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It's looking like I'm finally going to have upgrade my system. At the moment I'm running Win 98 (on computers not much more recent, this one's a Pentium II) and I've been perfectly happy with that. Did everything I wanted.
Now, I'm looking to reduce my phone bill by going to broadband and voip, and the providers don't support 98.

I have this idea for a dedicated internet computer, with no hard-drive, that on start-up boots from a CD (or DVD, same diff), creates a virtual hard-drive in RAM, and loads whatever it needs to run. My reasoning is, that I can easily clean it of viruses and malware by simply switching it off. No hdd, nowhere to hide.

I'm wondering if this idea is good, and I'm looking for advice on the new OS. The choices seem to be between ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and Unix. I'm looking at cost, stability, compatability, and ability to be loaded reasonably quickly on boot-up. And anything else that anyone who cares more about computers then I do knows is important.

Or you could learn how to avoid virus riddled sites? If all you want to do is browse the web just buy a netbook. You can get a new one for under $400 with Windows XP most cases, and generally they're powerful enough to handle VOIP. And Windows 98? LOL.

The idea is shit and asking for trouble. If you've ever had to use a LiveCD dor anything approaching useful activity you'll realise this.

As for a new OS, get Windows 7 when it's released. It's fast, easy to use, and if you have half a functioning brain you can easily keep it 100% virus-free.

Win98 only supports upto IE6, and even the more recent Firefox versions will not run on it.

Win98 is completely and utter shit compared to modern OSs. Win9x was written back in the early 1990s and was never designed for the general internet we have today. And it sucks. Horribly.

Korto wrote:Now, I'm looking to reduce my phone bill by going to broadband and voip, and the providers don't support 98.

You should be able to reduce your powerbill with a modern computer. Older computers suck down the juice horribly. They are also loud and unbelievably slow.

Korto wrote:The choices seem to be between ME,

This is joke right?

2000,

Suctastic USB support, driver support is crappy. is actually EOL end of this year!

XP,

Dated Windows release, utterly no point on using it compared to Vista on modern hardware.

Vista

Dated Windows release, no point going for it considering Windows 7 will run better on the same hardware. Provided it was made within the last 5 years.

and Unix.

So you are going to buy a Mac?

Korto wrote:I have this idea for a dedicated internet computer, with no hard-drive, that on start-up boots from a CD (or DVD, same diff), creates a virtual hard-drive in RAM, and loads whatever it needs to run. My reasoning is, that I can easily clean it of viruses and malware by simply switching it off. No hdd, nowhere to hide.

You can use a LiveCD-only computer but it will be slow and you lose the ability to persistently store data, like bookmarks, address books and whatnot. Yes, you can sync to the cloud but that means every time you boot up you'll have to deal with pulling down all your information. Worse, these sync tools generally require application updates or extensions so you'd have to download them every time you boot your computer.

Compounding the issue is that security updates won't get permanently installed, so you'll be vulnerable every time you boot unless you write a new disc every time you boot.

In short? Don't bother.

I'm wondering if this idea is good, and I'm looking for advice on the new OS. The choices seem to be between ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and Unix. I'm looking at cost, stability, compatability, and ability to be loaded reasonably quickly on boot-up. And anything else that anyone who cares more about computers then I do knows is important.

If you're going for a PC, Windows XP SP3 for less-capable hardware (netbooks, etc.), Windows 7 for anything else. Linux would be interesting but may be too steep a learning curve if you've been running Windows 98 for ten years. MacOS X is a fine alternative as well and has broader support for popular applications than Linux (but less than Windows).

Xon wrote:

XP,

Dated Windows release, utterly no point on using it compared to Vista on modern hardware.

Due to RAM and GPU constraints, a system based on Atom, C7, Nano, etc. would probably be better off on XP.

Vista

Dated Windows release, no point going for it considering Windows 7 will run better on the same hardware. Provided it was made within the last 5 years.

Well, Windows 7 hasn't reached general release yet.

Korto wrote:It's looking like I'm finally going to have upgrade my system. At the moment I'm running Win 98 (on computers not much more recent, this one's a Pentium II) and I've been perfectly happy with that. Did everything I wanted.
Now, I'm looking to reduce my phone bill by going to broadband and voip, and the providers don't support 98.

I have this idea for a dedicated internet computer, with no hard-drive, that on start-up boots from a CD (or DVD, same diff), creates a virtual hard-drive in RAM, and loads whatever it needs to run. My reasoning is, that I can easily clean it of viruses and malware by simply switching it off. No hdd, nowhere to hide.

I'm wondering if this idea is good, and I'm looking for advice on the new OS. The choices seem to be between ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and Unix. I'm looking at cost, stability, compatability, and ability to be loaded reasonably quickly on boot-up. And anything else that anyone who cares more about computers then I do knows is important.

This kind of fits your requirements... http://tinycorelinux.com/ It'll probably even suit your current hardware. You might come up a little shy on ISP support though.

Yeah, I suppose it's easy to sneer at '98; old, slow, can't do anything like the new OS's. Why the hell would I still use it?

1) I already own it
2) It runs all the software I care about (well, up till now)

If I changed to a newer OS
1) It will cost me money
2) It may not run all of my software, some of which cannot be replaced.
3) It will likely use more RAM, processing power, and hard drive space; possibly more than my current system is capable of providing, so I would have to buy new hardware, which....
4) Will cost me money

While speed and performance may be necessary to others of you, it takes very little of either to run a word processor, spreadsheet, and a handful of VB apps. The only reason up till now to upgrade would have been because they were NEW! and GLITZY!, and that's not good enough.
I'll actually be keeping '98 on at least one computer, for the reasons given above.

Phongn, I actually did realise that the computer would have no easy persistent storage, that if I wanted to keep a bookmark, I would have to go to a little trouble. Downloaded extensions that remain usable for decent lengths of time (a few years) wouldn't be a problem, as the CD can be re-burnt on occasion. Virus updates would be a problem, but the idea is that viruses may get in, but they can't stay. There shouldn't be anything important on the machine, anyway. I do have some concern whether that attitude may put others at risk; e.g. something gets in, and emails itself around before the computer is switched off.

Spyder, what I understood about that TinyCore whatsit certainly seemed the sort of thing called for. I share your concern about ISP support, however. Thanks for the pointer.

Finally if Longhorn, oops, sorry, Vista, is anything to go by, I wouldn't be holding my breath on the release of Win 7 too soon.

If some old machine can be adapted to it, I might just give this thing a try. I suspect that with a small enough OS, completely on a RAM virtual HD, it would actually be faster. If I don't like it, no reason I couldn't just stick a hard drive in afterwards.

Korto wrote:Yeah, I suppose it's easy to sneer at '98; old, slow, can't do anything like the new OS's. Why the hell would I still use it?

1) I already own it
2) It runs all the software I care about (well, up till now)

If I changed to a newer OS
1) It will cost me money
2) It may not run all of my software, some of which cannot be replaced.
3) It will likely use more RAM, processing power, and hard drive space; possibly more than my current system is capable of providing, so I would have to buy new hardware, which....
4) Will cost me money

You can get a netbook that will do everything you wanted to on Windows 98 for well under $400 in many cases. Unless you're close to being homeless or subsistence living it shouldn't be a major concern. . .but if you are why are you shopping for a new (or upgraded, whichever) PC?

While speed and performance may be necessary to others of you, it takes very little of either to run a word processor, spreadsheet, and a handful of VB apps. The only reason up till now to upgrade would have been because they were NEW! and GLITZY!, and that's not good enough.
I'll actually be keeping '98 on at least one computer, for the reasons given above.

Because clearly massive improvements in functionality and stability couldn't possibly be one of the reasons to upgrade right? Oh wait. . .

Finally if Longhorn, oops, sorry, Vista, is anything to go by, I wouldn't be holding my breath on the release of Win 7 too soon.

In other words you're basing your entire position off the fact you're too ignorant or lazy to do any research on new operating systems?

If some old machine can be adapted to it, I might just give this thing a try. I suspect that with a small enough OS, completely on a RAM virtual HD, it would actually be faster. If I don't like it, no reason I couldn't just stick a hard drive in afterwards.

It wouldn't be faster. (It's possible it would be, but the functionality you would lose would not make it worth while). Right now you're just spewing ignorant nonsense.

Korto wrote:Yeah, I suppose it's easy to sneer at '98; old, slow, can't do anything like the new OS's. Why the hell would I still use it?

It is horrifically slow? Unstable as hell? Unbelievably insecure?

2) It may not run all of my software, some of which cannot be replaced.

What software?

3) It will likely use more RAM, processing power, and hard drive space; possibly more than my current system is capable of providing, so I would have to buy new hardware, which....

Even budget Modern systems literially have an order of magnitude more ram, about 2-3 orders of magnitude more disk space, about 4-5 orders of magnitude faster CPUs than typical Win98 systems.

Any "upgrade" will rapidly run into the fact, that no budget components will work with such an old computer. practically everything will be incompatiable except the case. And even then that may be suspect.

4) Will cost me money

Computer upgrades of any type cost money. Either upfront or in time.

Finally if Longhorn, oops, sorry, Vista, is anything to go by, I wouldn't be holding my breath on the release of Win 7 too soon.

It has been two and a half years since Vista was released. You probably don't have much experiance with this, but operating systems do change.

If some old machine can be adapted to it, I might just give this thing a try. I suspect that with a small enough OS, completely on a RAM virtual HD, it would actually be faster. If I don't like it, no reason I couldn't just stick a hard drive in afterwards.

1-2 gigabytes is not nearly enough for a ram-drive which is a profoundly silly idea for this.

Finally if Longhorn, oops, sorry, Vista, is anything to go by, I wouldn't be holding my breath on the release of Win 7 too soon.

You seem to be stuck in 2003. Please, hold your breath for Windows 7, it really is that good.

It seems like you have some very peculiar and very unfounded ideas about what a computer is and how you use it. No offence intended of course - if you do your thing and you're happy, all the better for you, though I pity the poor soul who'll have to help you keep that clunker running. I've used Windows 95 as a primary OS to see if it can be done and the answer invariably is somewhere between "almost" and "only if your time is worthless".

That said, there operating systems out there that will suit your needs better than an unsupported relic. I've been using Vector Linux Light lately on a 1999 laptop, and apart from not having full support of Windows apps - apart from Wine, of course - it does everything it needs to do and does it faster than Windows 2000 ever did, because it benefits from the last ten years in software development. Windows 98 isn't just old and "non-glitzy", it's outdated, and you are denying yourself some very real benefits in sticking with it. The laptop I've been using probably makes your desktop look like a gaming monster, yet with a modern, light OS it runs as good as any brand-new netbook. With horrendous power consumption and weight, of course; it's still obsolete hardware. But I wouldn't even consider going to back to a ten-year-old version of Windows.

If you are worried about applications, tell us which ones you need and I'm sure people can help you out with getting them to work on a modern OS. You'd be surprised how much you can do either with an improved version of the app or with virtualization.

You idea of using a computer with non-persistent storage is pretty stupid, by the way. You'll need a lot of RAM to make a vaguely useful OS run with an acceptable performance, and the benefit will be less than zero. It works for a kiosk or something but for a computer you plan to use frequently and for which you can take proper security measures it's silly wasted effort.

Korto wrote:If I changed to a newer OS
1) It will cost me money
2) It may not run all of my software, some of which cannot be replaced.
3) It will likely use more RAM, processing power, and hard drive space; possibly more than my current system is capable of providing, so I would have to buy new hardware, which....
4) Will cost me money

Well, you mentioned before you were considering upgrading and most people here thought that meant you were going to get new hardware as well as a new operating system. Should you get a new machine, as others noted, Windows 98 simply will not support much of its hardware (no drivers) and for those applications you must run that are incompatible with newer versions of Windows, you can use something like VirtualPC (free) to run a virtualized instance.

Finally if Longhorn, oops, sorry, Vista, is anything to go by, I wouldn't be holding my breath on the release of Win 7 too soon.

Uh, if that's supposed to be a snappy remark on Vista's delays implying that Windows 7 would also be delayed, you would be quite wrong. W7 was released to production already. TechNet and MSDN subscribers already have access to the final build.

If some old machine can be adapted to it, I might just give this thing a try. I suspect that with a small enough OS, completely on a RAM virtual HD, it would actually be faster. If I don't like it, no reason I couldn't just stick a hard drive in afterwards.

Probably not going to be faster.

Oh christ, I've got to stop avoiding 'upgrade my computer' threads. There's nothing I like more than poorly informed Vista-bashing.

I gotta ask how this jiggery pokery is worth it when Win7 RC is literally free (well, until June 2010) and a system upgrade is fucking cheap.

Korto wrote:Virus updates would be a problem, but the idea is that viruses may get in, but they can't stay. There shouldn't be anything important on the machine, anyway. I do have some concern whether that attitude may put others at risk; e.g. something gets in, and emails itself around before the computer is switched off.

Why go to those lengths to avoid infection and not just be not, I don't know, stupid? I have no idea why people treat viruses and malware as this unavoidable, allmighty stuff that creeps down your phone or dsl line on its own whenever you go online.

Just don't install any malware, have some virus scanner running, don't use Outlook for eMail, use some halfway modern browser and keep your OS up-to-date on security updates. It's not hard. Oh, and don't go around klicking on everything and installing everything without looking at what you're doing. You don't "catch" viruses involuntarily.

While there's little I enjoy more than being shown up and humiliated for my ignorance in a public forum, this will be my last post in this thread. There's just a few things I have to say.

Yeah, I suppose it's easy to sneer at '98; old, slow, can't do anything like the new OS's. Why the hell would I still use it?

1) I already own it
2) It runs all the software I care about (well, up till now)

If I changed to a newer OS
1) It will cost me money
2) It may not run all of my software, some of which cannot be replaced.
3) It will likely use more RAM, processing power, and hard drive space; possibly more than my current system is capable of providing, so I would have to buy new hardware, which....
4) Will cost me money

When I wrote this, it was in answer to what I interpreted as an implicit question of why I was still running '98 after all these years. I did not mean it to say that I wasn't thinking of a new OS, or that I wasn't going to need to get a better system to run the OS. What I wrote, however, wasn't clear. I understand the confusion.

Yes, General Zod, I had been on almost subsistence living for most of my adult life. You got a fucking problem with that? Up until a few years ago, if I wanted to pay my vehicle registration, I would have to start saving six bloody months in advance. Money's easier now, but old habits die hard, and I have other priorities.

General Zod wrote:

Korto wrote: If some old machine can be adapted to it, I might just give this thing a try. I suspect that with a small enough OS, completely on a RAM virtual HD, it would actually be faster. If I don't like it, no reason I couldn't just stick a hard drive in afterwards.

It wouldn't be faster. (It's possible it would be, but the functionality you would lose would not make it worth while). Right now you're just spewing ignorant nonsense.

Ignorant, yes, but which bits are nonsense? That a stripped down, more modern OS may be faster than my old OS with all its accumulated crap over the years, even without a hard drive? Or that there's no harm giving it a try, and if I don't like the result, I can just stick a hard drive back in and have a normal computer?
I will decide what functionality I want in a computer I own, not you. I will remind people this was about a seperate, dedicated computer just for the internet. There are other computers in the house. There would be three in total if I get this new one, so I don't see why I can't experiment with one, and leave 98 on another.

Xon, the software I'm mainly worried about are some VB4 and VB6 programs I wrote. While it's not really true, I suppose, to say they're irreplaceable, I would really hate to have to write them again. Maybe they would work on the higher OS, maybe on an emulator, maybe not at all. It would also be quite annoying if my Campaign Cartographer 2 stopped working properly, although I would only really worry about that with Win 7, and maybe Vista. Profantasy would probably have a patch if there's a problem, unless they see it as a chance to push me to upgrade.

About Vista; yes, I had heard that it was delayed and delayed in production for so long that it became an embarrassment for MS, which was why they changed the name from Longhorn to Vista (because changing the name made it a new product, and not something that had missed deadline after deadline after deadline); so yes, I was expressing doubt at MS supplying Win 7 at any kind of decent pace. But doubt only, not meaning to imply they wouldn't, just saying I'm not going to expect it until I see it.

Stark, I don't believe I said anything good, bad, or otherwise about Vista, except it was late. It was described as "dated" by Xon, but with some justification considering Win 7 is apparently almost released.
I will say that according the the Australian Financial Review, its sales have been quite disappointing. If you want the issue date, I can hunt it down for you.

Korto wrote: Yes, General Zod, I had been on almost subsistence living for most of my adult life. You got a fucking problem with that? Up until a few years ago, if I wanted to pay my vehicle registration, I would have to start saving six bloody months in advance. Money's easier now, but old habits die hard, and I have other priorities.

Generally, when people ask for advice upgrading? That means they intend to spend money. Whining about having to spend money when you're asking for information about upgrading just makes you look like a twat.

Ignorant, yes, but which bits are nonsense? That a stripped down, more modern OS may be faster than my old OS with all its accumulated crap over the years, even without a hard drive? Or that there's no harm giving it a try, and if I don't like the result, I can just stick a hard drive back in and have a normal computer?

Being stripped down does not mean faster. If it's not making use of the processing power and RAM available in modern PCs then frankly it's a waste.

I will decide what functionality I want in a computer I own, not you. I will remind people this was about a seperate, dedicated computer just for the internet. There are other computers in the house. There would be three in total if I get this new one, so I don't see why I can't experiment with one, and leave 98 on another.

The ignorant nerd rage right there is all kinds of hilarious.

About Vista; yes, I had heard that it was delayed and delayed in production for so long that it became an embarrassment for MS, which was why they changed the name from Longhorn to Vista (because changing the name made it a new product, and not something that had missed deadline after deadline after deadline); so yes, I was expressing doubt at MS supplying Win 7 at any kind of decent pace. But doubt only, not meaning to imply they wouldn't, just saying I'm not going to expect it until I see it.

Doubt based on complete ignorance. The release candidate has been available to the public to play around with for some time, and it's already dated to ship to stores in October.

General Zod wrote:The release candidate has been available to the public to play around with for some time, and it's already dated to ship to stores in October.

Release is that close?

So I guess it would be better to wait until then few months before buying a new notebook/netbook?

D.Turtle wrote:

General Zod wrote:The release candidate has been available to the public to play around with for some time, and it's already dated to ship to stores in October.

Release is that close?

So I guess it would be better to wait until then few months before buying a new notebook/netbook?

Depends on how quickly you really need it. Personally I'm looking at the netbook market but I want to wait until Windows 7 is available for them to seriously consider buying one.

D.Turtle wrote:Release is that close?

W7 has been released-to-manufacture (RTM) and is already available for quite a few people, such as (but not only) MSDN and TechNet customers.

So I guess it would be better to wait until then few months before buying a new notebook/netbook?

Check to see if your computer manufacturer offers a free upgrade.

General Zod wrote:Depends on how quickly you really need it. Personally I'm looking at the netbook market but I want to wait until Windows 7 is available for them to seriously consider buying one.

If you can be assed jumping through hoops, Win7 works pretty well on most netbooks (not the bottom-of-the-range older ones) already, installing it is just annoying.