May 10, 1999
Windows 98 version confusion
By Bob O'Donnell
Software updates and upgrades are a critical part of the computer industry, driving
progress, innovation, and, of course, the financial success of the companies who generate
and sell them. Smaller updates and bug fixes -- in theory at least -- create a more
robust, more stable environment for PC users and IT workers who need to maintain these
machines.
When it comes to operating system patches, these types of software upgrades are also
supposed to provide a level playing field: a consistent environment on which businesses
can standardize their desktop computers and to which third-party ISVs can write
applications. It's particularly critical for IT support personnel to have a completely
consistent platform within the OS environment they choose to deploy. (The specific OS they
choose is a different issue and the topic for about a hundred other columns.)
For this reason, I think the recently announced Windows 98 Service Pack and Second
Edition could end up generating as many problems as they are purported to solve. On the
one hand, it's great to see a collection of bug fixes rolled into a single upgrade (which
is what the Windows 98 Service Pack 1 is); but then to offer essentially the same thing
with a few minor enhancements (which is what Windows 98 Second Edition, or OSR-1, does)
does nothing but create confusion. The bottom line is that, with the introduction of these
enhancements -- which is now scheduled for some time in June -- there will be three
different versions of Windows 98, all of which are just slightly different from one
another.
And given the previous history and the nature of Windows in general, it's these minute
differences that will make or break certain applications and lead to countless hours of
confounding troubleshooting trying to pinpoint the problem. Even worse, you'll have to
resort to learning the nonintuitive version numbers of the different Windows 98
variations, which are buried in the System Control Panel, just to know what you're dealing
with.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since there ended up being five different versions of
Windows 95 before it reached the end of its life cycle (the original, 95A, 95B -- both OSR
2 and 2.1 -- and 95C). But one of the benefits Microsoft touted for Windows 98 was that it
provided a consistent platform that could be deployed enterprisewide (that is, if you
chose to use the Win9x architecture). Installing Windows 98, the argument went, would rid
you of all the Win95 variations you needed to support and give you a shared foundation. To
make its point even stronger, Microsoft touted its Windows Update feature, which was
designed to make the platform consistent even as the inevitable bug fixes and other minor
tweaks were introduced. With Windows Update, the argument continued, all of the desktop
machines could easily get access to any critical OS updates within a short time frame and,
again, the platform could stay consistent.
Now, however, the Windows 98 Second Edition introduction blows this concept out of the
water. Yes, theoretically, all Windows 98 users can get Service Pack 1, but it costs $20
per machine (undoubtedly less for corporatewide upgrades, but there's still some cost
nonetheless) to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition. Not only does this create a platform
schism and once again introduce multiple OS variations, but that $20 isn't buying a whole
lot: Internet Connection Sharing (a proxy server feature that's specifically designed for
home networks), Internet Explorer 5.0 (which is freely available elsewhere), and support
for some additional hardware, such as Device Bay and IEEE 1394. I'm particularly confused
by this last point because it makes no sense to me to require someone to upgrade an OS
just to get a few base-level drivers so that they can use new hardware. Corporate
environments, in particular, stand to benefit from the convenience offered by both IEEE
1394 and Device Bay, so why not just make them part of the Service Pack?
Microsoft, for its part, claims that it doesn't want to confuse customers by including
new "features" in Service Packs. Instead, its trying to reinforce the point that
Service Packs are bug fixes only. But it seems to me Microsoft is causing a lot of
potential headaches and confusion in the process. It certainly incorporated minor OS
tweaks in previous Service Packs, so why not just roll up the trivial few features of
Windows 98 Second Edition and bug fixes into one freely available upgrade to Windows 98?
That, to me, would have been the smart thing to do.
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Copyright 1999, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
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