The Static Page

Revisiting Microsoft Technology

I remember when Windows 98 first came out, one of the most controversial "upgrades" Microsoft had done was Internet Explorer 4. Or rather, its seemingly inextricible links to the OS. I was one of many who wouldn't upgrade to Windows 98. My PCs were happily running Windows 95 and were generally stable. Working with an OS for so long - especially a particular version - means you get to know it. If nothing else, it was a familiar if quirky interface.

Unfortunately, it isn't entirely possible to stay put in Windows versions. At least not if hardware upgrades keep happening over time.

As it happens, recently I got the chance to play with a clean install of Windows 98 Second Edition. And I was beginning to wonder why I'd left it so long. Internet Explorer wasn't actually terribly intrusive. Opera installed and ran quite fine. In fact, the biggest annoyance was the convergence of various Explorer-style interfaces. Could this really be so bad?

So I decided to re-install my Games PC, the most up-to-date hardware I have with a newer version of Windows. As it happens, I chose Windows 2000. It was certainly the easiest install I've ever done for a Windows OS. There was even a record low for number of reboots: less than 5! This compared with more than 12 last time I re-installed Windows 95C, though most of those were for driver installations. The newer functionality, such as USB, was most welcome, as was various other system enhancements. And if IE still consumes an unfairly large portion of idle CPU, with faster and faster hardware, the percentage of total performance this toll takes is becoming increasingly irrelevant. (I'm sure Microsoft would be happy about that.)

But the Explorer convergance is not so good. The Control Panel and the Program Groups are not much more than directories in Explorer. In previous versions, this might have also been true, but it was a pleasant fiction that they weren't. At the very least you could have Large Icons in Program Groups and List Items in Explorer... this is possible in Windows 2000, but fiddly and time-consuming to setup.

In short, Windows 2000 is quite a pleasant OS to run on my PC. Perhaps Microsoft's advancements in desktop operating systems are actually getting better...?

Wade Bowmer, aka Static.

Comments? Email me at static dash page at yceran dot org.