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Done to death? Perhaps not!

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by guruofdos

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I'm sure the debate over XP has been done a million times but I'd like some objective opinions over claims made by MS, rather than a love-hate debate...if that's possible!

Test Bed 1: Two PC's...identical. 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 40Gb ATA133 hard drive, 256Mb PC266 RAM. Mobos used: K7SOM+ and latest Bios. Test Bed 2: EPIA-M all in one VIA mobo with 933MHz C3 CPU. Hard drives and RAM as above. CD used in each case was a 48x CDRW. Broadband DSL via USB2.0 in each case. Comparing 98SE and XP:

To install 98 on a newly formatted hard disk, install and then apply every update from the Windows Update site took just under 60 mins. 1/2hr to install Office 2000SBE, updates and patches, Nero5.5, Winamp and one or two small apps. To get XP to this stage took just over 4 hours.

MS claim that XP will start up faster and run apps quicker than any previous OS. On both my test PC's, XP was vastly slower. More reliable? W98 is still running and has been for over a week without a single problem. TheXP PC has given me at least 20 errors requiring a reboot, then asks to send a report to MS. Rebooting gives a message saying that Windows has had to recover from a serious error.

Shutting down, the 98 machine is off in under 7 seconds, the XP PC takes at least a minute to shut down. All my apps which flew under 98 now take longer to load and work very slowly. The hard disk on the XP machine is littered with tmp files after switching between one or two apps. Networking the 98 machine took 1 min and 1 reboot, and immediately networked to my other 11 PC's with no tweaks. The XP PC refused to network unless I created a Setup disk and then ran it on all the other machines and rebooted them each 3 times. Much of my software will not run underXP and as for my scanner.....!

HDD remaining for data under W98? 34Gb. Under XP? Just under 29Gb. Faster, better, more reliable? How do MS justify these claims?

30 replies

by oldefar

This is an excellent approach. Much more valuable than a discussion on the pros and cons.

Thanks.

by guruofdos

Disk defragmenter...takes much longer and doesn't completely defrag the whole disk. Printing takes longer. Older 16 bit apps that worked just fine under 95, 98, ME and WFWG3.1 don't like working under XP, even with the compatibility wizard. I could go on with the list of problems, but I'm sure you get the picture!

by areets

If you may allow me, I will share my W98/XP experience and conclusions, which is in full agreement with the obvious deduction, but more must be said.

Thanks.

TSP

by guruofdos

I 'know my stuff' could also be a subject for debate! But I do know this:-
No man is an island, and we can't all know all of the gen all of the time. It is easy to say XP is 'crap' or '98 sucks' based on other peoples comments or experiences but atthe end of the day the only way to know is to collate data from as many varied sources as possible and then to implement some kind of test as I did to see how 'A compares to B'.

Many people may have had the opposite experiences to me - TheChas for one. I appreciate his input which adds to the value of the comparison because none of us run identical setups and what might be good for one isn't always best for all.

My 'test' was to run two identical PC's under the two OS's to see what worked best for ME. I repeated the test on two different systems to make a similar comparison. Sometimes differences in performance can be highlighted by the spec of a PC. e.g. W95 WILL run on a 486 SX33 with 8Mb but it will crawl whereas WFWG 3.11 will fly along nicely. Upgrade to DX4-100 and 32Mb of RAM and both systems are about the same although 3.11 has the edge.

A 1.8GHz system shouldn't have a problem running either OS but when a 500MHz K6 with 64Mb and an ATA66 drive and 98SE can outpace a 3GHz P4 running XP that MUST mean there is a problem somewhere and it can ONLY lie with the OS as all the apps are identical. SiSoft Sandra shows the raw power to be vastly different and the P4 SHOULD comfortably outrun the K6, but even with a 300%better disk transfer rate and quadruple RAM, AGPx/32Mb compared to PCI/8MB, the 98SE K6 is still faster and to my mind, better.

My point of old....increases in PC power are written off by the demands of a new OS. Computing would be a better experience if coders could wring more efficiency out of the same hardware specs, then new, fast machines would make the investment worthwhile.

by cactus pete

I like to consider myself platform neutral, as I see good and bad in all OSes that I didn't build myself [I haven't built any]... That said, perhaps I'll choose the what some would certainly consider the devil's advocate side of this, just to move the discussion.

Which version of XP are you using?

Remember that 98SE is already a patched version of 98 versions, which was a patched version of 95. There will never be a newly released retail product that is more stable than something which has been 'fixed' repeatedly for almost a decade. [Going back to the development days for 95...]

XP and 98 were not developed with the same goals in mind, so XP dropped support for older apps and hw. This is bound to happen every couple of generations...

I haven't read all the propaganda myself, so which claim are you citing for XP being better than 98, anyway?

Have you tried tweaking XP to make it boot faster? There are plenty of additional services in XP that don't exist for 98 - you can turn lots of these off, thereby speeding up the boot.

For that matter, did you follow any 'best practices' for the install? [even if they're your own version of this... it's a matter of how did you customize the install, if at all, to affect the performance one way or another...]

by areets

From my viewpoint, Windows 98 is Microsoft?s best OS flavour for home and entertainment even if seen as an upgrade from Windows 95. Why the choices and to some extent mis-information of and between client OS flavours of W98, W2K, XP and soon W3K?Home entertainment, small businesses and some mid to large companies migrated from W98 to W2K too early, but they were looking towards platform stability and network security.

When MS bought NT and its file system, somewhere back in the 70/80s, MS? objectives for the young OS of the time was to take as much as of Novell?s network OS market share. Some of us probably do remember the disturbance caused by NET PCs since bandwidth would be over pouring. Well; we are still waiting for NET PCs or true cost effective bandwidth (geographical!!). Novell was looking to sit on Windows, in a dual manor failed. IBM OS/2 brought OS stability but lacked the GUI that Windows? users got use to.

TSP

by areets

Amongst this disorder, MS gained a fair slice of that network OS market from Novell in SME to large organisations offices. Once again not the industry, since MS created competition but those in place to ensure that companies? productivity was maintained; rather focused on ?what everyone else seems to be doing?. So we got NT 4.0 Workstation with its Service Packs, W2K Prof. and XP.

If we choose the file system NTFS over FAT32, we gain on network security and stability. By simple mathematics, with both OS properly and fully installed, why would NT OS start-up or shutdown quicker than a non-net-focus OS.

Network OS stability and security focus will make users lose out on overall performance which starts from the boot up to driver/application processing to system shutdown.

So, why did companies force this unnecessary change?

I think that we could build quite a list.

I had achieved an installation of XP on a PII dell workstation with 96 MB RAM and 3 Go HDD. You ask why I did. I have never agreed with the marketed configurations of PCs.

What I can say is that XP is pretty good at optimising your PC?s resources when it is insufficient! Though, the more resources you have, Windows 98 gets better.

Microsoft brought a deal to the IT industry, but many at management level did not have the charisma to take another road, because it would have meant going it alone or against the majority.

TSP

by oz_media

Although the XP vs 98/W2K etc. debate has gone on forever it seems, your post is a reasonalbly bew approach to the qustion.
You have obviously documented your case quite well and the results say it all, "Why upgrade to XP?".
I just spent Sunday evening removing XPHome and installing 98SE in a brand new PC that a client bought because it was his only option at the time of purchase.
The customer wanted to remove the HOME edition due to it's lack of network support but also didn't really likethe newer interface. He is really stuck in the 98 world and didn't forsee any additional benefits to 'downgrading'.
Without any real reason to downgrade other than familiarity, he was shocked at the way 98SE performed over the stock XPHome install.
Boot and shut down was quicker, his remote networking was a snap to configure and he is elated at the overal outcome.
dpetrak suggested that there are several ways to configure XP for best performance (which I didn't take time to play with because it was Sunday night)which may have boosted the XP performance, so I can't rule out that tweaking may boost performance to the Win98SE level. Also mentioned was that XP hasn't really been patched and repatched the way 98SE has, also a legitimate point, but until XP performs at its peak out of the box, why bother?
I run Win2K Pro on my notebook because at the time I purchased it XP was brand new. Had I gone with XP, I'd still be waiting for revisions and patches to get it to top performance, but then the next Win flavour will be released. The new headwrecker will be whether to upgrade from XP.

by guruofdos

Of course, you could go out and spend 45k on a new sports car, or stick with your 5 year old model, and by suitably tweaking and modifying engine components, steering and suspension end up with something that leaves a 'showroom fresh' example standing at the lights! My 1991 1.9 litre Peugeot (normally aspirated diesel, at that!)leaves my bosses brand new 535i BMW in a cloud of tyre smoke, but his car cost 25k and mine cost about a grand! His might look very pretty but it doesn't go half as wellas mine! Of course, my old junker has seen a few 'upgrades and patches' and many is the time I've had to get under the hood to tweak or fiddle and improve or adapt...

Hang on a minute...doesn't this sound familiar?!!!

by guruofdos

My Puggy averages 67 mpg and the BMW gets about 36 mpg. Funnily enough, I can get almost twice as much work done in the same time on the 98 machine as I can on the XP beast....is that another spooky coincidence or what?!!

So if XP is a Beamer and98 is a Peugeot, when Microsoft release their 'Ferrari' OS, can we expect to overtake it on a bicycle?!!!

by rickydoo

My suggestions echo dpetraks regarding tuning down the eye candy and superfluous services in XP. It definitely does improve performance, but I have yet to test head-to-head vs. 98SE in the way GuruOfDos has.
OzMedia made the comment of tuning down98SE as well, and this would only be fair in a truly unbiased test. Only necessary services for each OS, and the same or similar extra services in both. I would assume XP Home would be the version used in this test, but I didn't see the distinction made in GuruOfDos's post.
But having used and supported XP, I have to say I prefer 98SE and won't be changing anytime soon. Judging purely on the basis of XP problems that walk into my shop vs. 98 problems has made up my mind. Cleaning viruses off XP machines cemented my decision.

by guruofdos

I tried three versions of XP. Home, Professional and Corporate. In each case, I disabled every non-essential service and background task. 98 is running 'balls out', i.e. every option and extra enabled. I am also running PC-Cillin 2002 on both machines as Norton Antivirus refused to work on the XP platform, despite all the patches and updates from the Symantec website (apparently symevent.sys is incompatible with XP).

My wife is running 98SE on an AMD K6 500 with 64Mb or RAM and a 2.5Gb ATA66hard disk, SiS6326 8Mb PCI graphics....and her system is snappier and more stable and smooth than the 1800XP Athlon running WinXP. Today I brought her machine into the office and compared it with a brand new P4 3GHz machine running XP Home on 512Mb or RAM, and her machine is still more productive than the new machine. Booting, opening an Excel spreadsheet, printing and then shutting down the system takes a minute and a half less on her old dog than the new PC does to do exactly the same job.One other point....I have set the XP machine to use FAT32 rather than NTFS, so the two file systems are also identical...NTFS is much slower than FAT32! The only blue screen of death I EVER get on any of the 98 boxes is when the file system is trying to read a scratched or damaged CD, then a simple 'ESC' and eject the disk resolves the issue!

by guruofdos

9 out of 10 of my 'private' customers for new PC's still insist on 98SE...ME doesn't even get a look in. The problem is, I'm running out of places to purchase OEM copies of 98. I even contacted Microsoft on this issue and was told that I can purchase XP Pro full version and then 'downgrade' to 98 and the XP licence would cover the use of 98...yet they don't even sell ME any more so technically 98 is two generations out of date....you would think that as so many people still want to use 98 Microsoft would still provide licences (at a knock down price) even if they only provide limited support, but of course we all know that Uncle Bill would rather screw us over for $400 for a licence for a new product and then leave us in the lurch.

Back to my 'car' simile...I COULD buy a 2003 model Ford from a Ford dealership, but they'd still sell me a '97 used one if that was what I wanted, only they wouldn't charge me list for a brand new one!

by thechas

While my conditions were not as controlled as yours, I got the opposite results.

W98SE system:
750 MHz Athlon Slot A
Epox KT7A
384MB RAM
Aureal SQ2500 Sound card
3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 64MB video
Intel "HAM" modem

XP Pro system:
850 MHz Athlon Slot A 'Thunderbird'
Epox KT7A+
384MB RAM
Aureal SQ2500 Sound card
S3 Savage 4 video
Intel "HAM" modem

I could not believe how much faster the XP system booted up.
Aside from downloads, and web page loads, the XP system seemed to run everything faster.

As to stability, we need to re-boot the W98 box up to 6 times a day.
All XP boxes are nearly trouble-free.

I do attribute the problems with W98 to IE6, and will be starting over from scratch soon, stopping updates at IE5.5.

Chas

by guruofdos

What exactly are you doing that requires a reboot 6 times a day?!!! I have a peer to peer network running at the office and the 'server', i.e., the one with the huge hard disk and all the shared files and two shared printers is running 98SE, with the 7 'client' machines running a mix of 98SE and W95 OSR2.1. As well as supporting the shared files and printers, the 'server' is also running a PCI modem and CD rewriter making daily incremental backups. We also run AOL on the server as it is the only PC in the office with a modem fitted so seven or so people are logging on and off AOL several times a day. I also use a video capture card on this machine to capture and edit footage from VHS tape and burn it to CD. I am also running WinMX and Winamp on a regular basis and I use IE6 with Copernic Agent over the top. I use Office 2K and five or six older DOS applications (assembler, TurboCad DOS, EasyPC pcb drafting software, etc.) two or three times a day and three of us in the company do our banking online using the same machine. Running a Duron 800 with 128Mb of RAM on a PC Chips M810LMR mobo (integrated EVERYTHING)...looking at the sytem information, the uptime is currently 38 days and some odd hours since the last reboot, and system resources are sat at the 72% mark. Just what abuse are you giving your 98 system?!!!

by thechas

Every time we open IE or any other Microsoft application, we loose 30MB or so of available RAM.

Even running a memory manager, we eventually get to less than 10MB of free RAM.

The problem did not start until IE 6 was installed on the PC.
It is either registry expansion, or IE6 itself.
Either way, I know that a clean install of W98 will fix the problem.
I just have not had the time to dedicate to a re-install on this PC.

Prior to installing IE6, the W98 PC was nearly as stable as my current Windows XP boxes.

Chas

by rickydoo

Due to a family tradgedy, I have spent the last couple of months staying with my mother in BC, and keeping up to date with TR through a P75 w/48MB RAM running 98SE & IE 5.01. I have noticed that my infrequent reboots are more out of habit than need, and this thing was running for weeks with no problems before I got here.
Conversly, my Athlon 1.4GHz/384MB running 98SE & IE 6 needs a reboot every couple of hours of use and has had a dozen re-installs among many other troubleshooting attempts for one reason or another. This is of course due to all the crap I load on it and the different and more complex peripherals I use, compared to the relatively static configuration and highly stable and simple components of my fathers' machine.
My point being that TheChas is running different apps, using the PC for generally different tasks and possibly has one or two little shareware apps on there that do a poor job of cleaning up after themselves, so he's going to have a different experience asfar as stability and that annoying "memory leak" are concerned.
Comparing one OS or app version w/the next is going to always end up with a mad mix of opinions. Just remember that mine is always the correct one ;)
This is why I love SOHO/home user tech support in spite of my aversion to human contact. Even in the face of identical problems (eg. Klez infection) the solution is going to be a little different every time (apologies to Crispy Crunch).

by guruofdos

The wife only uses her machine for running AOL to keep in touch with her family in the USA who are all AOL users (ah well!). Mine is for playing on, and by playing I mean downloading music, add-ons and shareware, browsing, email and generally farting around - I'm not a gamer apart from the occasional whirl at Freecell or Solitaire! I also bring work home from the office and so spend a lot of time working on software, CAD files, spreadsheets etc. I also use the machine at home to try out programs, utilities and odds and sods before committing anything to the PC's at the office.

Bottom line....the wife's machine has the same software on it that it did when I built it two years ago and my machine is constantly having crap installed, de-installed and stuff moved around the hard disk or wiped and reloaded. Apart from running the defragmenter on a weekly basis and trawling through the registry and the windows\system folder clearing out the dross every so often, it's eminently stable andnever needs reboots or tweaks unless required by an install or uninstall and that doesn't happen very often. I'm not entirely convinced that a more complex software mix necessarily causes instability in a PC but obviously running several apps concurrently along with a few applets running in the background is going to drain resources but closing processes should restore these to the system.

by guruofdos

Powerquest are on Version 8.0 of Partition Magic, retailing for about ?39 in the UK (US$50 or so). Last week I picked up a copy of a PC mag with a free full version of PartitionMagic 6.0 on the cover disk. It does the job and I prefer it to v8. Whenare we going to see 95, 98 and ME handed out on a magazine CD?!!! Mind you...you can download virtually ANYTHING for free if you search for it on Kazaa or WinMX...including every version of Windows (I looked...just out of interest! I do NOT condone piracy but if that's the ONLY option...).

Anyone want a Dutch or German copy of XP Pro?!! It's out there.....! If Microsoft realise people can't buy 98 so they'll download it (and a key generator!), then why don't they sell it legitimately for say $25 as an 'obsolete product' and still pick up a few bucks like Lotus do with older versions of SmartSuite for example? Games companies do this...a $49.99 new release today is a $9.99 'budget' game in two years time....why can't this be the same with OS's?!!! Perhaps Bill doesn't want us sticking with an older system? Maybe then he will be forced produce something that people will WANT to upgrade to, not something that he tells us is our only choice...like it or lump it.

Mike :-)

by guruofdos

Losing 30Mb a time?! Wow...you have a major problem there! The problem I found with IE6 initially was that if you upgraded to IE6 from IE5.5 then every time you launched IE, the IE window would open very slowly, and the background of the window would be transparent until the page you requested had finished loading, then it would suddenly appear as normal. Browsing to another page caused the old page to become transparent in parts until the new page fineshed loading. It also seems much slower than IE5.5. I found two fixes for this problem. The first was to uninstall IE6 then IE5.5 and revert to the original 98SE version of IE5.0, and THEN upgrade directly to IE6. The second was related to the graphics card drivers on certain AGP cards with16Mb or more of memory and the dibeng.dll (device independent bitmap engine) file clashing with certain versions of DirectX and IE. Certain graphics adaptors just do NOT like IE6. The preferred weapon of choice on the majority of our systems is the SiS6326 in either AGP or PCI flavours with 8Mb ram and whilst not a high performance card, it seems to be bombproof and works well enough for 2D applications. On most other graphics cards I have tried, knocking the hardware accelleration down one notch usually cures most IE ills.

by guruofdos

In fact, my most common usage of the PC is to run IE6 to browse for discographies and cover artwork, find the info I need, run WinMX to search for music, converting audio to mp3 via my soundcard line-in, burn audio CD's on the fly using Nero5.5 and create cover artwork and print it to a Lexmark USB printer using Nero Cover Designer. All these processes run comfortably together under 98SE and I ALT-TAB between them as required. I can run one process at a time under XP on the same hardware...trying to do more than one thing at a time just causes the system to become painfully unresponsive and unproductive.

In case you are wondering about the ethical issues here...I'm not downloading music I haven't paid for the royalties on...I'm simply beavering away converting all my 11,000-odd (yes eleven thousand!) vinyl albums to CD and downloading the occasional track from the net to replace album tracks with dirty great big needle-jumping scratches on them! We have a baby on the way and the record collection has unfortunately got to go to make space for a nursery!

by oz_media

11,000 albums, being in the music industry, it makes me cringe to think of all that hard work and mastering going to the ????
I can pay for shipping if you're looking to get rid of them.

by guruofdos

another boxfull get taken to a local charity shop who seem to be able to make some money on the deal.

Ethically, I should destroy them as they have been copied to another medium as a replacement rather than a 'backup copy for my personal use' and as such I can not legitimately pass them on as second hand when I'm retaining the copyrighted content....however I'd rather let a charity make a few pennies for a good cause and if the record industry wants to take issue with me, they are welcome to! Most of the stuff is pre 1990 anyway and is no longer available for sale having been longe-since deleted from catalogues so it's not like I'm screwing them out of the price of a new CD by downloading a new release from the internet instead of buying it by legitimate means!

by monkeybutter

You know, I'd love to know how those error reports come out at the other end.

It'd be fun to send Microsoft the occasional error report, proclaiming "critical error in the crocodile's industrial sized vat of swafega", or something similar. See how that appears on their demographics.

by guruofdos

In my early days as a programmer, I thought it was pretty cool to write error trapping into my code, generating a 'Windows Critical Error pop up lookalike' with the words

"The moron using this program has performed an illogical operation and willbe shot at dawn!"

or a message like

"The contents of your database are about to be replaced by a selection of fresh, seasonal vegetables. Do you wish to proceed?"

and the obligatory YES/NO/CANCEL button legends replaced by YES/SURE/DEFINITELY!

Happy days :-)

by oz_media

Yes I know there is a huge focus on copyrighted material. In your case, letting a charity (or even a small ma and pa shop) benefit from resale is a great idea. I love helping local businesses by giving them free websites, advertising, promo etc. It helps the little guys survive in a world of Wal-Farts and Super Stores.

Speaking of which, if anyone wants to burn down a local Wal-Fart they're building another one in Vancouver.
That low life loser still gets away with exploiting workers toget the lowest price. (even though Woolco was cheaper, another rant for another time, sorry).

I just didn't want to see a lot of irreplaceble albums go to the dump or something.

by valley boy

Thoroughly enjoyed reading that discussion. For what it's worth, i too run W98 on my home PC, and very rarely have OS problems.

However, do you know of any tool etc. in W98 that provides the same sort of info as the Event Viewer in NT/2K/XP? Justin case i need it one day...

Cheers,
S.

by guruofdos

98 logs events in log files....there are logs for all sorts of goings on, but I just open the logs in Notepad :-)

by zeromeoutnospam

If you were to buy a new pc from a vendor with your chose of any windows version (or another Os) for the same price no matter what OS. What Os would you have them install for you?
I'll post a new discussion with this (?).

by guruofdos

Is Win98SE, but very few vendors offer it as an option! 90% of the PC's I build go out of the door with SE on them, and I get a lot of peeps bringing me XP machines that want them reformatted wirh 98 put on! I even make 'puters with 95 OSR2.1 if someone wants a real cheapie!

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