win me or win 98?

Thorbar

I already have a version of windows 98 from this computer so i don't really see the point in spending 100 pounds for an windows me. Is there any really good reason to buy win me or can I make do with win 98? I'm also going to be duel booting with linux which i'll be using for net and other stuff. Any games or progs or such will be run off windows.

phobos

For the love of God, don't bother with ME. It doesn't matter what you use your computer for, there is always going to be a better choice of OS than ME.

Right I'm a FY student/programmer, and best MS platform for someone like me would be Win2k pro. It is rock solid like NT4, and a great development platform. It also handles games pretty well also. But if you're not a developer I would stay with Win98 (Second Edition). This OS is a great platform for games and is pretty flexible in that dept. But since you are interested in dual booting a Linux distro, I can easily say you are beyond the status of a casual user. So if you are a general techie, who plays games, likes hardware, knows HTML (Christ there's enough of ye muppets, lol ). I would stick to 98SE, and dual boot that with Linux.

So there ya go. BTW if anybody diagrees with me, they are clearly on drugs so don't mind them.

JustHalf

Nice, Phobos. You've dismissed people's points before they've even made them.

Windows ME = Windows 98SE + some more bugs + pointless crap you probably don't need

If I were you, I'd run Win2K Pro as your primary OS, with Windows 98SE for the few games that don't like it (like DOS games... shut up, I've got a rake of them! -- some others don't like it either too). And if you're REALLY set on Linux, then Tri-boot.

Thorbar

Alright ta for the information I think I'll stick with win98 and linux.

Fand

WinMe has one thing I like: it will update drivers if you instal something with older drivers. In other words, if you instal a printer and it has an older version of lpt.vxd, WinMe will ask you if you want to use the newer (and usually better) one instead.

But as far as I know you can actually download all the extra bits of Win98 that turn it into WinMe for free, anyway.

Oh, yeah, and there's one bad thing about WinMe: if you get a virus and get rid of it, WinMe has a nasty habit of returning to the virus-ridden status the next day; you have to turn off the "return to old virus-ridden status" (or whatever they call it) function, reboot, de-virus again, reboot, then turn it on again.

chernobyl

Why not download XP RTM, its free and beats the pants off 98/ME.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

elexes

im using win me and i do find it better then 98 lots better . but id go win 2k if your going to spend cash on it . i wouldent spend my hard earned cash on it if i was u

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what type of world will we live in when there is no world ?

Thorbar

Here's my dream machine from overclockers. Tell me what you think oh and if there's anything in there that's really stupid or wont work with something else please point it out.

ASUS A7V266 DDR/AMD ThunderBird 1.4GHz AYHJA CPU Guaranteed to 1533MHz+/OcUK Super ThermalRight SK6 - Bundle 1
£248.60 £248.60
Coolermaster ATCS-200 (No PSU) 1
£173.75 £173.75
Enermax EG365P-VE 350W ATX Power Supply 1
£45.60 £45.60
Crucial 256MB DDR PC2100 CAS-2.5 2
£31.50 £63.00
Creative Soundblaster Live! Player 5.1 - Retail 1
£51.00 £51.00
Creative Labs Desktop Theatre 5.1 DTT2200 1
£72.00 £72.00
Pioneer DVD-106 Region Free! - OEM 1
£54.45 £54.45
Plextor PleXwriter 16/10/40A Burn-Proof CD-RW - Retail 1
£114.90 £114.90
Cherry G83-6000 PS2 Keyboard 1
£15.65 £15.65
Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical USB/PS2 Mouse - OEM 1
£24.00 £24.00
D-Link DFE-530TX NIC 1
£17.00 £17.00
Rounded Ultra ATA100/66 IDE Cable (0.9m) - White 2
£7.50 £15.00
Ratpadz™ Mousing Surface 1
£13.61 £13.61
Teac 3.5" Black Floppy Disk Drive - OEM 1
£12.99 £12.99
Hansol 710P 17" Monitor 1
£127.70 £127.70
OcUK Case Badges 1
£0.70 £0.70
AMD Athlon Case Badge 1
£0.70 £0.70
Asus V8200 GeForce3 Deluxe (AGP) - Retail 1
£267.70 £267.70
IBM 60GXP 61.5GB UDMA100 1
£122.08 £122.08
Subtotal: £1,440.43
Shipping: (Parcelforce Euro 48) £192.00
VAT: £285.70
Total: £1,918.13

WhiteWashMan

win2k.
by the way, how ever posted that list of components from o/cers.
er, you dont really need a mouse mat if you have an optical mat.
should save you about 2 quid

Gerry

That bundle of parts should work fine together. If you haven't built a machine before just bear in mind that it may not be all plain sailing, just post up any problems here. Do search the tech board to see if someone has had the same question resolved on this board before.

Thorbar

I have a gaming mouse already which i'll be using with my ratzpad and my optic mouse is for normal use. Yeah its excess but what the hell.

astrofool

thermal paste?

rather than having to use the pad that comes with the heatsink, or cheapy paste, get some arctic silver, works very well.

Installed copper heatsink here(sk6), arctic silver and rounded cables, temp of processor has dropped by 13-14 c, chip is cooler than the north bridge at times now O_o.

Also the ratpadz are v. good, no resistance mouse movement is always a plus

I use Me here, and it works fine, never ever crashes, and is bug free, I tried win2k, but have too many peripherals in this machine for it to work at all stable, so went back to Me.

Stability in 9x os's can be improved if u go through the control panel, check the drivers, if you see files in brackets, 9x is using another file, but not the actual file, extract the file in brackets using system configuration utility thing, to system folder, and it'll use that file then, improves stability alot.

Always use win2k in business systems, but it's still pap for a large back catalogue of games, older c&c games won't run on it, and alot of newer ones have huge problems

Gerry

An interesting point astrofool, modern northbridges seem to run hot as hell. Some artic silver thermal epoxy, and a pentium I heatsink would go down nicely. I'd leave the case airflow to circulate air over it, cheap small fans make too much noise.

I dunno about stability in win9x. If you use win2k for long enough, you will see that no one program can bring the whole system down, you can usually recover from software crashes, of course hardware lockups are another story.