Slightly OT - 98 or NT4?

[Peter in New Zealand]

My apologies for the OT post, but I am curious to ask an opinion on
this. The machine I have originally came with your choice of 98 or NT4
on it. I have 98SE running pretty well thanks to the support and
experience of this group. A friend of mine has a full install CD for NT4
Workstation he hasn't used for years and he is happy to gift it to me if
I want it. Apart from the fact that NT groups on the Internet are fairly
quiet now-a-days I think am more likely to get an unbiased opinion here
I think from anyone who has used it.

I don't use the machine for games - I run MS Office 97, and use Firefox
and Thunderbird. I would gain stability from switching to NT4 from 98 I
know, but are there any gotchas I should be aware of? I will be imaging
the drive before starting so I can return it to its 98 state pretty
easily if I want to.

On the USB issue I have decided to forget about it as I will be tossing
in a network PC card when it arrives and then I can move stuff between
it and my other machine without difficulty.
--
Peter in New Zealand. (Email address is fake)
Collector of old cameras, tropical fish fancier, good coffee nutter, and
compulsive computer fiddler.

 

[Calvin]

Peter in New Zealand wrote:

> My apologies for the OT post, but I am curious to ask an opinion on
> this. The machine I have originally came with your choice of 98 or NT4
> on it. I have 98SE running pretty well thanks to the support and
> experience of this group. A friend of mine has a full install CD for NT4
> Workstation he hasn't used for years and he is happy to gift it to me if I want it.

Your question is NOT OT at all.

> Apart from the fact that NT groups on the Internet are fairly
> quiet now-a-days I think am more likely to get an unbiased opinion here
> I think from anyone who has used it.

Some of us are still here, and are DEFINITELY still using NT4

> I don't use the machine for games - I run MS Office 97, and use Firefox
> and Thunderbird. I would gain stability from switching to NT4 from 98 I
> know, but are there any gotchas I should be aware of? I will be imaging
> the drive before starting so I can return it to its 98 state pretty
> easily if I want to.

Only things I would do is research all your hardware vendors on the
Internet for the devices in the machine (Video Card, Sound Card etc..)
and make sure you can still obtain the correct drivers for this hardware
for NT4, a lot of this content is getting very thin on the ground :-(

The bad news on the Firefox front is, effective with Firefox 3.0
(released yesterday), the ONLY Win OS support is for Win2k, XP and Vista
(YUK)

Firefox 2.0.0.14 works fine on NT4 (and so looks like it will be our 'last')

You may also want to consider setting the machine up as 'dual boot',
then you could use either OS on demand

Personally IMHO NT4 would kill 98 hands down - far more stable and
reliable, real security instead of the bluff that is Win98 security, the
ability to use NTFS and have a REAL file system as opposed to FAT32 (the
Microsoft version of a bad joke !)

I maintain a support site for NT4 users - have a look here:

http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au

> On the USB issue I have decided to forget about it as I will be tossing
> in a network PC card when it arrives and then I can move stuff between
> it and my other machine without difficulty.

If all you want is simple USB support for devices like USB memory keys -
NO PROBLEM under NT4 - have a read of http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/usb.htm
for a full explanation.

Hope this info helps...

Calvin.

 

[Peter in New Zealand]

Calvin wrote:
> Peter in New Zealand wrote:
>
>> My apologies for the OT post, but I am curious to ask an opinion on
>> this. The machine I have originally came with your choice of 98 or NT4
>> on it. I have 98SE running pretty well thanks to the support and
>> experience of this group. A friend of mine has a full install CD for
>> NT4 Workstation he hasn't used for years and he is happy to gift it to
>> me if I want it.
>
> Your question is NOT OT at all.
>
>> Apart from the fact that NT groups on the Internet are fairly quiet
>> now-a-days I think am more likely to get an unbiased opinion here I
>> think from anyone who has used it.
>
> Some of us are still here, and are DEFINITELY still using NT4
>
>> I don't use the machine for games - I run MS Office 97, and use
>> Firefox and Thunderbird. I would gain stability from switching to NT4
>> from 98 I know, but are there any gotchas I should be aware of? I will
>> be imaging the drive before starting so I can return it to its 98
>> state pretty easily if I want to.
>
> Only things I would do is research all your hardware vendors on the
> Internet for the devices in the machine (Video Card, Sound Card etc..)
> and make sure you can still obtain the correct drivers for this hardware
> for NT4, a lot of this content is getting very thin on the ground :-(
>
> The bad news on the Firefox front is, effective with Firefox 3.0
> (released yesterday), the ONLY Win OS support is for Win2k, XP and Vista
> (YUK)
>
> Firefox 2.0.0.14 works fine on NT4 (and so looks like it will be our
> 'last')
>
> You may also want to consider setting the machine up as 'dual boot',
> then you could use either OS on demand
>
> Personally IMHO NT4 would kill 98 hands down - far more stable and
> reliable, real security instead of the bluff that is Win98 security, the
> ability to use NTFS and have a REAL file system as opposed to FAT32 (the
> Microsoft version of a bad joke !)
>
> I maintain a support site for NT4 users - have a look here:
>
> http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au
>
>> On the USB issue I have decided to forget about it as I will be
>> tossing in a network PC card when it arrives and then I can move stuff
>> between it and my other machine without difficulty.
>
> If all you want is simple USB support for devices like USB memory keys -
> NO PROBLEM under NT4 - have a read of http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/usb.htm
> for a full explanation.
>
> Hope this info helps...
>
> Calvin.

That's great Calvin. Thank you for your encouraging comments. My friend
is sending me his NT4 install CD (the set also includes floppies
apparently). He is happy to gift it to me if I want it. I have only had
time to glance at those two web pages, but I have bookmarked them and I
will be looking through them later this evening (NZ time). Looks like
there's a heap of excellent material there. Once again, thanks heaps for
the thoughts and comments.

--
Peter in New Zealand. (Email address is fake)
Collector of old cameras, tropical fish fancier, good coffee nutter, and
compulsive computer fiddler.