It's the end of the Windows world as we know it.... The days of skating by with Windows 95 or 98, secure in the knowledge that there was no other operating system worth considering, are long over. Now you've got several flavors on two sides of the aisle competing for your attention, with the 9x crowd on one side and the NT/2K crowd on the other, with Windows XP merging the two. You can find out more about Win 2000 and Win NT on the Win 2000 page; you can find the Windows XP Page.

Windows 98. Win 98 features, among other things, increased platform stability; over 3,000 bug fixes (!); a near-seamless integration with the included Internet Explorer (and it's relatively easy to convert to Netscape, although you give up the Active Desktop with such a move, boo hoo); a more efficient disk partitioning system (FAT 32); built-in DVD, ATM, ACPI, USB and FireWire compatibility; a raft of useful drivers and utilities; a revamped Winsock 2.0 and a new TCP/IP stack; lots of new multimedia and WebTV technology; better protection of the Registry; an easier setup on older machines, and supposedly prepped to upgrade nicely to Win 2000 (the latest version of NT). All well and good, and excellent reasons to make the conversion. But wait. Lots of older hardware chokes on Win 98. Many PCs require a BIOS update before running Win 98; not a small thing to contemplate. And it isn't just the older hardware; many laptop manufacturers have warned against upgrading their machines to Win 98 due to incompatibilities with Win 98's new ACPI power management system (touted as being faster than the older APM system but in actuality a tad slower) and other BIOS features. Check your laptop's Web site for information. Win 98's bundled version of Explorer has a potentially lethal bug in it that could result in unwanted deletion of files, and another, minor bug that causes date rollover problems (patches are available). Quite a few people are raising hell about problems arising from upgrading their old Win 95 array. Dozens of popular apps, including Norton's AntiVirus 4.0 and System Doctor, Dr. Solomon's Antivirus, Nuts&Bolts, and Corel's CD Creator 2.0 don't as yet run properly under Win 98. Win 98 has trouble identifying and installing hardware and software that worked perfectly under Win 95 (most of these are due to driver conflicts; check the manufacturer's Web site or Frank Condron's Windows 98 page www.worldowindows.com/Win98.asp for drivers that may function properly). Microsoft's own Knowledge Base documents dozens of minor bugs that cause trouble in one area or another of the OS. The feature called Windows Update, which is an upgrade utility similar to Cybermedia's Oil Change, may be too enthusiastic about downloading and changing your system. Many fans of Netscape, Opera, and other browsers, not to mention the Department of Justice, are disgusted with Microsoft's insistence that Win 98 is to run hand-in-hand with MSIE (check out www.98lite.net/ for a way to strip Win 98 of MSIE, get back about 35mb of space, and let Netscape function under Win 98 without crashing. Also visit www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/
9903/09/removeie.idg/index.html for the same thing.) And, not surprisingly, many 16-bit apps that were designed to run under Win3.x won't function under Win 98, though Win 98 purportedly still supports the 16-bit legacy apps. Many, though not nearly all, of these problems have been addressed in Microsoft's recent release of a Service Pack to Win 98 -- the upgraded version is now called Win 98 SE, for Second Edition.

What's the upshot? Well, if I were buying a new PC tonight, it's a no-brainer: you're going to get XP whether you like it or not. But let's say you're working with a Win 95 machine (yes, there are plenty of Win 95 users still out there). If you're running Win 95 and aren't having major problems with, say, peripherals requiring USB connections, digital Internet connections requiring spiffed-up DUN protocols, or the latest multimedia gear not working properly under Win 95, I'd have to say stick with Win 95 for the present. Don't get me wrong. Win 98 SE is a better system, though it's not anywhere near as up-to-date as XP, and Win 95 is completely outdated. However, Win 98 is just not good enough, or revolutionary enough, to warrant an automatic changeover, and neither is XP. (Besides, older 95 machines, and a lot of 98 machines, aren't powerful enough to handle XP.) Many people have experienced problems upgrading from 95 to 98 (not the least of which is disk hogging; while a fresh install of Win 98 may take up to 160MB of disk space, an install over Win 95 will take up to 300MB). People who start with a fresh install of Win 98 are much happier. Certainly if you're running an older machine, or running a lot of DOS-based or 16-bit apps, you should stick with Win 95. You shouldn't let Win 98 anywhere near anything less than a 90MHz Pentium system with 32mb of RAM; a PII-300 with 64MB of RAM is a much better fit. There's also the matter of a BIOS changeover; an older machine may not accept the BIOS update necessary for Win 98 to run at maximum efficiency. If you want to upgrade Win 95 to the max, you can download a number of Service Packs, patches, and fixes from Microsoft that will give your existing version of Win 95 some of Win 98's capabilities (try to locate a version of Windows 95 OSR2, see the above section on upgrading Win 95, and consider downloading and installing the latest version of Internet Explorer). (Those few of you running Win 95b with USB support built in, and who have downloaded and installed the appropriate patches and MSIE 4.01 or newer, have an OS so close to Win 98 that you may not need to change over.) Some may profit by using a program called System Commander SE, which keeps your old OS intact and ready for booting even after installing Win 98 (go to www.v-com.com/sc98.html for more info). If you do go for Windows 98, don't forget the Win 98 Resource Kit. It's a huge and very useful goodie included on your Win 98 CD. The Win 98 version of TweakUI alone is worth having; the Help files and other goodies are also worth digging out. There's also a $45 Win 98 Plus! pack available; save your money unless you really, really want a few extra desktop themes, a clunky zip applet, a limited version of McAfee's VirusScan, and a "lite" version of MS Golf.

Windows Millennium. Millennium, already dubbed "Win ME," wasn't originally planned for release, but when Microsoft realized how much time their planned successor for Win 98 SE (Windows XP, the much-vaunted "merger" of the 9x/NT lines) was going to take to be ready, Millennium appeared as a "stopgap" release. Basically it's a multimedia-enhanced update of Win 98 SE (one writer calls it "Win 98 Service Pack 2000"). It focuses on home networking, digital media usage, and ease of maintenance, and includes MSIE 5.5 (a minor upgrade to MSIE 5), MSN Messenger, Outlook Express, Movie Maker (a bare-bones digital video editor that competes with the iMac's vaunted "home digital movie" capability, and only saves files in its own, proprietory ASX format) and a new Windows Media Player (version 7; opinion is sharply divided between critics who loathe it, preferring the slimmer, more efficient earlier versions, and those who love its new capabilities). A clutch of nifty additions called PC Health include the System Restore utility, a rollback utility which makes it easy to recover from an evil app install (similar to the GoBack and Second Chance utilities reviewed elsewhere on this site), the System File Protection utility, which protects you against apps replacing perfectly good DLLs with bad ones, and the Help Center, which tracks all the changes you've made to your system since the initial install. Other features include a Home Networking Wizard, which makes it easy for non-geeks to network their home or small office PCs, an improved Shutdown feature that fixes some of the shutdown glitches most often experienced by Win 98 SE users, and a new TCP/IP stack lifted from Win 2000, which might be troublesome to a few users but should make life a lot more stable for most Web surfers. Also, Win ME's initial HTML-based Help setup leaves a lot to be desired. It installs easily enough, but makes it virtually impossible to access the DOS core, in line with the DOS-less Win 2K (whose interface it borrowed from substantially), and almost completely automates the System Update feature, which is certain to annoy some users. Additionally, some digital hardware owners may be aggravated by Win ME's reliance on the new Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) programming interface, and some users may experience trouble with the Hibernate feature, particularly those who upgraded from a previous version (as opposed to those who installed Win ME from scratch). While Microsoft is determined to put the bug-plagued 9x line behind them, the various flavors, from granddad Win 3.x to "Millennium," will be around for a long, long time, all precariously balanced on the original MS-DOS foundation. (Warning: the System Restore utility apparently keeps copies of everything that makes its way onto your system, including viruses. One user wrote Fred Langa detailing his problems with System Restore reintroducing copies of a virus to his machine even after he had disinfected it -- he pretty much had to reinstall ME.)

Overall, the buzz on Win ME isn't particularly pretty. While it's functional enough, much of the added bells and whistles aren't used by its owners, and since it is a Microsoft product, the folks at Redmond have added the usual layers of bloat, removed all legacy driver support (often requiring users to hunt up new drivers), and inexplicably hid MS Backup (originally they weren't going to include it at all, but they bowed to public outcry and stuffed it in the ADD-ONS\MSBACKUP folder on the Win ME CD). Worst of all, it's actually more crashprone than Win 98. The folks at Byte and other knowledgeable sources initially advised us to wait for Redmond to issue some bug fixes, and for the guys at www.98lite.net/ to get their clever little paws on it and streamline it into a faster, more efficient OS; now they're saying to forget Millennium altogether in favor of either 98 SE or XP. More information on Win ME is at www.browsertune.com/flanga/winme.htm. Note: Installing it takes a minimun of 32MB of RAM, a Pentium-150 or faster system, with math co-processor, and 320MB of hard disk space. (An authoritative Web site claims that it will suck up 550MB -- over half a gig!) Also, a visit to John Woram's column on the Win ME Registry at content.techweb.com/winmag/columns/optwin/2000/02.htm is worth your time. This really should have been a free upgrade to Win 98. But, Microsoft being what it is, that didn't happen. And there's enough wrong with Win ME to make it difficult to recommend. If I were buying a machine today, I would stick with Win 98 SE and forego Millennium. (Of course, I went out and bought a machine with Win ME installed on it. So far no problems.) Certainly I wouldn't run out and upgrade my perfectly servicable Win 95 setup for Millennium just because it's out there. Again, if you're not buying now, consider saving your pennies for an XP-based machine.

The initial word from the experts is that if you're bound and determined to run Win ME, you're much better off running a cleanly installed version instead of upgrading from a previous edition. Additionally, you'll need to plan ahead by collecting the latest BIOS updates, software drivers for your various peripherals, and if you can, use the latest possible versions of the hardware you plan on installing. You'll probably want to make an image backup of your hard disk using Norton Ghost or another, similar utility. Windows Magazine has a useful, if dated, setup guide to every version of Windows 9x at content.techweb.com/winmag/windows/guides/, which you will definitely want to check out. Warning: a lot of PC vendors didn't provide Win ME CDs with their machines. Check to see if the new Millenium machine you buy has one with it; if not, raise hell until you get one. If you're installing Win ME onto a PC with either WinPoet or Enternet DSL connections, uninstall it before loading Win ME. If you're using AtGuard or Norton Internet Security as a firewall, you will experience lots of blue-screen crashes (Norton has promised to release an update that will work with ME; AtGuard reportedly has no intention of updating their program). Microsoft has a fairly useful article giving tips to prospective buyers and/or upgraders to Win ME at support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q272/1/56.ASP, and another one titled "Working Efficiently with Windows ME" at www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/winmetips.htm. Don't take the system requirements too lightly; if you don't have at least a Pentium II machine with a minimum of 32MB RAM and at least 4GB of hard drive space, don't even think about putting Millennium on your machine.

XP. I've created a new page in this section of the site for XP, which can now be accessed here. I've rewritten the info on this page, but for more complete info, you'll need to go to the new page for current info and updates on the XP system.

Windows XP, formerly dubbed "Whistler," hit the shelves in the fall of 2001. It's the long-promised operating system that merges the user-friendliness and flexibility of the 9x line with the stability, security, and strict program management of NT (it's based on the NT kernel, which means that some programs that won't run on NT/2K won't run under XP, though Microsoft is supposedly continuing to try to avert that). Reportedly Win XP is the goal to which the Microsoft OS designers have been striving towards for lo, these many years. It includes a much stronger ability for the user to configure the interface (including speech and handwriting recognition), self-configuring hardware managers, state-of-the-art digital media usage, instant Internet access, easy upgrading, self-repair of mistakes such as accidental file deletion, true Plug&Play capability, seamless Web integration, tough security protocols, upgraded power management for notebooks, smart card authentication procedures, remote control access, and customized management procedures for local networks and intranets. Win XP is also the first iteration of a new product called Microsoft.Net. The idea behind MS.Net, or Dot-Net, is to allow all kinds of devices -- computers, palmtops, cell phones, Web tablets, what have you -- to access the same Internet apps and services. You can find out more on my Microsoft Net page. The price for the Home Upgrade version of Win XP is around $99, significantly cheaper than the Upgrade version of Win 2K. The official system requirements include a Pentium or equivalent CPU running at 300MHz or faster, 64MB RAM minimum (128MB strongly recommended), and 1.5GB free disk space. The BIOS and components in PCs born before January 2000 could have trouble with Win XP, since Microsoft focused on devices shipped since that date. Some features of Win XP will actually require BIOSes that won't come to market until later this year. Microsoft has provided a utility for prospective XP buyers called Upgrade Advisor, available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/advisor.asp. Upgrade Advisor is designed to run on PCs with previous versions of Windows. It will let you know, before you shell out for install XP, whether your system components and OS installation will weather the change well. Upgrade Advisor also covers software compatibility, giving specific advice about any software on your PC that either will not run, or might not run. Windows 98/SE/ME owners will be able to upgrade to either Windows XP Home Edition or Windows XP Professional. But Windows NT 4.0 and 2000 users are required to upgrade to the more expensive Windows XP Pro edition; if you're moving up from Win 3.1, 95, or NT 3.51, you must do a clean install. (Thanks to Scot Finnie for making this information available to his newsletter subscribers.) Find out more about XP from Microsoft's XP page at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.asp; a new progam compatibility check list is available at support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q286575, and you can give your PC an XP Readiness Test at www.pcpitstop.com/xpready/.

Here's the skinny on some of the extras that come along with XP. The code that lets XP burn CDs comes from Roxio, makers of the popular Easy CD Creator utility; unfortunately, XP's version is pretty basic, with few of the better features of the Roxio offering. Windows Media Player comes in a new (and buggy) version for XP, offering the ability to rip CD tracks to a hard disk as well as play streaming media files -- though WMP tends to work better with Microsoft's proprietory .WMA and .WMV files than with the more ubiquitous Real and MPEG files. An upgrade to MSN Messenger, now called Windows Messenger, is also included, but the new utility only works with XP -- if both parties don't have XP on their machines, they're out of luck. Contrast this to AOL's Instant Messenger, which works with Windows (all flavors), Mac, Linux, and Palm OS's. XP will also include a firewall utility, and the Professional version will include a Remote Desktop utility that will allow XP Pro users to access other XP Pro machines (with the proper password access). Symantec, makers of Norton Personal Firewall, dismisses XP's firewall program as "rudimentary," but others disagree.

Win XP is a minor upgrade to Win 2K and a major upgrade to Win 0xME, as Microsoft seems to be grafting all the fancy consumer-oriented features of ME onto 2K (currently including Media Player 8 and now 9, a sophisticated jukebox, and the more useful features of basic Internet firewall software, better backup features, and direct support for writing CDs and reading DVDs). It's also determined to make XP much more application-compatible than earlier versions of NT/2K. At this juncture, XP's Home Edition (the version most home users will have) is going to show a much different face to its users than the 9x family does, with many features and tools relocated and updated. 9x users have a bit sharper of a learning curve than 2K users. The hope is that better stability, better security, and better memory usage will be worth the new wrinkles in the user interface. Unfortunately, the OS's interface is almost cartoony in its design, which delights some and annoys others. Apparently Microsoft is tired of people having problems navigating its interface, regardless of how many shortcuts and launch bars they introduce, so it looks as if they're going with the "idiot-proof" approach. One analyst is referring to XP as "the 'dot-one' release of Windows 2000;" exactly what that means is anyone's guess. (Why was it formerly named "Whistler?" Like its even more mysterious sibling "Blackcomb," it was named for a mountain in British Columbia, both favorites with skiiers.) Blackcomb is actually being back-burnered somewhat in favor of yet another release, "Longhorn." Longhorn, originally set to appear in late 2004 and now back-burnered to 2006 (and maybe never), is the next iteration in the XP line of operating systems (XP Second Edition?), while Blackcomb is touted as a major overhaul of the NT kernel as well as a key element in the MS.Net initiative -- and is now slated for 2011, yeesh. Overkill? Some are already calling Microsoft's proposed onslaught of new operating systems just that, while others prefer to wait and see what Microsoft has up its sleeve. And by the way, the first and second Service Packs for XP are both out.