RE: Rebuttal

["Trainor, Kevin T." <Kevin.T.Trainor@norwest.com>]

Nick Reinking wrote:
>Actually, I notice very few hangs in NT 4 (I have
>yet to run across any in Win2k yet).  I do remember
>that the majority of my hangs in WinNT 4 were because
>of video drivers.  Not surprisingly, almost *all* of my
>lockups in Linux are because of a funky X server.
	I have to agree with Nick here. The company 
I work for uses NT 4.0 on Compaq boxes, and even 
before I got the new super-duper 500MHz/128MB 
Workstation of Death (hey, it was a step up from 
the 586 I was using) I don't recall the system 
ever hanging or requiring a reboot. Of course, I
tend to shut the critters down on the weekends 
anyway on general principles, so...
	I'm sure part of the reason the work boxes
have been so free of trouble is that we have 
excellent IT staff support and an iron-fisted
corporate policy regarding the installation of
software not approved by IT. (One word: Don't.)
This limits the possibility of some third-party
app not working or playing well with NT.
	For what it's worth, my experiences with
Win95 and Win98 have been exactly the reverse.
The Win95 box I used to run Office on would hang
and crash constantly for no apparent reason, and
there were a number of occasions on which I had
to just give up and reinstall everything from 
scratch. Then things would run OK until the next
time Office or Compuserve hung for no apparent
reason.
	The eBox with Win98 is just as bad. I went
through a period where Netscrape was crashing 
every couple of minutes and taking Windows with
it, then after that it was Compuserve, and now
I'm having intermittent crashes of C&C: Tiberian 
Sun. Go figure. The OS and the software intended
for it may be designed with Joe Sixpack in mind,
but the crashes are annoying, especially when 
there's nothing you can refer to that says, "If
the system does *this* when it crashes, try *that*."

	I don't make any claims to Linux expertise.
I've installed OpenLinux and Corel Linux on the eBox,
they both seem to work OK except that there are some 
features that aren't working yet. I figure that after
reading the man pages a few times, looking at the
Corel docs a few times, and rereading RUNNING LINUX
(yup, finally bought a copy) I'll be able to tinker
with it enough to get it all running right. I don't
have the same confidence about Win98, mostly because
the docs aren't there like they are for Linux.
	YMMV.

Kevin Trainor

Disappointed a few people/When friendship reared its/Ugly head
Disappointed a few people/Well, isn't that/What friends are for?"
     -"Disappointed", Public Image Ltd.

All opinions my own, not Norwest's or Wells Fargo's.