At a recent Microsoft seminar the speaker was pushing, yet again, Windows NT for a corporate environment instead of Windows 95 or 98 ( referred to as 9x ). I had heard this ad nauseum, and thought myself better for ignoring it. Unfortunately the facts kept coming at me; NT operates 33% faster than 9x using business applications, tight security, minimal crashes. NT is the easiest upgrade path to Windows 2000, which I'm looking forward to. As an aside, Microsoft just announced Windows 2000 won't be released until February 17, 2000, but purchasers of NT Workstation 4.0 will receive a free upgrade to Windows 2000 Professional. The kicker came at the end when I was handed a free copy of Windows NT Workstation 4.0 to try out. If it's free, why not give it a try? And so I installed it at home and at work to get a solid impression. Then I installed it about a dozen more times in different configurations until I had a handle on the whole what for.
Windows NT looks and feels like Windows 9x, until you want to deal with the hardware or system settings. Let's the negatives out of the way up front. NT does not support plug and play, USB, DVD and various other new technologies that have emerged in the past three years. Game support is sparse, as DirectX for NT is only at version 3, as opposed to version 7 for Windows 9x. To make system changes or check hardware, you have to work through quite a few different spots in the control panel. Not a big deal, but takes some getting used to.
Let's look at performance on the two machines, the work PC and the home PC.
My work PC is an IBM desktop with a Pentium 133 MHz, 96 MB RAM, 3.2 GB hard drive, 12X IDE CD-ROM, Sound Blaster 16 ASP sound card, Internal SCSI Zip drive, Adaptec AHA-1542 PCI SCSI adapter, Allied Telesyn 10BaseT ISA network adapter and a 2 MB Cirrus Logic integrated video card. Installation went without a hitch, since it is an older system and all the devices are mainstream; NT supported all the devices so I was set. I undated a few drivers without incident, so I went on to install the newest service pack. Instead of posting updates, Microsoft releases service packs that contains new features and bug fixes. Service pack six was just released, so I installed that. A funny problem though; I've read in quite a few places to install service pack three, then four, five and six. It seems some programs look for specific items from the various service packs. As well, the new features aren't carried over; only fixes are cumulative. Once I got working in the system, I did notice a speed difference; I don't know about 33%, but it was faster. It took a few weeks for the next item to hit me: no crashes! Just as in Window 9x, when something hangs you hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the task manager and bring the nonsense to a stop. The nice thing about NT is the program is terminated properly; so many times in Windows 9x I click "end task" only to have the computer lock up. That's just annoying. I have to say a very positive experience.
My home PC was a different story. Here's a breakdown: Dual Celeron 466 MHz, 256 MB SDRAM, 27 GB hard drive, 36X IDE CD-ROM, Sound Blaster Live! Value sound card, Acer ALN-320 10/100 PCI network adapter, Creative TNT2 Ultra AGP video card. A lot of cutting edge hardware that required a bit of hunting for drivers, but everything I have is supported. I had a Monster Sound MX300 sound card in here, but it doesn't support dual processors or four speaker output in NT so I swapped it. I learned it's best to install the service packs, then install your drivers, then re-install the last service pack. I couldn't figure out my NT was crashing when I set the video settings, then realized you need service pack 4 to support AGP. Lesson learned; tedious, but how often does the average person add new hardware or do a fresh install. Once I had all drivers installed, my system was humming; no crashes, blips or inconsistencies one associates with 9x. My office applications ran without a hitch, as they do at work. I tried some game playing, with mixed results. Starcraft worked great, no tweaking needed. Quake 3 Test same story. Age Of Empires II: Age Of Kings worked once I installed the Direct Play 6.1a patch; I don't know why it worked, but did. Homeworld ran fine, but would only play in software mode; no hardware support for video available, so this one is a 9x title for me. An excellent product that I'm afraid has languished under a corporate moniker and less than stellar advertising. If stability is your concern, run Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. As an aside, I've installed both NT and 98 on the same system and switch between them for the best of both worlds. Look at www.iprimus.ca/~tbabble for a detailed article on setting this up.
While on the topic of NT, let's discuss a must have companion: Symantec Speed Disk 5 for NT Workstation. I've written countless articles on the Norton series for 9x, but this is my first foray into NT waters. It seems Symantec sells the products individually for NT as opposed to bundling them into a System Works or Utilities for 9x. Speed Disk does just what you expect it to: defrag and organize your NT hard disk. Shocking but true, NT doesn't include any system utilities, leaving the consumer on their own. There are a few defragmenting utilities, but you can't go wrong with the Symantec name. I installed the software and went through the options; a simple and clean interface. You can defrag the drive, checking for errors first or schedule the process. You can exempt certain files or directories from the process if you're so inclined. Speed Disk optimizes the files by access and fragmentation, much the same way as it's 9x counterpart. A few nice features, such as defragmenting the pagefile and directory structure without rebooting make this product a must have. Check out www.symantec.com/sdnt/index.html for a trial version or more details. I'd like to say more, but that's the tale; Speed Disk defragments your NT hard drive and does the job well. If you're going the NT route, pick up Norton Speed Disk.
by Scott VanderPloeg
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