You are thinking that this program is just an un-installer. That is not true, it allows you to chose either Win95 or Win98 each time you boot the machine or while you are running under either OS (That's what they claim at least). The big advantage comes from the fact that Win98 will not run any 16bit software. Is that a problem? For a lot of people, the answer is yes. Most people have some 16 bit software on their system. When you mitigate over to Win98, that software will no longer function at all. Here is the write up from SYCR's "Out of Sync" newsletter. The real question is will they be able to put this product on the market with their current financial situation.
Ideally, you would smoothly migrate your system and applications to the new OS, and if you ran into a problem simply switch back to Windows 95 in order to get your work done. Eventually, once you were comfortable with Windows 98 and had worked out all of the problems, you would then simply reclaim the space from Windows 95.
What does Microsoft offer for safe upgrading? Since Microsoft makes money by selling new operating systems, it's not surprising that Microsoft's solution emphasizes the one-way approach. To be fair, Microsoft does offer an option to uninstall 98 if you select the proper option during installation. However, after investing over an hour of your time in running the 98 installation process, do you really want to throw your efforts away when you feel the need to go back to 95 in order to get some productive work done?
If you happen to be a power user with half of your hard drive space free, there are some interesting solutions from the makers of partitioning products. By using a product such as System Commander 98 you can create a new partition, copy the contents of your system drive to the new partition,and then upgrade the new partition with Windows 98. With this approach you can quickly switch back and forth between OS's at boot time. Once you're satisfied with the new OS you can remove the old partition and reclaim the space.
Is the partitioning approach the right tool for you? While hard disk space is cheap, if you don't have the luxury of a lot of free disk space, partitioning won't work for you. Also, if you happen to bounce back and forth between OS's your documents created on the system drive hidden from the other OS. Further, partitioning is a radical alteration of your disk drive and spend half as much on a power tool when something much more focused can solve your migration problems in a more elegant way?
Now I'd like to introduce the latest innovation in Smart Files System technology: UpgradeAID 98. UpgradeAID 98 is a specialized tool that holds your hand through the Windows 98 upgrade process and saves away your Windows 95 system. After you have completed the upgrade, you are given the chance to switch OS's either at boot time from a Windows-like interface or from Windows. Finally, when you are totally satisfied with Windows 98, or for some reason find it no longer useful for your needs, you can remove the unwanted OS and reclaim the space.
Interestingly, it does this without partitioning so that only a minimal amount of extra disk space is required. Also, your document files are shared so that if you bounce back and forth between OS's you can access the same documents without any problems. UpgradeAID 98 was designed from the ground up as a tool specifically for the user migrating from Windows 95 to 98.
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