This week I wasted most of my free time and sleep on a title I wasn't even anxious to try: Imperium Galactica II from GT Interactive. It's a strategy title in the tradition of Master Of Orion, an old title that had me hooked. You start with one planet and a few ships, then have to expand to other planets and take on other races to control the galaxy. You have to control production on each planet, build a fleet and manage your research for bigger and better things. The game is time based, with settings for pause, slow, normal and fast speeds. When you want to check out a planet or a fleet just pause the time, do your thing and set it to normal or fast. Battles in space and on land use the same control, so you can assign targets then watch the mayhem.
Things move along at a good pace, and once you're managing a dozen or so planets it's hectic. The graphics are pretty good; nice ship and building design but the fonts used are terrible to read. Sound is excellent, with mood music keeping you going and audible reports from your fleet and planets. The only annoyance is a pause in the game when you receive your annual taxes; the more planets you have the longer the pause. I am seriously addicted to this, until I beat the game. If you want to be sucked into a game, go out and grab Imperium Galactica II.
It's designed for Windows 9x and plays well, but my Windows 2000 ( W2k ) experiences are less than stellar. I know it doesn't say W2K on the box, but you just expect it to work. Good thing I dual boot my system.
Why dual boot, you say? For all the games that won't run in W2k, or for those hardware items that don't have drivers yet. The latest poll from Forrester Research regarding W2k stated customer's biggest complaints have been about printer and scanner drivers, which I've experienced as well. A friend of mine has an Okidata printer and an Agfa scanner and is still waiting for drivers, six months since W2k's release.
Setting up a dual boot is fairly straightforward, with two proviso's: you already have Windows 95 or 98 installed, and you have a free partition to install W2k. Most likely you have the first but not the second.
A partition is a segmented space on your hard drive; I have a 15 GB hard drive divided into two partitions of 5 GB and 10 GB. To create a partition you can use FDISK, which wipes all information out, or use Partition Magic from Powerquest to create partitions without losing data. I've been using Partition Magic for some years without incident, and with each version it get easier to use. Back to the topic.
Once you have a partition set aside, boot up to Windows 9x and insert your W2k CD. You'll be prompted to install Windows 2000, so follow along with a clean install and select your empty partition. A few reboots later your system will have Windows 9x and Windows 2000 installed, with a menu option on boot up allowing you to choose.
That brings me to my next point: does anyone need W2k? I became a fan of Windows NT 4.0 last year, and stuck with it. When W2k was released I grabbed a copy and started using it, and have found it just isn't as stable as NT. Of course I started using NT after four service packs were released, so I'm willing to stick it out. Microsoft recommends W2k for business use only, and discourages it for home use. That's what Windows 98 and the upcoming Windows Millennium Edition are for.
I have a friend who could use a home server, so I loaded up an old Pentium 133 MHz machine with NT 4.0 Workstation. Why workstation and not the Server product? Price, for one thing: around $250 for NT Workstation compared to $1600 for NT Server. Why not W2k? It just won't run on the old hardware, but NT 4.0 will truck right along. How can you use Workstation version as a server? The basics of NT are the same across the platform: set up user accounts, log into the machine, share resources. The Workstation license limits you to ten concurrent connections. What you don't get with the Workstation are DHCP, DNS and other advanced server options that are now available in home gateway solutions for sharing high speed internet access, but that's a story for another day.
I just ran across the best solution for home networks on a budget: the Microsoft Small Business Server 4.5 Evaluation Kit. For $20, Microsoft will send you a full version of SBS 4.5 which is limited in the following: it can't be upgraded, it has a limit of 6 concurrent connections, no tech support. This is an amazing product that fits the bill for any home network, and for that price you can't go wrong. Six clients will exclude it from any businesses, but they can buy the full version. The only real hardware requirements are a Pentium processor, 64 MB of RAM and a modem. This let's you share resources like storage space, printers, modems, email accounts, etc. Go here and get the full details. Now I'll have to set this up for my friend, since I just got the kit.
That was my week; come back next time for more hair raising tales of the single IT guy.
by Scott VanderPloeg
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