2000.ÂÃ,  Still, if you can immediately transfer to one of the older OS's that would be OK.

I'd love to see Win3.11 up and running again ..

I couldn't see any comments about running games - maybe the DirectX emulation is not up to it.ÂÃ,  A USB joystick is OK they reckon.

all the best,

Graham

Hi Graham,

In truth, I don't know the current cost of Virtual PC, but I can tell you that when I bought it here in the UK around a year ago, it was about HALF the price of VMWare!!!

I'm not a games player, but I suspect it WILL work with games (and there is/was a 'try before you buy' option for Virtual PC).

I think what struck me the most, is that if anybody knows how to make one M$ O/S work with another M$ O/S...M$ doesÂÃ, 

I find Virtual PC VERY nice (for example, you can install 'whatever' on an O/S and if it doesn't work, just take the option on exit to 'not save' the latest installations)...again...very nice.

This means of course that you can always return to a 'clean' O/S.

Cheers.

Terry aka tjs.

[Parker]

I'd love to see Win3.11 up and running again ..

funny, I actually tried it maybe a month ago. Problem is, the computer said it couldn't read from the floppy disks.

[tjs]

I'd love to see Win3.11 up and running again ..

funny, I actually tried it maybe a month ago. Problem is, the computer said it couldn't read from the floppy disks.

Hi Parker,

Yes, when I first tried to install Win 3.11 I had a similar problem (and we have to consider that, by definition, these Floppies are probably YEARS old).

However, I eventually managed to find a disk set for a now VERY ageing Tosh Laptop that would install (the first thing I then did was to consign them to a CD)ÂÃ, 

Cheers.

Terry.