Windows 98 Review

The launch of any new operating system from Microsoft is bound to generate hype, but it's fair to say that Windows 98 hasn't been quite as eagerly anticipated as was Windows 95. And with good reason - this is really the development of an existing operating system rather than the launch of a completely new one. More like the transition from Windows 3.1 to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups than from 3.11 to 95, in fact.

It is still an important release, though. It includes improved support for peripheral devices - notably USB equipment - and expansion cards through updated and (allegedly) more efficiently coded drivers. It incorporates Internet Explorer as a core component, which is yet another nail in the coffin of Netscape Navigator. And, according to Microsoft, Windows 98 is faster than Windows 95, at booting up, shutting down and, more importantly, launching applications. There are other, less obvious changes too, many of which are available as patches to Windows 95 from Microsoft's Web site. Having them all on a single CDROM is certainly convenient.

We installed the upgrade version of Windows 98 onto three PCs, each time over an existing copy of Windows 95. The first time, we boldly attempted the upgrade from within Windows 95, by double-clicking on the SETUP.EXE icon. This appeared to go well, but when the time came to reboot the system, Windows 98 couldn't find its COMMAND.COM file, which was a little disconcerting, although none of our existing data was lost. So we tried again, using a DOS boot disk containing CDROM drivers. This time there were no problems at all. The third attempt progressed without incident, too, and each attempt took just over an hour to complete. Our three installations do not exactly represent a statistically relevant sample, but judging from newsgroup postings and other reports, Windows 98 is less painful to install than Windows 95, which is good news.

Windows 98 supports drive compression through DriveSpace 3 (previously part of the Microsoft Plus Pack), and also FAT32, a more efficient method of hard drive file allocation that allows for large partitions but can sometimes cause problems with legacy applications. You can't use FAT32 and DriveSpace 3 at the same time, but with the size of today's hard drives that probably won't be a problem.

This latest operating system is supposed to boot up faster than Windows 95, as well as loading applications faster. We haven't noticed any reduction in the boot time, but certainly native 32-bit Windows applications do seem to load faster than before. We were also pleased to see a performance increase in some games, particularly those with DirectX support. The difference was probably only around 5-10 percent, but was still welcome. Compatibility seems to be good, with the twenty or so applications installed on our test systems all functioning well. 16-bit applications will generate a 'This application might not work properly' message the first time they are run, but that was the same under Windows 95, and we noticed no related problems. Our only real gripe, after disabling Active Desktop and most of the other Web-related interface options, was that folder windows can take longer to open than before, due mainly to the increased amount of graphics and information contained within them. Other than that we were impressed and, barring any unforeseen glitches, we will be upgrading all our systems to Windows 98 over the next few weeks.

A note to systems administrators and power users: the Windows 98 installer is every bit as predatory as its predecessor. If your system has multiple bootable partitions controlled by a boot manager, they will be temporarily inaccessible as the boot record is over-written. Most boot managers have re-installation options to cope with this, but keep a boot disk and FDISK handy just in case.

Verdict
If you're buying a new PC, it's highly likely that it will have Windows 98 pre-installed, so the question of whether or not to upgrade is academic. For those users happy with their existing installation of Windows 95, there's no immediately compelling reason to upgrade, although in our opinion Windows 98 is a better platform than its predecessor. If you do plan to carry out the upgrade yourself, make a backup of all your data first and be prepared for possible problems, although permanent data loss is unlikely. Also, note that it is rumoured that the first upgrade to Windows 98 could be here within a few months. Bizarre.