doesn't anyone like nt4?
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Ron_Jeremy
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I love NT4. I have been around computers for a little over a year (started at the tender age of 32 hehe) & WIN98 was my first visual interface to PC's. After installing NT4 though, I never went back......& no more blue screens or system lock-ups yeaaah!
I don't care about it's diectx short coming's (directx 3), because the only game I play runs fine on NT [Counter-Strike(Half-Life)]. UT will also run but not very well on my 433 Celeron machine. I only wished it would natively support USB (I don't feel like paying a 3rd party developer for USB support!).
Sadly, I doubt we will ever see any more Service Pak releases from M$ for NT................
I don't care about it's diectx short coming's (directx 3), because the only game I play runs fine on NT [Counter-Strike(Half-Life)]. UT will also run but not very well on my 433 Celeron machine. I only wished it would natively support USB (I don't feel like paying a 3rd party developer for USB support!).
Sadly, I doubt we will ever see any more Service Pak releases from M$ for NT................
I use Win98SE at home and Winnt4.0 at work. Both have their advantages and weaknesses. At work where I labor as a programmer, Winnt4 is great because of the way it isolates processes from the OS. This means that if I write code that screws up the whole process, all I need to do is hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and end the task. I am assured that nothing happened to the OS. Under Win98, such carelessness often requires a re-boot to assure that all is well. Also winnt comes stock with Findstr, a grep like utility that I prefer over the GUI find included in Win98 and Winnt. It also allows non-empty directory removal with rd -s. This can be accomplished with Deltree under WIN98 but long file names add difficulty. Another great thing about Winnt is that cd prog* works from the command line to change to the 'program files' directory. Win98 allows no such shortcuts. A small detail but Winnt defaults to not asking for permission to overwrite. I know the Win98 can be set to do this in autoexec but a small pain none the less.
On the down side, Winnt does not support FAT32 and has no hot swap support for PCMCIA cards. The first is a huge pain for dual boot machines now that hard drive almost always exceed 8GB. The latter is a large pain for laptop installs. Also, there is no USB support so my laser mouse must resort to the PS/2 adaptor (really no big deal but USB will be big in the near future.)
That said, it is my favorite OS. I know people say the W2000 is rock solid but I find Winnt to be excellent in this regard as well. In addition, a big pet peeve about W2000 is that it defaults to insert mode when editing a DOS prompt entry. (I know, this can be fixed.)
Win98 allows everything to load. This is not true of Winnt and W2000. You have to load DOSKEY to get editing of DOS commands (not necessary in WINNT and W2000). Win98 boots very quickly and supports FAT32 but not NTFS. Again, a pain for dual boot.
As you can probably tell, I use the DOS prompts almost exclusively as I hate the Windows Explorer with a passion. There is almost nothing that the Explorer can do faster and easier than a good ol' DOS prompt.
I loaded a dual boot system with W2000 and Win98. Unwisely, I did not follow the advise offered that said I should load the two systems on different partitions. This lead to a huge mess. There is evidently a big difference in .DLLs. As an example, MS Exchange would only work in one or the other system depending on which .DLL was installed. Sorry for the long answer. Hope it provides some insight.
Regards,
Art Powell
apowell@speakeasy.org
On the down side, Winnt does not support FAT32 and has no hot swap support for PCMCIA cards. The first is a huge pain for dual boot machines now that hard drive almost always exceed 8GB. The latter is a large pain for laptop installs. Also, there is no USB support so my laser mouse must resort to the PS/2 adaptor (really no big deal but USB will be big in the near future.)
That said, it is my favorite OS. I know people say the W2000 is rock solid but I find Winnt to be excellent in this regard as well. In addition, a big pet peeve about W2000 is that it defaults to insert mode when editing a DOS prompt entry. (I know, this can be fixed.)
Win98 allows everything to load. This is not true of Winnt and W2000. You have to load DOSKEY to get editing of DOS commands (not necessary in WINNT and W2000). Win98 boots very quickly and supports FAT32 but not NTFS. Again, a pain for dual boot.
As you can probably tell, I use the DOS prompts almost exclusively as I hate the Windows Explorer with a passion. There is almost nothing that the Explorer can do faster and easier than a good ol' DOS prompt.
I loaded a dual boot system with W2000 and Win98. Unwisely, I did not follow the advise offered that said I should load the two systems on different partitions. This lead to a huge mess. There is evidently a big difference in .DLLs. As an example, MS Exchange would only work in one or the other system depending on which .DLL was installed. Sorry for the long answer. Hope it provides some insight.
Regards,
Art Powell
apowell@speakeasy.org
I prefer NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 for the following reasons: firstly, it is a mature product (it takes on average about three to four service packs to work most of the bugs out); secondly, it is less resource heavy because of the absence of Plug and Play and finally, years of use make you very aware of both the strengths and weakness of the operating system.
PS: I believe that Windows 2000 has the potential to be a great operating system however it needs more time to mature!
PS: I believe that Windows 2000 has the potential to be a great operating system however it needs more time to mature!
We upgraded 30+ pcs recently from NT to Win2k, which not only cost a lot in memory upgrades but also a lot of headaches to iron out all the issues that came up. When people simply get new machines every few years, plug and play just doesn't do much good. It just didn't seem worth it to me, but unfortunately I didn't have any say in the matter.
No, it's annoying and unstable, I have enough fun with it at work. As for the people that say 2000 is resorce heavy and unwieldy, I agree, but it runs well on my 800 athlon, and all the laptops I have installed it on. It's a nightmare to get all the NT4 drivers to work correctly on most of the laptops. and Having to re-install the service packs if I breath on the system wrong really annoys me.
But none of these systems are very old or very new, they are all in the right age group to get most if not all the drivers to be on the win2k disk. And with the ability to create an already sp1 patched win 2k installation CD(copy, patch, burn) installation is a pleasure!
But none of these systems are very old or very new, they are all in the right age group to get most if not all the drivers to be on the win2k disk. And with the ability to create an already sp1 patched win 2k installation CD(copy, patch, burn) installation is a pleasure!
We all have to be updated in the industry or else we would be crushed by competition, don't we? Win2000 has lots of better GUI and users may be able to benifit from those don't they? Like it or not, it has to be used.
Morgan 1.6Ghz + 256DDR = Dream on
However dreams are approacable
Morgan 1.6Ghz + 256DDR = Dream on
However dreams are approacable
I am the sole HelpDesk support for a site with 130 PC's, 10 Laptops and all of them running NT4 SP4 or 6a.
NT4 is an acceptable product as far as I'm concerned. Its fairly solid and stable, it does what its asked most of the time and I can lock out my L-users from killing their machines too often.
But its no where near the stage of solidness and configurablity that I find in my friend the LINUX.
But then again, most software that my site needs doesn't port to linux.
I.T. Industry motto : BIGGER, <i>Faster</i>, <b>More</b>, <i><b>NOW!</b></i>
NT4 is an acceptable product as far as I'm concerned. Its fairly solid and stable, it does what its asked most of the time and I can lock out my L-users from killing their machines too often.
But its no where near the stage of solidness and configurablity that I find in my friend the LINUX.
But then again, most software that my site needs doesn't port to linux.
I.T. Industry motto : BIGGER, <i>Faster</i>, <b>More</b>, <i><b>NOW!</b></i>
BrainStorm
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I love it! Correctly configured (I mean with stable drivers and latest patchs) it next to never crash. Just like Win2k.
NT4 SP7 is in the works. Don't worry. In the mean time, there are always plenty of service packs you can install on top of sp6. 
DSutcliffe
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Personally, I am triple booting my system at work:
Win98 on 2GB Fat32 partition 0
WinNT on 3GB NTFS partition 1
Win2000 on 3GB NTFS partion 3
I ran 98 for a year until I absolutely needed NT for tools and security but did not want to destroy an excellent installation of win98 (left it running for 10 days strait no reboots).
After installing NT, I hardly ever went back to 98 if only to test stuff that would be installed on a user's machine as most users at my work use 98.
Another year went by and I determined that I would need Win2000 as I am going through the MCSE for Win2000 program. Now I hardly ever use NT anymore or 98 as the driver support and hardware changes are usually not a problem with Win2000.
I do still love NT and install it all the time for special users who need the extra stability for the work they do.
BTW my system is a K6-2 400 on ASUS P5A 128MB of ram.
Win98 on 2GB Fat32 partition 0
WinNT on 3GB NTFS partition 1
Win2000 on 3GB NTFS partion 3
I ran 98 for a year until I absolutely needed NT for tools and security but did not want to destroy an excellent installation of win98 (left it running for 10 days strait no reboots).
After installing NT, I hardly ever went back to 98 if only to test stuff that would be installed on a user's machine as most users at my work use 98.
Another year went by and I determined that I would need Win2000 as I am going through the MCSE for Win2000 program. Now I hardly ever use NT anymore or 98 as the driver support and hardware changes are usually not a problem with Win2000.
I do still love NT and install it all the time for special users who need the extra stability for the work they do.
BTW my system is a K6-2 400 on ASUS P5A 128MB of ram.
Guess I'll have to throw my 2 cents in here.
I have one remaining NT4.0 SP6a box left running. (The rest have graduated to various linux distros) But this poor thing is a work horse. I last re-installed on it 2+years ago. A weekly defrag,virus update, MS updates/patches, and re-boot is all the admin it seems to require.
I was using it as my IE 5.01 (html) test machine for checking web page compatability. However now with the use of VMware on my linux boxes, even that task has been replaced.
But if ol' faithfull (AMD-233/128meg) wants to keep kicking I'm not going to kill it. But I keep waiting .... plans for a linux w/apache web server have been on hold for it since a year a go.
Plus it still plays a mean game of backgammon on the zone. ;-)
linuxuser
I have one remaining NT4.0 SP6a box left running. (The rest have graduated to various linux distros) But this poor thing is a work horse. I last re-installed on it 2+years ago. A weekly defrag,virus update, MS updates/patches, and re-boot is all the admin it seems to require.
I was using it as my IE 5.01 (html) test machine for checking web page compatability. However now with the use of VMware on my linux boxes, even that task has been replaced.
But if ol' faithfull (AMD-233/128meg) wants to keep kicking I'm not going to kill it. But I keep waiting .... plans for a linux w/apache web server have been on hold for it since a year a go.
Plus it still plays a mean game of backgammon on the zone. ;-)
linuxuser
Ron_Jeremy
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WOW! SP7 to be released? Is this a rumour or official MS announcement? Any idea when? What other service packs can I install over SP6a? Do you mean the official MS fixes/patches/updates etc?
For commercial stuff it's rock solid - assuming you comply with the certified hardware list. W9x in a different league games wise, but let's face it - NT is not aimed at that market. W2K seems to be suffering slightly from an identity crisis trying to bring the two together - it's not working yet. Having said that the key word is YET. I agree with one other post in that W2K has a fantastic potential...
===
Do unto others before they do unto you...
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Do unto others before they do unto you...
It certainly fulfills it's role for being a reliable OS for business compared to it's aged relative, Win9x. NT isn't as backward compatible with every device/software developed for 9x, but that's the only way MS can improve reliability.
I have 400 NT4 users. Without it I would have lost my mind by now. We upgrade to w2k in feb. I just got my mcp for win 2000 and I'm confident that it will work out also.
I have used NT4 a lot and love it, but now that M/soft has retired all the NT4 exams I cant study it anymore, so I have to move on to Win2000, oh well, such is life
AmdMELTDOWN
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I love NT, beside linux! It never crashes and I've been using dual cpu's for awhile, all the games that matter run on this box(quake) I also have another machine which I have a triple boot with 98, Nt, Linux and will probably add 2000 just to test it.
NT is uncrashable, well my install is!
NT is uncrashable, well my install is!
I like NT, I have a real good experiences implementing NT.
Year ago, when I worked in Airport as IT Manager, I had a constant problem in tower, where there was W98 as OS. And tower is one of the most imortant places in Airport! So local power-users (power-dumbusers) managed to crash Win98 EVERY month. It was really painful. But since I dicided to install NT to there and keep an administrator password, It works there over a year without any problem!
This is only one aspect I like in NT and I mentioned it becaouse no-one else did.
PS. Question is why there was Win98 in the first place? Well, It was before me
PS. Why not W2K? 1. Year ago.. ..It was too fresh/new. 2. Why w2k, while NT works fine there?
And they said schizophrenia is annoying?
Year ago, when I worked in Airport as IT Manager, I had a constant problem in tower, where there was W98 as OS. And tower is one of the most imortant places in Airport! So local power-users (power-dumbusers) managed to crash Win98 EVERY month. It was really painful. But since I dicided to install NT to there and keep an administrator password, It works there over a year without any problem!
This is only one aspect I like in NT and I mentioned it becaouse no-one else did.
PS. Question is why there was Win98 in the first place? Well, It was before me
PS. Why not W2K? 1. Year ago.. ..It was too fresh/new. 2. Why w2k, while NT works fine there?
And they said schizophrenia is annoying?
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