Young People Try Windows 98

[Neroon]

14 hours ago, Caroline said:

The Briefcase feature was so useful and SIMPLE in 98 and XP.... like to this day I can't find a way to properly sync files in a matter of seconds like with Briefcase, I either have to install third-party software, run a server (open ports and stuff) or copy/paste thousands of files to and from an USB stick at once only to keep a few that have been modified with Windows constantly asking me which file I want to keep, it's moronic they've removed it because not everyone has a workgroup set up, or a fast LAN with multiple computers, or large USB/external drives.

Finding the new or modified files in a directory where there are hundreds takes time, yet Briefcase was able to do it in seconds.

 

I can take internet hosting out of the equation here because you can only imagine how long it'd take to upload 1GB of files with an internet connection that tops out at a 32kbps upload speed, and that's only in theory, in real uploads it'll be far slower depending on the server.

I mean they replaced it with OneDrive really. I know not everyone likes to use these services, but the way it works is the same, but just cloud based.

[mr moose]

The way people speak about older versions of windows suggest to me they didn't actually have much experience with them.

 

 

 

[Beerzerker]

14 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

  

I haven't had to do a clean reinstall due to OS corruption since the Windows NT 4 and 98 days. Even then, it was only because that was easier than properly fixing the problem I caused.

I was referring to Win 98/SE being called crap. 
It's a fair, yet also unfair comparison vs today's versions of an OS.

That's like comparing an F1 car from 1970 to one from 2000 and to one from 2020....... The 70 is the default overall loser everytime, the 2000 being in the middle and the 2020 always being on top.

Point:
Win 98 was and is a product of it's time, not a product of the year 2022. 

Judging it by today's (2022) standards is not fair at all, yet at the same time shows the amount of progress made from then up to now.
It was the best available in 98, just like so many say Win 10/11 is the best today (2022), yet you can also do a comparison later and come up with a completely different result at that time, lets say in the year 2040 for example. 
It's literally guaranteed, Win 10/11 will be absolute cold dogshiite compared to what would be available then and that's fair to say yet at the same time it's also unfair too.

14 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

What are you guys doing to your PCs?!

Don't you mean what is Winblows itself doing to PC's these days?
The answer lies within all the scattered "Windows update broke my PC" threads here and elsewhere, too numerous to count.

As for me, I've got no prob with Win 10/11 - Linux has me covered.

[Commodus]

Windows 98 was good at the time, but it still represented the "bad old days" of computing with driver headaches, stability issues, unnecessarily complex interfaces and pretty limited media and gaming capabilities. Windows XP was really the first Microsoft OS to streamline the computing experience for the everyday user.

 

I worked ISP tech support in the first few years of the millennium, and the leap in ease of setup between 98 and XP (or even ME and XP) was dramatic. XP users barely had to lift a finger beyond setting up their email client; with 98, you had to worry about everything from Ethernet card drivers (in part because Ethernet was less common in pre-XP PCs) to a botched TCP/IP stack. I'm somewhat envious of newer ISP techs who probably have to deal with far fewer software problems.

[Bitter]

I grew up with 95 initially, trying to use 3.1 tho...that was a foreign experience!

[Neroon]

4 hours ago, Caroline said:

>works just the same

>cloud based

Then it's not the same. Briefcase was local and speed was limited by your device(s).

Yeah like I said, it works the same, except it for being cloud based... is there a reason why you try to argue the exact thing I said?

[YellowJersey]

I think I saw a brief glimpse of Fury3 in there somewhere. My first PC was a DOS machine and I used to play Reader Rabbit and Super Solvers Midnight Mystery and some underwater game that I think was by the same study. I also remember changing my mouse pointer to yellow and browsing Encarta for hours.

[NumLock21]

Looking at that video bought back memories of using Win98, even though my first personal OS was WinMe. Here were some of the things I've remember or vaguely remember  with Win98

 

• To play audio from the audio jack on the CD-ROM, all you have to do is press the play button on the drive itself. Back then CD drives lets you play as a stand alone player, all of the button including the volume wheel is on the drive. I think if you're going to do direct play from the CD drive but want sound coming out of your speakers, then you'll need a audio cable from the drive to your sound card. They were mostly 4-pins, with some being 2-pins and there was proprietary one from Dell. I can't remember if Creative (the only good sound card maker during that time) dropped the 4-pin for the proprietary Dell or they decided to go the non-standard 4 pin. My original X-Fi didn't have the 4-pin but the proprietary Dell one.
• In the video they've change the background, but Win98 had themes that changes the whole entire desktop from icons, sounds, and even the mouse cursor. By default it does not get installed, during setup, you'll need to click customized to install them. For post setup, it's in Add/Remove Features. For a more professional look, I tend to use Windows Default. But the ones I personally liked was Science and Travel.
• You can free up extra computer resources by disabling find floppy drive using start up
• Win98 lets you see how much resources you have, it shows it in a simply number in percentages like Windows Resources 95% Free.
• The 3D pipe screen saver, there is a Easter Egg you can do, and all of the pipe joints will be the shape of a teapot.
• In IE, on the top right corner is a icon that animates every you load or refresh a page, that icon can be customized.
• For setup, the Win98 start up disk, which loads up a dos prompt, there is a file that can be edited which lets you change the color of your text, background, and even make it flash. The flashing can cause seizures so use that with caution.
• These days almost everything is done automatically, back then where there was a resource conflict between 2 pieces of hardware, windows derps out and doesn't know what do to. You'll need to manually select a free IRQ resource to fix the conflict.
• If you have a voice modem, you can prank call your buddy in their cubicles and not answer them, but you'll be able to hear their voices coming out from the tiny speaker from your modem that's in your PC. This will only work if you have 2 or more separate phone numbers
• The most popular modem card during that time was U.S. Robotics
• The most popular network card during that time was 3Com
• Because Win98 was setup with a dos prompt, back then both Intel and AMD made CPU utilities just for that, and you can use those to quickly identify your CPU without the need to reboot your PC. Of course the faster way was to look at the CPU itself, but that would only work if you've got a Intel Slot 1 or AMD Slot A. For socket types, the CPU utility was a lot more handy.

[JEskandari]

you guys are really young. recall my first PC it was an AcerPower 333s it come with MS-Dos 3.3 only god knew how long i played Prince of persia with it it had 80386sx CPU and had a co-processor called 80387sx to help it solve mathemathic problem faster and had a whooping 2mb of ram 40mb of hdd.

well in short i heard i can use mouse in some programs so i went and bought an Agiller Mouse (don't recall exact model) guess what inside it there was for 5.25 fdd and after i put them inside i had my first experience with graphical interface , yes the mouse came with windows 3.

 

 

by the way as it seems they had problem with playing the game because it was designed for older pc's well i had such problem then but it was mainly for dos games. then we used to use some programs that designed to mess the pc internal clock and actually make it possible playing those old games. later that multitasking become an option and pc's become more complex and messing with internal clock usually resulted in crash there were some programs that made fake load for CPU so it could assign less time to the game and as a result it played slower

[bobonlinenet]

Ah memories, my first os was Windows 95. I had a lot of cool games on 95/98 - Carmen Sandiego, Casino games, Sims, Jill of the Jungle, Diablo.

 

I remember rebooting the system a lot after installing drivers for new hardware. It's so much easier these days. One bsod I remember getting is for running out of ram. I upgraded from 256 mb to 512 mb and it was night and day difference. Our social media was AOL messenger. Kids missed out on fun times lol