RE: Performance

[Christopher Nelson]

> Michal Suchanek wrote:
> > There are quite a few counterexamples. For one, Windows 98 are much 
> > faster on common hardware than Windows 2000 or XP. Yet 
> there is large 
> > user base for the later because of much better stability.
> 
> Stability is definetely not the major reason for moving to 
> XP/Vista, e.g. 98 can't be bought anywhere since a long time, 
> and after moving it forward several times, the end of support 
> (like critical fixes) date is now 2006-07-11 
> <http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx>.

These statements are speculative at best.  Some systems cannot run on
anything newer than 98 (e.g. we have a number of cash registers that
cannot be upgraded.)  We prefer XP over 98 for many reasons, and speed
of execution had little to do with our choices.  Businesses make upgrade
decisions based on many things, but when the IT department is involved
it is generally: "What will make our life easier?"  If a given product
seems to make things easier for us, and we have the money for it, we do
it.  Case in point: Remote Desktop was the killer app for us to upgrade
to XP.  The increased stability was nice, the speed increase (over WinNT
and Win2k) was nice, but they weren't THE reason.  

I might also mention that, while you can't buy Win98 from MS, you can
buy it from plenty of other places.  Additionally, we have hundreds of
98 licenses sitting around that we don't use anymore.  There are several
businesses around the world who resell older, licensed MS software.  And
don't kid yourself, security and/or patch support for 98 was never that
great anyway.

The point is, if a product makes my life easier I'll certainly find a
way to use it.  

-={C}=-