rec.autos.simulators

Now that Win XP is out, is there anyone who thinks it is a good move from ME
or '98?

Especially, is the activation process working and does it offer an
advantages for Racing sims.

Andi.

I don't have XP yet but my two cents ... I usually give every Win OS about 6
months to a year to "settle in" and let all the OS geeks bash their brains
out on it :-)  I didn't even try Win ME yet (still have 98).

You don't want ME either, it's crap. But I happen to like XP. The only
driver I had to install was for my Santa Cruz soundcard, every other
piece of equipment is supported, although I did install newer vid
drivers and VIA drivers. Even my printer (Epson 870) is supported
right in WinXP. Never had such a painless install of Windows yet.

Dave,

Did you upgrade or do a "clean" install?

Todd

I don't have ANY interest in XP, or win2K, or ME.  I'm still on 98se, too.
Works fine on everything I run...

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
GPLRank - under construction...

Never argue with an idiot.  He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

XP is great if you DON"T have a Voodoo card, or an MPEG decoder card,
support for both is pretty poor.  And we all know the driver situation
concerning our beloved voodoo-based cards.

--
Biz

"Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand
alloys and compositions and,......things with molecular structures,....and
the....." - Ash

Sorry that's not true.  XP is great if you have a VooDoo card.   See
http://www.falconfly.de/3dfx.htm as one example.
There's XP drivers are available that support GLIDE!

The user community support has been outstanding, sort of like patchin' GPL
up.
Stick that up your tailpipe and smoke it!  :-)

        It's even better idea to wait another 6 months for XP SE then.

well, I was hesitant but I think XP rocks. ME is a POS. All that's good for
is lockups. XP is much kmore stable. If you have a TSW, though, there are
problems with F1 2001 recogning the accelerator. N4 works fine though. I
think it is due to the fact that you can no longer disable polling like in
98SE. But, everything else is much better to me ...

I've heard this twice today.  ME is NOT a POS, it's a much more stable OS
versus 95/98 IMO.
I've had excellent success with it.  With 98 on the same hardware I had to
reinstall every three months or so due to some glitch.  ME, rock solid.
PIII-733, Intel mainboard, exV5.

Now the other person who mentioned this today was quized.  You know what the
POS was, his system, ancient hardware, odd or no drivers for it, etc. but
guess what gets the blame?

It should be it's a true 32bit OS.

says...

You're pretty much "smoking crack" if you don't upgrade. I have had
zero problems so far, and all of my hardware and software is working.

The activation process is pretty much transparent; it's no big deal.  I
haven't installed any 3D games, so I can't comment on that. (PS2 gamer)
--
"Trying is the first step towards failure"
Homer Simpson

Voodoo card support using glide is still suspect, you must not be reading
the appropriate posts.  I understand it is working, but I've seen very few
positive posts about its reliability/stability running GPL using 3dfx under
XP.  If yoiu reread my post, I said support is poor, not non-existent.  I
understand the user copmmunity has stepped up to try to fill the gap left by
those nVidea morons, and I think its great, but its not 100% reliable yet on
many systems.

--
Biz

"Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand
alloys and compositions and,......things with molecular structures,....and
the....." - Ash

Lol, heck I'm still on win98 original - well, I do keep it updated through
the windows update sight so it is probably closer to SE now than not.
I'll have to admit though, i am intrigued by what I have read on XP. I've
been meaning to get a new hard drive and do a clean install of windows, XP
may just push me to doing it.

Don Burnette

    First off, this is not a repsonse to get at you. It is not intended to
be dissing you or anyone else. It may seem that way but these are some of
the frustrations we have seen and after looking at what I wrote and how it
was written, I can see how you might think I was so called "yelling" at you.
I am too tired to rewrite it now though. <G> It really is to Microsoft for
releasing ME in the first place.

    Well, when I bought ME last year, I had a Pentium III 1 Ghz system with
an ASUS CUSL2-C motherboard,with 256 MB of Crucial RAM, a Ultra 66 30.8 GB
Western Digital Hard disk, a 32 MB Hercules 3dProphet II-MX graphics card, a
Sb Live! Value Card, and a Kingston 10/100 Network card. These were all top
quality products then and all it did was crash. We received new PC's from
Dell with name brand components, most of those the same as above with USR
modem and network cards and the motherboards being the only difference,
pre-installed with Windows Me. Crash city. So, reinstall from scratch. Crash
city. BTW, what is the definition of crappy equipment? Did that guy you
quizzed have that crappy equipment work with 98SE? If it did work with 98SE,
then why should it not with ME? The people who've had success with ME are
few and far between, not the other way around. Windows 98 has been the
standard OS for years now, not Windows ME.
    I'm a programmer and IT consultant at work for smaller businesses. All
we have ever seen with ME are bugs and incompatibilities. They changed the
way a program sets window focus in Windows ME. Well, it caused Windows
versions of our accounting software we resale to lose focus, basically to
grey out the top bar so the keyboard wouldn't work without clicking on the
window every time a new form would open. This problem was non-existant in
95, 98, 98SE, AND Windows 2000. Also, programs were now launched differently
than before. For some reason, all of the other OS's worked with that syntax,
including XP now. There are bugs with the software that have never been
fixed. When the system crashed for whatever reason, it would restore a
working version of the OS. Great, in theory. What if those programs that
were on it at that time no longer were on the hard disk? It didnt reinstall
those. What it did do was that it created useless shortcuts and also it
added their entries back into the registry and would show up in Add/Remove
Programs in Control Panel, which you couldnt take it out of the list and
remove those entries because the uninstall program was gone. So, it leaves a
***load of registry entries for that program out there, as well as leaving
the program listed as installed. Well, super! There are also problems in ME
on local workgroup networks where the master broswer service conflicts with
other OS's and causes mapped drives to show as disconnected, for no reason.
I could go on.
    Guess what? They are discontinuing end user sales in November (at least
that's what they said a month ago at the local Microsoft Technet session)
for ME and 98 SE, no more updates. It was also slower than Christmas and not
half as fun. That's why the people I know that have had limited success with
ME switch to 98SE to play games such as Nascar 4. To even get ME to perform
close to 98, you had to disable the new things added to ME that were really
the only possible reasons to upgrade. XP Home is faster than ME, out of the
box. Why? 98 is faster than ME. Why? Windows ME and 98 will no longer be
available, period.
    Win 98 had incredible staying power because it was simply tons better
than Windows ME, and no one trusted ME to run their critical apps. There was
no reason at all to upgrade to Windows ME. The only reason it is out there
in mass at all is because they started bundling that with new PC's and
didn't give OEM's a lot of choice in the matter. Who actually bought Windows
ME from a store? Not many folks. The only reason ME was even released is
because they failed to have the home version of Windows 2000 ready. XP Home
is what Windows 2000 Home was supposed to have been. All they did was add
some features to 98, and package it up in a box to make some money off the
features they had already spent time on that would work, when they couldn't
get Win 2000 Home to work properly. They did this instead of just eating all
of that development time that fiscal year to make their fiugres look better,
when they couldn't get the Home version of 2000 to work properly. XP should
not have meant the end for ME anymore than ME was the end for 98SE. The
reason it is coming to an end now is because ME was a failure. If it were
any good at all, they would still sell a few copies. But what are people
buying at the store in retail sales? Either 98SE or now XP. DOS 6.0 to 6.22
had more success than 98SE to ME.
    I hate to sound harsh, I'm not trying to be to you. It's not directed to
you personally. It's frustration as an IT person that saw people and small
businesses that couldn't afford Win2k Professional taken for money for an
inferior product that will no longer receive good support. I know that
people will say, "well, it's not for business." That's just not realistic
though. Even companies as large as Michelin use Windows 98 or Me. The ME
users are now in effect forced to upgrade to keep current, only a year
later, to avoid security issues that crop up weekly with the Microsoft OS's.
Those will not be fixed in ME unless it is a major issue. The bugs that are
there will not be fixed. To get their problems fixed, they must upgrade at
regular upgrade prices, not even a year later, and to me that is wrong.
    Furthermore, it's also a pain just to have another OS to keep up with in
those situations for a consultant as well. Who needs this patch, well they
have 98, they have Me, different drivers for hardware in ME, and software
patches for ME: it's just more to keep up with for no reason. At least if
they said Win2k Home is not ready, keep using 98, then they could have had
legacy support and drivers, along with more compatibility. But no, they
couldn't just do that. They had to release something  to try to make up for
those failed promises, and it has cost everybody that has and still have
problems.
    It's also frustration for a developer that had to patch software that
worked perfectly fine in all other Windows OS's and works now in XP, one
year later, that the development time spent was just a waste of time and
cost developers money. Now the software doesn't need these patches any more.
I'm sorry it cost us money to have to actually physically go to client sites
and patch these systems, when we had other issues that to us, were more
important, that with 98 we would have never had to deal with. I'm sorry some
clients blamed our accounting system for not being compatible when it is
with everything else, including Linux and Unix. But, to the dumb luser
(Microsoft's term for users in Win2k server) that thinks Microsoft is God,
they aren't gonna listen to us, and they have an attitude toward the
accounting software as a result. I'm also sorry we had to tell folks not to
use ME because of incompatibilities, bugs, and crashes, and have to take the
time and money to explain why, IF they had a choice: most didn't if they
bought a Dell or Gateway or any other name brand PC's. The only complete
success stories with ME that I know of is your experience and a few others
and most of them use ME only for internet and things like that. Those are in
the minority. I'm glad it worked out for you, it just hasnt for most of the
other people I know. In my opinion, Windows ME should have never happened,
period.

Have a nice day,
Phillip

Anything not based on the NT kernal is a POS, at least for computer users in
the know.