Josh Koffman wrote:
> As an aside, I have a feeling that a lot of your negative experience was
> caused by Win98. I know, it says USB works on Win98, but in my

Only partly. I have about 5 actively used computers at home. Nearly all are
Win98SE because they don't have the horsepower to handle XP, and XP was so
flakey when it first came out that I refused to support it. Even today
GE Fanuc company policy FORBIDS the use of XP on company machines. If it's
bad enough for GE, it's bad enough for me.

My boxes are loaded
with all kinds of USB devices (cameras, scanners, card readers, A/D units,
Joysticks and Steering wheels, etc.). I came to believe that USB worked
reasonably well on Win98. Then I decided to try out MP3 players, and EVERY SINGLE
ONE had a problem with their USB implementation. The YEPP55V killed the USB driver
stack, and it took major regedit surgery and time to restore it. The IRiver unit
installed OK, but could never complete a >20MB file transfer successfully.
The WaveX device would connect, but be unable to manipulate any
files. Every operation would hang the program, yet disconnecting the cable
would free up the lock, with a 'device disconnected' error.

I learned that MP3 players and USB are simply not ready for prime time on Win98.
I also learned that the USB logo means zip wrt compatibility. Buyer beware!
Maybe Win2K is better, but I've already given Bill enough money for a toaster
that only toasts bread erratically.

> experience it's flakey at best. I've had much better luck with Win2K,

I've found up to date 98SE to be stable enough for my needs. I have one
machine that runs my camera security 24x7 and it rarely (once in 2 months)
needs a reboot. Others are less stable, but they are running Winblows after
all. I expect that eventually I'll get to Linux land.

> and the few times I've used XP it seems to be ok as well. I'm about to
> upgrade my last Win98 machine to Win2K, and this is one of the main
> reasons.

I may try 2k if I can buy a cheap used license somewhere.

Thanks again for the comments.

Robert

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