OS comparisons - Win95 vs WinNT

> Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 10:34:12 +1100
> From: Kersti at Work <kanear(at)pacificaccess.com.au>
> Subject:
>
> Hi,
>
> For various reasons I am wanting to change my workstation from Win NT to
> Win95.
> I need as many supporting arguments as possible and I'm hoping
> that you can
> help me out.
>
> My workstation is a "x86 Model 1 Family 6 Stepping 9" with 64Mb ram and a
> 2Gb drive (FAT32), currently running NT 4.00.1381. I have NO
> defrag options.
>

In case you change your mind and stay with NT . . .

Save all your data to tape or CD-ROM and start fresh. Create a 512MB or
slightly smaller FAT boot partition and format the rest as NTFS for best
performance. Before you decide on whether to use a 1KB or 4KB cluster size,
read some of the fascinating and highly useful tech notes on NTFS on the
http://www.execsoft.com site.

Make your swap file at least 140MB (2x the amount of RAM plus 12MB is the
minimum recommended my Microsoft). For best performance divide it across two
partitions or physical disks. The Performance tab of the System Manager
makes that easy to do. Create the swapfiles before you install any
applications, especially on the second drive or partition. NTFS reserves
from 12% to 15% of a partition for its file tables (a kind of directory
structure). That is part of its performance advantage over FAT and FAT32.

Note that it's a popular misconception that NTFS doesn't fragment or that it
fragments very little. Again, spend some time perusing the tech notes on
NTFS at the site that I mentioned. I believe that Execsoft actually wrote
the APIs for defragmenting NTFS that are now included in the OS itself.

This is also important: before installing any applications, install Service
Pack 3 and any hot fixes to it. Service Packs from Microsoft are notoriously
unstable and buggy but many applications depend on them (they have no
choice). I would recommend SP4 but it takes at least six months for any
Microsoft product to settle and become even remotely stable. Don't install
any Microsoft extras such as NetMeeting if you have IEEE1394 DV capture
hardware (firewire). I learned that the hard way. They are incompatible.

No matter what flavor of OS you end up with, it's not a good idea to
randomly delete applications because they remove key system files also. It's
always best to use Control Panel or the application's own utilities to do
that. To maintain system stability, keep background tasks to a minimum,
especially clock-stealing utilities like Microsoft or Symantec Fax programs,
screen savers and Virus checkers (you can run those on an as-needed basis).

NT will run faster than Win9x and not crash nearly as frequently as Win9x
does. Check all your hardware against the NT Hardware Compatibility List
(HCL). Since it's hard to dig anything out of the Microsoft site and it's
rather anal anyway with endless forms, self-promotion, cookies and such, get
the Service Packs and HCL via http://www.paperbits.com.

That's all I can think of off-the-cuff. If you are so inclined, prayers
won't hurt either ;-)

Cary E. R. 1991-1997, former Senior Technical Writer on Windows NT and NT
Resource Kit, ret.-- Team Lead on the Error Messages book and Help file, and
Registry Help.

Cary E.R.
~~~~~~~~~
Enoch's Vision, Inc., Peach County, Georgia
http://www.enochsvision.com/ (my art gallery, plus poetry, satire, and
psychodrama). enochsvision.net & .arts (soon), visionarypark.com.

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