|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
Gary,
You are the Best!!!Thank you.
Gary Fritz wrote:
>
> 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
|