Windows 9(x)

By Larry Anders, Librarian, Tampa PC Users Group

Later this year, as Windows 95 reaches its third birthday, a new release of Windows is to be unveiled. While some are calling it Windows 98, word is that it will be called Windows version 9(something). I have not given this latest version a trial run, even though I have had a couple of offers, because my system is running just fine with 95. But, I have read a lot about it since it has gone into BETA, and as I sit in a hotel room on the other coast of Florida, reading an e-mail from William saying he needs my article for this month’s newsletter, I thought I’d pass on some of what I’ve learned to you.

It apparently will not be as major a design change as from 3.1 to 95, but it’s touted to be more than just an upgrade. The bright spot in my mind is that it will actually save disk space. Included in this latest release from Redmond is the new Drive Converter utility that will convert your old Win95’s inefficient file allocation table (FAT 16) to the more efficient FAT32 that reclaims wasted disk space. A full installation of Win 9(x) over Win95 takes approximately 70 megabytes but frees up over 150 megabytes after running Drive Converter.. That’s quite a diet for your hard drive.

One neat feature is the ability to run two PCI display adapters and two monitors on a single PC. Why would you want to do this? You could run your e-mail program continuously on one monitor and run your desktop normally on another monitor:

Some other new features included are:

• Better plug and play management
• System File Checker and Windows Tune-Up
• Windows Update, a web-based wizard that analyzes your PC and automatically recommends updates to download such as patches and drivers
• Improved disk cache and memory management
• Over 1,200 new drivers including ones for DVD and USB
• Explorer 4, which has already been released, provides a choice for a different desktop view, one based more on the web, called Active Desktop
• Outlook Express, Personal Webserver, Task Scheduler, Net Meeting and a new version of Backup have also been added.

This isn’t all of the new features but it’s a majority of them. The RAM requirement is between 12 MB to 16 MB. Major performance gains shouldn’t be expected but you can expect your system to run better and have better reliability. Although Win95 has been good to me I’m ready for the next step in our evolutionary chain to Windows NT. How about you? u