Win 98, You Lose (Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition)

Member Name: bond008

Product:	Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
Date:	15/08/00 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its one of the few

Disadvantages: Lots

Ever wondered why we are forced to use this OS and have been for years. Its very noticable that there are only two reviews on a system that millions of people use, what are you afraid of. I've been using 95 & 98 for about 4 years collectively and my general opinion is this is not as great as everyone makes out. These are my thoughts, first off the plug & play in 98 is OK so long as the hardware you are installing is a perfect match. If its a little different then you will have problems. 98 will try and load what it thinks is the best match of drivers, very clever but useless. This means that you end up with a badly installed or not installed set of drivers that wont run your hardware, case in point C Media Soundcard Drivers. This feature of 98 is a complete nightmare and one that will seriously scare off anyone who does'nt know the OS very well.

Then there are the error messages, " Fatal Errors", what does that mean, has someone in Microsoft died. The dreaded blue screen which locks up your PC in the middle of a crucial point of your favourite game. The very familiar little grey boxes with all sorts of useless messages for the unitiated, we just accept them without question. Something is really wrong with all this. What we really have is an OS full of bugs that cause crashes at the most inopportune moments and without adequate explanation.

Have you ever tried re-installing the OS, I hope you never have to. You might be lucky and get a smooth install with no problems. Or you might get what happened to me, a 97% install that fails after nearly an hour and you have no choice but to start all over again. This has happened twice. Very frustrating.

I learnt my trade on AppleMacs back in 1990, I can remember the Mac,s that I used never crashed, did you hear that, they NEVER crashed or locked up or threw up any nasty error messages. Why not because they used extremely well designed components with excellent Operating systems. I
went back to the place where I first used the Macs 5 years later and they were still there looking battered and bruised but still working fine with no glitches, absolutely brilliant.

We have all grown to use Windows without question, including all its little faults. Lets be fair it could be a lot better and we could have a lot more choice. The fact that we have so little choice means that we have to put up with such poor workmanship as this. In no other business or product would we suffer this way, imagine buying a new car that needed its engine overhauled every year, or a washing machine that needed a new part every 6 months to make it continue to wash new fabrics, UTTER Madness, if you ask me, then Mr Gates will never need to ask me will he, or the rest of the world for that matter. There is some choice now, but not that runs all my favourite software. YET !!!

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