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> I just wanted to relay my experience of "upgrading" my operating
> system from Windows 98 SE to Windows ME.
Here is a message I posted recently to the Omega group:
===========
Windows 95 ***IS NOT*** a suitable platform for professional trading,
nor for many other kinds of mission-critical applications. It is a
pretty face on top of DOS, and carries all the 16-bit single-tasking
resource-lossage limitations of DOS. Windows 98 is a lightly dressed-
up version of W95, with all the same limitations. Windows ME is,
guess what, a pretty version of Windows 98 with many options REMOVED.
Fred Langa calls it "Windows 98 with training wheels."
Windows 95, 98, and ME are OK for running Quicken or Excel or
Solitaire or things like that, but **NOT NOT NOT** for a monster
resource-inhaler like TS2k or TS Pro.
I repeat: if you're running TS2k or TS Pro on W9x or Win ME, you are
shooting yourself in the foot. You are asking for trouble because
your OS is incapable of handling the load you're putting on it.
Is this getting through yet???? :-)
If Windows is a car, 95/98/ME are annual models of a pretty sportscar
that, under the hood, has a rubber-band engine and wooden wheels.
Windows NT has nothing in common with 95/98/ME except appearances.
They jacked up the hot-looking sportscar body, ripped out everything
underneath it, and replaced it with a 428 Hemi and Yoko racing tires.
NT is a *REAL* operating system, designed from the ground up with
resource management features &etc that W9x can only try to fake. It
is very solid and very reliable. I've been running TS4 (and usually
8-10 other apps like IE5, Visual Studio, Excel, MS Word, Pegasus
mailer, Xnews newsreader, etc etc) for two years now, and in that
time I have had ONE problem when NT got confused and required a
reboot. I've had many times when **TS** got itself hosed and could
only be fixed with a reboot, but that's not NT's fault. NT has NEVER
EVER crashed or hung on me in 2 years of hard daily use.
Windows 2000 is the next-generation NT, like Win 98 is the next-gen
Win 95. They took the NT guts and improved them. From what I'm
hearing, they did an excellent job.
NT and W2k have REAL resource managers that can handle things
properly when an ill-behaved application (can you say TradeStation?)
mismanages its resources. With W9x, lost resources will toast your
entire system. With NT or W2k, at worst it will mess up the
application that can't clean up after itself.
If you are trying to TRADE on W95, 98, or ME, I would **STRONGLY**
recommend that you move to Windows 2000 as SOON as possible.
If you stay on W9x, you can count on continued crashes, memory
problems, lockups, etc., *especially* if you are running TS2k or TS
Pro. Many of these problems will be unexplainable and non-
repeatable. You will continue to fight invisible computer demons as
long as you insist on using the wrong tool for the job.
Furthermore, you will HAVE to move to W2k or its successors
eventually, because Win ME is the *LAST* release in the W9x line.
Microsoft is finally going to shoot the dead horse and move
everything over to the NT-based platform. The next Windows release,
called "Whistler," is essentially the W2k OS with some of the Win ME
toys grafted on top. The Win 9x / Win ME guts will be gone forever,
and good riddance.
I haven't moved to W2k yet, because NT is very solid. When W2k has
gone through 4-5 service packs I'll move over, but what I have now is
so reliable that I see no reason to move to an OS that is still
fairly young (and missing drivers for some hardware). But W2k, even
in its initial releases, was FAR better and more solid than any of
the W9x family. If I was on W9x now, I'd move to W2k rather than
going through the NT side-trip.
Moving to W2k will be a major undertaking, no question. But so is
trying to run TS2k/TS Pro on W9x system, isn't it? Once you've
moved, you will be *amazed* at how many of your former problems just
disappear.
> let's do that? so that we could figure out if there is really a
> memory problems or need better hardware...
> this is very important as we should know what hardware an OS we
> need for the job.
Other people have done this already. We've had lots of people post
on this list that their TS2k problems disappeared when they moved
from W9x to NT or W2k.
I'd bet your current hardware is good enough. You just need to put a
decent OS on it.
Gary
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