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Copyright © 1998 by Woody Liswood. All Rights Reserved
Well, WIN98 has been around since June. If you haven't already upgraded, should you?
I'm reminded of a line from Evita. It goes something like well yes, and no, and yes, and no and
Before you make up your mind about WIN98, you might consider some of the following features.
First, in my opinion, WIN98 is a maintenance release for WIN95. It contains bug fixes and additional features that either should have been in WIN95 to begin with and new device drivers to support hardware that has come into being since WIN95 came along.
FAT32
The most important new feature of is that it comes with the FAT32 (32 bit File Allocation Table) file system plus a utility to convert from the old FAT16. If you aren,t already running FAT32, this upgrade is a must. It will free up megabytes of disk space and may even keep you from having to purchase a new hard drive. FAT32 was part of WIN95 OSR2 release but Microsoft refused to sell that release to the public. You could only get it by purchasing a new computer or hard drive.
USB (Universal Serial Bus)
Do you have a computer with USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports available? If so, WIN98 enables this new technology. Most of the microcomputers sold over the last 2 years have had the USB connectors on the motherboard, but there has been almost no hardware or software. WIN98 changes that since it comes with a full USB implementation and there are now USB devices arriving in the marketplace (I'll cover some of those in future columns.)
WINTV
Want WIN TV? It is built into WIN98 and you do have to have a WIN98 compatible TV tuner board installed in your computer.
DVD
Do you own, or want to own, a DVD drive? If so, WIN98 has that support built into it, but without a single standard you might want to wait until the industry on DVD-RAM or DVD +RW.
BACKUP
Do you want to backup to your SCSI tape drive? You can under WIN98. Seagate wrote this backup software.
MULTIPLE MONITORS
Do you want to run more than one monitor at a time? WIN98 has multiple display support.
INTERNET EXPLORER
WIN98 comes with Internet Explorer 4.1. But, you can download 4.1 from the Internet and have your computer look like WIN98.
Microsoft has added an update site for WIN98. A click on an icon, you hook up to the Internet, and see what is new. Great stuff, but not much different from technology that OIL CHANGE has had for years.
ONLINE SERVICES
WIN98 has an Online Services Folder with links to AOL, ATT, Compuserve and Prodigy. So what? You probably already have your Internet Service Provider and don,t need this stuff taking up space on your disk.
One of my complaints about WIN95 is how long it takes to startup and to shut down. Shut down is significantly faster under WIN98. But, if you keep your computer on all the time, this is not a big deal.
Woody's Recommendation
My recommendation: if you don't already have an FAT32, you must definitely upgrade to WIN98. If you have a system that sometimes has problems, then WIN98 might very will have the bug fix that solves your problems. If you want to use USB hardware, you need WIN98 to get it to work correctly and WIN98 is a must. Other than that, the upgrade is worth while, but not immediately necessary.