Windows 98, The (Un)Essential Upgrade?
In the computer industry, 2 years, 10 months and 1day is an eternity. That was the "shelf-life" of Windows 95. August 24, 1995, amid much pomp and ceremony, Bill Gates and the rest of the millionaires at Microsoft promised to make computing easier, more accessible and more enjoyable. Although many were skeptical at the time, today, few would argue that Win95 was anything but a success, both for the industry and the Redmond giant. On June 25, 1998, the next version, Windows 98, was released. This time around, however, Microsoft has been spending as much time in court as they have promoting their new flagship product.
So, what's different this time around? Win95 was a drastic improvement over Windows 3.1. It featured a new user interface, better management of system resources, an improved driver model and better multitasking. Conversely, Win98 is much more of an interim release than a new operating system (OS). The "guts" of Win98 have remained virtually unchanged from its predecessor, with new features added on top, including the much heralded inclusion of Internet Explorer 4 (IE4). It's been said that MS programmers have fixed more than 3000 bugs along the way, which is never a bad thing.
There are also many new features in Win98. Most importantly is support for many new technologies, including DirectX 5.0, Universal Serial Bus (USB), FAT32, IEEE 1394 or Firewire, DVD, WebTV etc. Support for some of these was available as service releases or add-ons to Win95, but having them fully integrated into the OS leads to better stability and improved functionality.
Microsoft has also improved the performance of its OS with Win98. Before you get all excited, you won't notice a higher frame rate in Quake 2 and your spreadsheets will all recalculate at about the same speed; that's not where the performance increase is. Where you will notice a difference is at startup, shutdown and in the loading of your applications. Nothing is more boring that watching that life-line scroll across the bottom of the screen while Windows starts, or more tedious than the "please wait while your computer shuts down" screen. Microsoft has shaved a few seconds off startup times and drastically reduced the time it takes to shutdown. Also, a new disk defragmenter which watches the order in which files are accessed when you start a program and orders them appropriately on your disk, speeds the loading of your applications. Word or Netscape Navigator, for instance, will start anywhere from one to several seconds faster. Be careful, though, third party defragmenters like Norton Utilities will see your files as being broken up and try to "fix" them.
The other big improvement is in the setting up of the OS. I have installed Win98 on three different systems, a clean install on a PentiumII-300, a dual-boot with Windows NT 4 on a different PentiumII-300, and an upgrade from Win95 on a Pentium-166. The only problem I had at all was that when dual-booting with NT, it is easier, though not absolutely necessary, if you install Win98 first, otherwise, some files will get overwritten and NT will no longer start. In fact, the upgrade of the Pentium-166 was so easy that once I started the installation (which only took a few clicks) I literally went and made myself a bowl of hot cereal and watched a football game while it was happily proceeded without any intervention from me.
In the month or so that I've been using Win98 I have found it to be more stable and less likely to crash than its predecessor. Most of the crashes that I have experienced have been while I was doing something odd like installing beta software or messing around with drivers. This means less down time and less chance of losing data because your machine froze.
The ultimate decision to upgrade to Windows 98 depends on your current computer. If you've got an aging 486 or Pentium, there isn't really a compelling feature that you'll not be able to live without. If on the other hand you've recently bought a new system, you'll appreciate the support for USB devices and DVD as well as the improved stability of the OS. Finally, if you're about to buy a new computer, the choice will most likely be made for you and you'll probably be getting Win98, but don't worry, you can turn off all the "enhancements" that come with IE4 if you find them irritating or want to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your new speedster. Basically, you won't be left too far out of the loop if you decide not to upgrade, but won't notice a drastic improvement in how you get "where you want to go today" if you do.
Microsoft has also released a companion CD for Win98 called Plus! 98 (P98). The Win95 Plus! CD contained many useful and fun add-ons, like support for desktop themes, but most of them have been incorporated into Win98. P98 features an improved maintenance wizard, MS Golf Lite, virus protection, more themes and a few other forgettable utilities. Other than an amazing CD player (when you insert an audio CD, it will search the Internet and automatically download the artist, title and track information) and a maddening new card game, Spider Solitaire, I see no good reason to buy P98 and can't recommend it.
by Jason Offiong
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