[extropy-chat] when will computers improve?

[Robert J. Bradbury]

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin -- get a real OS! You could get an
old copy of Windows 4.0 but Windows 2000 is *much* better
(though be sure to apply the service packs).

You might even be able to pick up a version second hand
or at some discount computer outlet cheaply.

I've been using it for 3 years an I've rarely had a crash
(usually when I lose the fan on one of my CPUs).

It may have a very rare memory leak (reboot it every couple
of months) and *does* still have internal OS memory limits
(that Microsloth doesn't disclose unless you lean on the
tech support people) -- but they are *WAY* larger -- I can
run something like 75-100 windows before I start running
into problems -- even then it usually doesn't crash -- it
just gets slow and sometimes doesn't like to start new
processes.

The hardware has been able to manage this since the mid-'90s.
The problem was that Microsoft wanted to remain backwards
compatible with the new software on the 286 machines so their
end-user OSs never took advantage of the capabilities of the
386, 486, etc.  Only the high end server OSs were real 32-bit
OSs with real memory protection.

My experience with Windows 2000 is that it is almost as stable
as Linux and UnixWare.  On the other hand Windows 95 and 98 are
very insecure because there is no memory protection and they
are basically kludged 16 bit systems while Windows XP from
what I have heard is simply buggy.

If you look around you might even be able to find people selling
Win2K as an upgrade CD that allows you to migrate up from 98
to 2K without having to pay the full 2K price.

Good luck
Robert