| |
>>Do you think I would fare better with NT, or should I
stick with Win95?
No way I can answer this directly. I can outline my experience
and observations which might not help you make a decision:
1. I do find NT more stable than Win 95. In particular,
APPLICATIONS rarely lock up the OS (it can happen, but it
is indeed rare). Applications can still go to hell in a
handbasket but don't take NT with it, or other applications
either. NT does a much better job than Win 95 of screening
errant aps from each other.
2. NT provides security which is nearly non-existent in Win 95
(forget all that Win 95 password/login stuff; I can bust it with
a toothpick). It sounds like in your case at the moment it's
a non-issue, BUT if you ever hook up a cable modem it will
become one because then you have a presence on the internet
and are subject to external attacks (I'm assuming you don't
allow dial-in).
3. NT gives you IP routing, which, though limited, means
(for example) that one of your machines could act as a router
to an ISP or other internet connection for your other machine
that's networked to it. You could access the internet or
other IP network over ISDN (such as a UUNET VPN) from
your non-connected routing through your connected PC. If
that's interesting, we can talk about "limited" more later.
4. NT is a son of a bitch to repair when something goes wrong.
You HAVE to be prepared for that somehow. Fortunately, it's
rarer than Win 95, but it's also harder when it happens.
That means you must either be willing to allocate time and
resources to learning about it or have a good source of
advice, or both.
5. NT as an OS is also more stable than Win 95, but it
does occasionally crash. I have had mouse drivers crash it
(for instance). My current version crashes with the
"Blue Screen of Death" (the for an NT kernel dump on a blue
background) about once every ten days. My previous install
didn't do that -- it was very stable and I ran it for weeks
at a time. The trouble maker is the latest NT disk from
Microsoft. More evidence NOT to install the latest, as if
we needed more. I keep my systems up 24x7, incidentally.
I doubt you'd ever see this if you rebooted every few days,
or even once a week.
6. As noted earlier, there are rare but frustating aps
that you might want or need which will just not run on
NT (like this year's Turbo Tax).
7. NT is not plug and play. If you had problems resolving
IRQ conflicts, etc, in Win 3.1, you get to resharpen your
skills with NT. BUT PCI cards don't give so many problems,
so if peripherals are mostly PCI, conflicts are rarer.
Sound cards are the notorious exceptions nowadays.
8. If you add new hardware, you have to be sure it has
NT support. Problem areas are network cards, video cards,
scanners, recordable CDs, photo printers, any new-technology
devices. Even some ISPs do not support NT and many have
only a very few NT knowledgeable tech-support people (mine,
for example). This changing, but slowly. In particular,
most mainline network and video cards are now supported
pretty well (ATI, matrox, etc).
----
This is probably getting way too general. To refocus,
if you don't change your environment frequently, once
you get setup and running, NT may well work fine for you.
It is more stable, which may be your bottom line. It
also has better resources for certain kinds of things,
especially networking.
NT is NOT easy to learn or trouble shoot, but fortunately
for many of the more routine things you want to do, much
of what you know about Win 95 carries over. In particular,
the NT install steps you through network setup at least
as well as, and maybe a bit better than, Win 95.
Don't let this sound too negative. NT install is not
a lot harder from 95, though more tedious.
You CAN exist with NT without knowing its internals.
BUT eventually a problem will come up and you must, I mean
must, have a technical resource you can turn to or be
prepared to learn a lot about NT.
-----
I expect most of this is more confusing than helpful, for
which I apologize, but the truth is there is no simple
answer. Perhaps the Cybertrader tech support people can
give you an idea of how much support you might expect from
them.
One final note. You can easily dual boot between NT and
Win 95 (that's how I did my taxes). I highly recommend this.
All you do is install NT on the same machine in a different
directory, and NT will take care of the dual boot for you
(yes, it's really that easy).
The problem is you must maintain two separate environments;
that is, anything you change (new software, new hardware)
you must maintain in both systems.
BUT you can ease into NT without destroying your existing
Win 95 environment, and you have your familiar environment
available if something goes wrong.
Spots |
|
