Just wondering

[Student^2]

I'll admit I'm not dealing with the public on a daily basis anymore, but I am amazed at the volume of posts here that start off "I'm running Win95...". I haven't seen a box with 95 on it for over a year, at least, and then it was OSR2. I can understand not making a major jump (I'll never use Win ME because I use DOS on a regular basis for troubleshooting) in OS, but 95 to 98 is really required IMHO.
What really gets me is when people say they have a 95 client on a network with the implication it is a business environment. There is no justification for that - 95 is less secure, less stable, and has a memory management routine that is a joke.
Why would anyone still use 95?

This, of course, excludes end users who don't know the difference and would probably be happy with WfWG 3.11 if it had Plus! installed.....


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Time is a great teacher,
but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

[pga]

ummm... cuz ppl r cheap...

I have a ton of customers that run 95... heck with all of the updates, '98 is not that much different.

on a new system i encourage ME unless they have DOS APPS as you mentioned, then it would be 98SE, but in my community, there are a few con artists pushing illegal copies of 95 and 98 to make an extra buck (which really pi$$es me off!!!!).

These idiot con artists tell consumers that 95A is more stable than 98SE or ME and then sell them a gold CD or counterfeit CD from "Black Cat" with a hand written # on the CD!!!!

Piracy really irks me, because we are legit and consumers think we are ripping them off because the competition is doing illegal BS. Consumers have no idea, because Microsoft does not advertise to the public, they only advertise to resellers!!!!

this is probably half of your problem.
Get Microsoft to spend a few bucks on Anti piracy, as WE HAVE and that will cure half of the problems!!

It's weird that we are a small business that spends $ on anti-piracy, but a multi billion dollar corporation can't afford a few advertising dollars!!!

[This message has been edited by pga (edited November 02, 2000).]

[Yanish]

There is a dos prompt in Me plus dos is still there just hidden you can download a patch for it from www.astalavista.com that will give you your dos in me.
Astalavista is a search engine so just search away

[sykophreak]

pga's right, people are cheap. My boss and I have a state-wide customer with three offices that are all still on Windows 3.11. We are slowly managing to get them to upgrade to Win98SE, but it's like pulling teeth. I can't count the number of businesses around here that are still using dos-based accounting packages like AccPac and Cougar Mountain for Dos. It's rediculous, and they don't understand why they have so many headaches and problems. We also have a lot of users come in with Win95 original or Win95a.

[physjcirl]

Win 95 is an adequete operating system for people who need the 'gig' of memory; unless they want to cripple a system that runs more or less quickly they are smart to stay in that realm. Win 95 once the upgrade is installed serves them very well, costs practically nothing and they are not aware of the more friendly.... functions and versatility of Win98. There is the question of additional ram even on a LAN, and I concur there are still programs out there "they" are using, which their employees are only comfortable with and this is simply what they are doing. The level they are at only reflects the knowledge and the resulting problems that they cannot resolve and need help to straighten out. They simply don't need it for that same reason.

[shawnMt]

Originally posted by Student^2:
This, of course, excludes end users who don't know the difference and would probably be happy with WfWG 3.11 if it had Plus! installed.....

That describes most small biz customers.



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Paint your old laptop!

[jasonflorida1]

Windows Me had DOS, goto Run and type: Command.

[Nighthand]

You'd be surprised at how many big businesses subscribe to that same theory. The government will only use 3.1 or NT for "security" reasons. Go figure.

[shawnMt]

jasonflorida - ME has a command prompt but the "Command Prompt Only" or true DOS prompt is missing from the F8 startup menu. The patch mentioned cures this

I've only installed it once to test and it seemed to work.

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Paint your old laptop!

[tregee]

NightHand I can understand useing NT for security reasons, but whats the security in 3.1?

[pga]

Originally posted by shawnMt:
jasonflorida - ME has a command prompt but the "Command Prompt Only" or true DOS prompt is missing from the F8 startup menu. The patch mentioned cures this

I've only installed it once to test and it seemed to work.

will this patch allow me to make a boot disk from the command prompt (i.e.: "sys a:") and allow other ommitted dos commands?

[Student^2]

Well, I guess there isn't a real answer to the question. I always included upgrades in my service contract prices for small businesses and up, but I never had to worry about my customer base so I could afford to.

As for the many replies to the DOS statement - yes, it is in ME, the same version the NT family uses. It is NOT capable of a direct boot, and that is what I need (not a good one, anyway). If for no other reason, I love watching younger techs stare while I do command line networking. :P


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Time is a great teacher,
but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

[TangleWeb]

Reasons for Windows 95 OSR2, or 2.5 ("B" & "C" respectively)

1) Customer needs to run a program that won't run on NT & the hardware is too meager to run 98. Case in point; I work for "The Local Phone Company" as a Support Analyst. In every one of our retail stores is a workstation that is used to configure wireless phones. It has to be able to run 5-6 different vendor provided phone programming programs, only some of which run under NT. Some require a "Hardware Key" on the serial port. These workstations are predominately used for this function only, so we use older Digital Boxes, P200's with 64 MB RAM. This system is dog slow with 98SE, but runs just fine with 95. Additionally, I think one of the crap vendor programs has a problem with even 98!

2) Residential customers who own older systems with a licensed copy of 95 OSR 2. These systems are still fine for Internet Surfing, e-mail, basic family bookkeeping, word processing, you name it. Why should they upgrade to 98SE? It will only slow them down & they probably won't take advantage of the enhancements anyway. Hard drive space is probably at a premium also. If they own a 486, upgrading isn't even an option. Before you get into a tizzy over someone still using a 486, consider that there is still lots of productive work being done on 486's, also that there a many families out there that were given hand-me-downs & can ill afford the purchase of another system. I would much rather have a 486DX-66, with 32 or 64 MB of RAM, a 28.8 Modem and a 14" monitor than NO COMPUTER. I spent about an hour on the Internet recently with a system configured exactly this way & was pleasantly surprised at the performance!

By the way, any of you that feel so strongly that 486's with Windows 95 are dead, are encouraged to send me your working 486 systems (Even I would require them to be 486DX-33's, or better). I will pay the shipping. :-)


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Dave Sparks,
Systems Support Analyst