I think that everyone at one time or another has heard of windows 98, either thinking it to be some sort of double glazing company or a very stable and yet unreliable operating system from Microsoft. Yet this one proves to one of the most basic operating systems made by Microsoft, and one of the best in many ways.
Even in places like schools, that still use Windows 98, even though the computers are supporting windows xp, windows 98 is all they run, and the very few computers that run windows xp are avoided. For constant us of a computer windows 98 is for you.
Some people say that their software is not working because they have used it too much, but that’s not true, computers only do what you tell them to do, so the things that you put on a pc will only do the things they are meant to do. People Use computers all the time, it’s the knowledgeable people whose computers are less likely to crash since
they know how to use it properly and know what to do when confronted with an error.
The amount of times that I have had to reinstall and format my windows 98 partition is countless, well who doesn’t format their computer constantly, apart from me? But the thing is, with windows 98, the operating system acts as an operating system, not some operating system filled to the brink (cough, cough, windows xp) with useless software that can be installed when you NEED it, not when you don’t.
Windows 98 runs on the dos kernel, so you have that little disadvantage and advantage when it comes to dos based games, programs and other things. But, because windows 98 is not built on the NT engine, you still have some little things that Microsoft had never ironed out, like windows xp for example, full of bugs it is.
Windows 98 can be brought, on more modern media, such as the cd or can be brought on the floppy disk, I know its amazing, who would really sit there and slot all the disks in, on by one. It is still priced at around £49.99, in some online shops.
When I first received my cd, this is years back but I can remember perfectly from installing the damn thing constantly! Well, anyway, I inserted the cd into the drive, lalala, working fine as usual, scandisk, and registry check and so on and so forth.
The main setup process, considering how big the operating system actually is, (around 300-600mb for a normal installation, depending on the options that you choose), the install process takes around 45-55 minutes on most normal computers. The quickest that I managed to install windows 98 was only twenty minutes.
First it asks for some info, such as install location, whether you want to create a backup of you current files and settings, incase you want to uninstall windows 98. You then go on to the installation of all the files and where the files will go. This is the bit that takes the longest, and usually the other parts take but five mins max each.
When you have installed all of the files, you are already halfway through the setup process. When it successfully restarts into the main windows operating system, you configure all the hardware on your system, control panel settings, time and the rest.
You then have the not so annoying older version of the product key entry form, this one, luckily, does not need online activation, so I could reinstall 98 as many times as I wanted. When you restart next, windows actually loads into its main GUI State, and you have the choice of making users and just having one local user.
When you successfully logon to windows, you are presented with the desktop, very plain, but encouraging you clearly to use the internet by having links to just about every out of date ISP In the country that is not yours.
The new Welcome box comes up on the start-up, the one that says welcome to windows 98 and plays the funny music, the chimes and stuff. You have to stop is from coming at start-up else you end up getting very annoyed.
You can get straight on with internet connection or set up your hardware so that you can setup you connection. Windows 98 is very good for networking, and has very good support for later operating systems, and older also.
There are a limited amount of tools and programs already installed in windows 98; they are good for a starting point so that you can get on with installing all the software that you need.
Windows 98 comes with internet explorer 5.5, so it is very good to begin with for using the internet straight away. Windows update comes with windows 98, so you need to update as soon as possible.
Windows 98 supports just about any program that you can think of, apart from newer software, such as office 2003, which only works with windows XP and 2K. Software runs fine in windows 98, with crashes occurring not frequently, but I do get annoyed, and I’m sure others do, with that annoying little illegal operation box that shows up ever five milliseconds.
I would only use Windows 98SE if I had to use it at all, since, this comes with massive updates and the service pack and is compatible with more software that original windows 98.
Windows 98 will run on a computer with the requirements of about a Pentium one and maybe less, I’m not really sure what the requirements are since I haven’t checked the computer specs I just install it and it works fine.
Windows 98 has a few large bugs including one to do with RAM on the system; it will stop counting the RAM at 512, and still thinks it’s using 512 even though sometimes more is installed. You can buy windows 98 new and second-hand, on cd or floppy (cd more commonly), from nay good hardware/software shops near you or on the internet. Windows 98 is good if you desperately need good operating systems that is table and fast and has good support for just about every program that there is.
I would recommend anyone to buy this operating system, although I would also recommend windows XP just as equally as they are about the same on all different levels, so they cancel each other out.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1 - for PC - English - Quantity: 1, 3 - 1 user - CD-ROM, Preinstalled
(+) Faster, good networking with other Windows machine, so far it has not crashed. (-) price, best to do a fresh install which will involve backup & restore of information
May 28th, 2004
very helpful by (75%):
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