by Al Massey
If you are among those that have kept up with service pack releases of Windows 95 and have the very latest incarnation of IE4.x on your desktop, Windows 98 will represent just another ho-hum day at the office. However, if you have the latest hardware and are wanting to take advantage of new chipsets, video cards and USB devices, then rush right out and get your hands on a copy post haste.
At first blush, Windows 98 installed quickly and flawlessly on a new hard drive and over an existing Windows 95 installation. It found most of my hardware, even though I had to install the latest drivers for my video card and sound card. As a side note, when I installed Windows 98, my system’s sound card, the ever-popular Creative Labs AWE 64 Gold presented a few minor configuration problems that were quickly overcome. When the AWE 64 was replaced with a new PCI card from Shark Multimedia, Windows 98 recognized it immediately. It required no tweaking to get it up to maximum performance in short order.
The same problem presented itself when recognizing my ATI All-In-Wonder Pro video card. It worked great after I installed the latest driver by hand. In fact it worked better than ever, I never knew it could be this good. But, and here is a big but, I wanted to evaluate a Number Nine Revolution 3D Card with 8MB of WDRAM. It was immediately recognized and installed itself without any glitches whatsoever. I can only surmise that Windows 98 is TWEAKED for the latest and greatest, and really doesn’t want to play nice with anything it considers long in the tooth. Hummm, that just might include me, come to think of it.
The interface itself offers no surprises for those of us that have been using Windows 95 OSR 2 or better and have IE 4.0 installed. However, it did take a bit more determination on my part to de-activate all those Channels it insisted on putting up. I swear, ever since Chairman Bill discovered the sad fact that there are fewer folks with Internet access than there are with TV’s he has had his elves slaving away in an effort to merge your computer and TV set. Convergence is a word you are going to get sick of hearing.
At the end of the day this “.x” upgrade to Windows 95 is less about flash and dash than it is about preventing aggravation and keeping pace with new hardware, including support for USB, PCI, ATM and FIRE WIRE. This support, coupled with enhanced Internet networking by implementing Winsock 2 and a new version of the TCP/IP stack, along with components to ease the transition to the year 2000, new ISDN drivers and an enhanced network dialer that supports local 10-digit phone numbers, just might make it worth the price.
In spite of all the hoopla, I did find small incremental performance gains in start-up, application launch, swap file operation, and Win98 shutdown times. Although I did not test Windows 98 under its recommended minimum system requirements of a 486 DX2 with 16 MB of RAM (my test bed was a Pentium II 266 and 128 MB), I got the distinct impression Windows 98 will run under its minimum requirements almost as well as Windows 95 did with a 386 and 16 MB of RAM.
Among the many new features I found both elegant and ominous was a new utility called System Recovery, a disaster recovery tool that lets you boot from your Win98 Startup floppy disk to restore from backup as a fast protected-mode process. The feature works by initiating a minimal setup of Win98 and launching you into it. As Win98 starts, a wizard that steps you through restoration from Microsoft Backup or any other backup software replaces the Welcome to Windows screen.
I haven’t had time to delve into the inner workings of Win98 yet but it quickly becomes apparent that Microsoft has taken a “beauty is only skin deep” approach. Even the casual observer should note improvements in memory management, both in terms of how data is stored on the disk and improvements to Windows swap file handling. I am also pleased to report that Microsoft has taken a Weed Eater to its startup and shutdown routines resulting in snappier performance.
But the real net gain is improved stability, an operating system that works better out of the box with all kinds of hardware, and a Windows that is much smarter about helping users prevent and solve many common kinds of problems, including setup obstacles, crash protection, and startup problems. That’s topped off with an all new and far more efficient Setup routine and Win98’s ability to update itself online. Windows 98 is not the reliability champion that Windows NT is, but it clearly bests Windows 95 in that regard. And that’s reason enough to upgrade. The next most important feature is FAT32, which could free up as much as 20 to 30 percent of the disk space on your system.
Tweaking the Kernel
One complaint I had with Windows 95, its insistence on initializing and loading drivers on startup, has been addressed. The Kernel has been tweaked so that now drivers are loaded only when needed. This is a vast improvement and should make for fewer BSODs (Blue Screens of Death). Shutdown has been speeded up somewhat by skipping the unloading of drivers. It just goes ahead and cuts power to the system and then reinitializes them when power is restored.
Memory Management
Memory Management is addressed in three different ways: realigning applications, preswapping to disk, and mapping pages out of cache. Preswapping simply means that during idle time, Windows tries to determine which application is going to need to be swapped to disk. Mapping pages out of cache is accomplished by a new utility called, oddly MapCache. Realigning applications is done through yet another utility called WinAlign. When these applications are working well you probably won’t notice them at all.
Application Launch Acceleration
Windows Disk Defrager now includes Intel’s Application Launch Accelerator that helps optimize your applications and place the ones you use the most in “sweet Spots” around the edge of your hard disk. The object here is to speed up the launching of your most common applications. Does it work? I really don’t know. With 128 MB of RAM and a Pentium II I didn’t notice any speed up but with a slower system using less resources maybe.
System File Checker
This utility proved to be more than a little frustrating for me. First of all, it found all manner of outdated files and was gentleman enough to ask if I wanted to replace them with newer versions. But when I agreed it somehow couldn’t, or wouldn’t, find newer replacements. By checking the Resource Kit, I found that I could replace them manually, but decided this would take too long. I’ll save that chore for the future service release that is sure to come.
FAT 32
Although FAT 32 has been around since Windows 95 OSR 2, I find most users haven’t gotten around to using it yet. This is probably the most important part of the whole package. Its smaller cluster size will immediately make your hard disk appear larger and is a must have for any system, particularly laptops.
System Information
After spending hours of tweaking Windows 95 and trying to configure my own startup programs rather than let Microsoft determine my personal preferences, MSINFO32 is a breath of fresh air. Notice the 32 in MSINFO, this is not your grandfather’s MSINFO. This version serves as a jumping off spot for several other utilities (System File Checker, System Configuration Utility and Registry Checker). The System Configuration Utility allows you to modify what applications load with windows. I am going to spend a good deal of time on this and will be reporting on it in the future.
To buy or not to buy
If you are an individual user and everything is working, your applications are behaving and playing nice with each other, and you don’t have to reboot every time the screen flickers, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. However, if you want to take advantage of the latest hardware or USB devices (I presently have at least eight USB devices that will be reported on in the near future) or plan on upgrading to a newer, faster system soon, then by all means go for it.
Conversely, I don’t see the corporate user rushing out to upgrade anytime soon. If I were responsible for a large number of workstations, I would have a strong tendency to wait on NT 5. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of an IT Manager when several thousand users started Smart Updating their systems over the Internet at the same time. Not Smart!
Finally on the question of upgrading, I will leave it to Microsoft itself. At a recent Professional Developers Conference, Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the personal and business systems group at Microsoft stated that “from 1999 and beyond, the successor to Windows 98 will be based on the NT technology,” he went on to say “Windows NT 5 is so strategic that Microsoft is going to bet the company on it.”
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member who can be contacted at almas@hal-pc.org
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