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Re: TS 4 I/O overwhelmed - need ideas


  • To: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx
  • Subject: Re: TS 4 I/O overwhelmed - need ideas
  • From: "Gary Fritz" <fritz@xxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 12:13:46 -0800
  • In-reply-to: <3C640AF4.AA69CADE@xxxxxxxxxxx>

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A lister asked me:

> What are the benefits of and differences in running W2K vs W98.
> Why do you say that " NT and W2k are MUCH MUCH MUCH better
> platforms to run realtime and mission-critical software on." 

Windows ME is "Windows 98 with training wheels," according to one 
noted PC expert.  Windows 98 is Windows 95 with prettier cosmetics.  
Windows 95 is just a fancy interface on top of DOS.

All these OS's share the same underlying structure, and the same 
weaknesses.  Their memory management is very poor, which is why you 
often get better results if you use one of the "RAM saver" utilities 
on the net.  Those after-market products try to patch around the 
inherent bugs and weaknesses in the DOS/W9x design.  W9x also has 
very limited process protection -- if one process goes haywire, it 
can overwrite memory that belongs to other processes or to the OS.  
That is Very Bad.  There are other problems, but those are some of 
the worst, and they can't be "fixed."

Windows NT was built on an entirely new foundation, and Windows 2000 
was built on NT.  W2k may *look* a lot like W98 or ME, but the 
resemblance is skin-deep.  W9x was a patch on top of a patch on top 
of a 16-bit command interpreter (DOS).  W2k, under the pretty Windows 
face, has a FAR more solid design.  It was built from the ground up 
as a genuine operating system, with most of the things expected of a 
modern operating system.  I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they actually 
did a pretty reasonable job on NT & W2k.  (Mostly IMHO because they 
hired non-Microsoft people to develop NT -- people who had built REAL 
OS's instead of brainwashed-from-birth Microsofties who thought W95 
was The Way It Should Be.)  It still can't compare to a *real* OS 
like Unix, in terms of its underlying architecture, stability, things 
like that -- it's common for Unix systems to run for MONTHS or YEARS 
without crashing or requiring a reboot -- but it's by far the best of 
the Microsoft offerings.

NT and W2k are much more solid than W9x.  In nearly 3 years of 
running NT, I never had ONE SINGLE CRASH.  NEVER.  Sometimes a badly 
written application (usually Tradestation) would get itself into a 
bad state and would refuse to run until I rebooted the system, but 
that's the app's fault.  The OS was solid.  After almost 3 years I 
installed the SP6 service pack, and that together with 3 years of 
accumulated cruft in the OS & registry combined to make the system 
increasingly sluggish and troublesome.  (It's well known that all 
Windows OS's get "hardening of the arteries" after a while, and a re-
install can do wonders to pep up an old system.)

I don't have much personal experience with W2k yet, but the fact that 
it's built on NT means it's starting out from a much better place 
than any of the W9x OS's.  That seems to be borne out by the comments 
you often see here, saying that W2k was a MUCH more solid platform to 
run TS2k or whatever.

See also http://www.purebytes.com/archives/omega/2001/msg00515.html.

Gary