Which operating system is the best?

[Yonkey]

Yep, all the computers I use have ZoneAlarm.  I prefer it to the router's firewall.

[dew7]

In my opinion, it is simply better as well.  I posted a while ago about an attacker that was able to get around the router's firewall and the Windows firewall but I was not using ZA at that time in XP Pro. SP2.  Fortunately, Zone Alarm Professional has not failed me yet and it recently had that huge block from the hacker attack from China while I was using 98SE.

[dew7]

Interesting column about how people could do more with the 98(SE) printer driver than with the printer driver in XP.

The following is courtesy of John Smith from 98 general newsgroup posting:

HP Printers: The Older, the Better?    

By Ed Foster, Section The Gripelog

http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2006/8/15/02925/4537

I didn't know that some HP XP printer drivers have less
functionality than the Win 98 drivers.

[Yonkey]

Oh, that actually happened to me with Canon too.  For some reason, the older drivers had more functionality.  Maybe it's because Win2k+ uses common functionality for all printers, so the manufacturers sort of cut back.

[Oldbushie]

dew7, you'll be happy to know that I now have AVG installed. It's still not a firewall, but at least it keeps an eye out for viruses.

*went without virus protection for months because he couldn't find a free alternative that was non-bulky*

And even after I installed it it didn't find anything besides a couple spyware things.

[dew7]

People in the 98 general newsgroup posted about the driver of 9x being more complex than the NT driver but I really don't have many details about this and yeah Neil I think the printer manufacturers did cut back.

Way to go, Oldbushie.  I use AVG as well and like it.

[dew7]

Chris Quirke, MVP (Most Valuable Professional) in the Microsoft newsgroups has some interesting things to say about safety on computers and Vista.

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/

[racx_00]

I still use Window Update but I won't allow the installation of WGA. I've come to like XP, not as much as 98se but still a fair bit. Really not looking forward to Vista though.

[dew7]

The market share of operating systems is worldwide as follows:

Windows XP = 86.80%
Windows 2000 = 6.09%
Windows 98(SE) = 2.68%

I would say take that Microsoft because 98SE is very good, easy to use on older computers and so this shows that people are not dummies and not all of them are being taken in by Microsoft's scare tactics of 98SE not being supported anymore as of July 11, 2006. <If you think about it -- 98SE (released in 1999) has already had 7 years of support which is really great for an operating system and so it has been patched to be very stable now.  The latest critical vulnerability at secunia.com for Internet Explorer has been patched for the current operating systems.  It may not apply to 98SE but then again even if it does I hope the users of 98SE are protected by a third party firewall like Zone Alarm Professional and/or a hardware firewall in their router.

Yeah, XP is okay and it does provide support for modern hardware like PCI Express and for current software that does not always run on 98SE.  It surprises me that Microsoft is releasing the Microsoft Explorer 3.0 mouse which I have and use along with a regular mouse with 98SE except they are changing it slightly and not providing support for 98SE with it -- Go Figure --- I still think it annoys Microsoft that 98SE is still doing so well.

OS  Market Share

Mouse

[Yonkey]

Whoa.   I knew WinXP was dominant, but I didn't know it was that dominant.

[Shadowfax]

Just my 'two-cents' on the subject...

Microsoft have the market advantage where I live for the simple reason that its always been around and easily available (whilst some die-hards love to claim they stole all their ideas from Apple...who in turn nicked them from Xerox...ultimately MS, certainly in the UK, was the first to widely license their software, gaining a foothold that 'snowballed' over time. The only dominant Mac related item over here in the UK seems to be the iPod!)

Whilst trendy media students and graphic designers like to use mac, for people like me and my associates, who do A LOT of computer work, we prefer windows because we can 'get into' the system far easier than we can with Mac (besides...I like two-click menues!) However, I have heard several horror stories of Windows XP computers turning themselves on in the middle of the night and performing random operations! (Though admittedly, the owners of the computers in question probably were involved in dubious acts of programming, as it were, though they claim this is no fault of their own!)

I know this has contributed 'nothing' to the debate but nonetheless!

BTW: Does anyone else suffer weird problems with Windows Update once in a while (trying to download when the internet is clearly OFFLINE or downloading useless updates that merely upset the OS!)

[dew7]

No, I cannot say that I do Shadowfax.  I got a weird reboot on my computer today and no error message or anything but I did hit two keys and one was enter so perhaps I inadvertantly restarted my computer.  I am currently researching the issue.  The September 19 vulnerability is really bad and I highly suggest everyone update their antivirus utilities and antispyware utilities ASAP.  In addition, you may want to consider another browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera which are not affected.

[dew7]

So now that Windows Vista has been released to the general public --- what does everyone here think?  Does it live up to the hype or is it just a poor substitute for XP?

[tessspoon]

Well, I don't like it, but that's only because my dad can't get us free versions from his work like it did with the previous ones. I haven't had a chance to actually try it yet.

[Shades2585]

From what I've play with SR1 it's ok. I haven't spent much time on that machine though. I probably will when I get Vista Ultimate to put on it.

[racx_00]

I'd wait till the first service pack before even considering Vista. Personally I don't like the look of it and it's a new OS to learn and master. I just can't be buggered with it.

[Oldbushie]

I got Vista Business for free through my school and immediately configured it to look and act like 98SE. It's just XP with glitter and a coujple new features, not the new filesystem that they were going for. Which is actually kind of a relief because I didn't want to reformat my drives yet again.

[dew7]

It seems like people would be better off with XP than the cheap basic version of Vista but I do like the glass interface on the fancier versions of Vista.  I plan to wait for Vista as well until I need it.  I read that Direct X 10 will be for Vista only and will support only some of the fanciest and expensive video cards that are currently in use but I have no idea when Microsoft will release Direct X 10.

[dew7]

Well, there have been some reports that Microsoft plans another operating system for the end of 2009 but that seems like that will hardly be enough time for Microsoft to let Vista get established and it may just be a rumor.  I also feel that it is a good idea to wait for a while while Vista gets stability issues worked out with their drivers working well on different hardware.

[dew7]

Just a heads up that there was a security update for Windows today.



Also, apparently PC World likes Windows XP better than Windows Vista due to continued problems with compatibility of drivers.  I noticed with the Sound Blaster Audigy that I own that the driver lacks features such as DVD Audio with Windows Vista so that would definitely make me not want to upgrade at least not for a while.