May 4, 1998
Windows 98 = Windows 95.1
By Bob O'Donnell
I was really looking forward to loading and playing with Beta 3 of Windows 98. I have
been a longtime user of Win95 and was eager to see what kind of improvements and other
capabilities Microsoft had added to its latest operating system. I had already read lots
and lots of things about Win98, but I was withholding any judgment until I could actually
use it and investigate it myself.
Having done so, all I can say now is, where's the beef?
Other than a nice new start-up sound, color gradients inside window title bars and an
animated menu trick that was in the original Microsoft Plus, Windows 98 looks, acts, feels
and works exactly like Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4.0 installed (except that you
don't have the option to remove Explorer 4.0 in the Add/Remove Software control panel --
what a surprise!). In fact, after I worked with it for about 15 minutes I nearly forgot I
was in Windows 98.
One interesting thing I did notice, however, is that the version number of Windows 98
is listed as 4.1 (plus lots of other digits after that). Windows 95, if you'll recall,
uses a basic version number of 4.0 (which, of course, is a major upgrade over Windows
3.1). It seems even Microsoft's programmers recognize that Windows 98 is a minor,
incremental upgrade.
If you dig a bit deeper, you'll still find an overwhelming number of similarities to
Windows 95. The Windows 98 Resource Kit Beta Release, for example, reads remarkably
similar to the Windows 95 Resource Kit. In fact, in large chunks of the book it looks as
if they just did a search and replace, putting 98 in for 95. Windows 95 administrators
looking for Windows 98-specific changes are going to be frustrated trying to find just the
new information.
I know that internally there are some differences, but for the vast majority of people
(say 95 percent or so), most of those differences will be completely irrelevant. Support
for multiple monitors may be nice, for example, but I don't think very many people will
take advantage of it. Similarly, end-users have proven over and over again that they
really aren't interested in viewing TV signals on their PC.
TV tuner cards have been available for a long time and have even been bundled with many
mainstream systems, but they have never been a big draw. The WebTV for Windows feature in
Windows 98 adds the new wrinkle of supporting data delivery via the video signal's
vertical blanking interval, but very few channels are actually planning to support it.
Plus, even if they did, this data-delivery mechanism is just another variation on push
technology which, despite great hype and expectations, has never really caught on. (It's
becoming increasingly apparent to me that what people really want is higher bandwidth
connections to the Net so that they can go and retrieve whatever it is they want, when
they want to do it.)
Windows 98 also adds additional support for new hardware, such as Universal Serial Bus
(USB) devices and apparently incorporates lots of bug fixes, but since when are those
considered part of an upgrade that costs money? To its credit, Microsoft has a good
history of delivering bug fixes via free patches and it has also delivered free updates to
support other types of hardware (voice modems, infrared, etc.) in the past. So, the
question is, why shouldn't these fixes and hardware updates be free? And besides,
shouldn't you just get a USB driver when you purchase a USB device, regardless of whether
you're running Windows 95 or 98?
The one real highlight of Windows 98 is all the new troubleshooting and diagnostic
tools included with the OS. The updated version of the Microsoft System Information tool
(which works similarly to the SiSoft Sandra shareware utility I mentioned in a previous
column), as well as the System Configuration Utility, Dr. Watson, Registry Checker,
System File Checker and more look really nice. In next week's column, I'll go over them in
more detail.
Ultimately, though, I'm left feeling that while Windows 98 is clearly an improvement
over Windows 95, it doesn't come close to justifying its $109 upgrade price tag -- except
perhaps for Windows 3.1 users, who will see enormous benefits. For Windows 95
installations, however, this looks and feels like a $29-$39 .1 upgrade. Anything more than
that, in my opinion, is just more grist for the U.S. Justice Department's investigation
into Microsoft's monopolistic practices.
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Copyright 1998, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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