RE: tlug: FW: Windows 95

[Tim Meggs <tim@example.com>]

From: "Jonathan Byrne--3Web" <jq@example.com>
Subject: RE: tlug: FW: Windows 95
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 16:15:03 +0900

> We have several NT machines here (for internal use; our public servers are
> all UNIX boxes) and we don't have those kinds of problems on any of them.
> I'd say that more likely there is either a hardware or a configuration
> problem with your NT machine.  What kind of computer is it running on?  Not
> a Fujitsu, I hope :-)

Mine is a Gateway Pentium II 233.
The servers are mostly Dells, G/Ws, but there is one IBM in there. 
Two of the other NT users here are using Dell and Compaq.
They all crash sooner or later :(

WRT the servers, more and more is being moved to FreeBSD so as to lighten 
the load on the NT machines and increase availability of services.

Personally I turn mine off each night - so as to start with a clean slate 
each morning.   

> The people in your shop who like NT may not know what's wrong with that
> system, but I guarantee that something is.  NT does not normally behave that
> way.  

I might add that i'm doing s/w development on my machine.   I'm not sure that
the debugger (M$) is all that robust.    But then again it shouldn't bring 
down the whole machine, should it?    Also there was a MPEG layer 3 player 
I used in the past that seemed to cause the system to go off the deep end 
a while after having used it. 

> Windows 95 seems very sensitive to hardware, though, and can really be
> made sick by stuff that isn't 100% off the rack standard parts.  Perhaps NT
> also shares this characteristic?   I can certainly state that Windows 95 is
> a lot more hardware-sensitive than Linux, anyway, so maybe NT also is.

From what I've experienced (and heard) NT is less plug and play than 95.  
I had to manually set the sound blaster and *serial ports* settings after 
installing NT.   AFAI remember everything else was auto-detected ok.

tim :)