Preemptive multitasking and other things...
@Tim Anderson
I think MS have been rewriting history a bit. AFAIR 95/98 used cooperative mutil-tasking hence badly written apps had the ability to crash the whole machine. Whereas NT used preemptive multitasking and would kill off misbehaving apps. Thats why all the trading floors I worked on 97-01 used NT as their desktop OS. Losing your view of the market for 5-10 minutes because Excel crashed and took everything else with it wasn't an acceptable option.
Mmmmmm. Just had a quick read around to refresh my memory and the issue may not be as simple as types of multi-tasking. However the experience stands. NT4 was way more reliable then 95/98 albeit with limited driver support. And as Oliver Jones posted earlier 2000 was the dogs danglies. NT4 stability with 95/98 plug'n'play and driver support. I just couldn't see the point of XP especially with the Fisher-Price interface.
Windows 7 is looking good. I've been using Server 2008 for a few months so I'm getting used to the interface and I've been putting 7 on various hardware since my Action Pack disks turned up. So far I've been impressed especially when I put it on a 5 year old low-spec Dell with no Vista/7 drivers and it happily used the XP drivers. Stable and responsive - what more could you ask.
P.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
