a question: "A lot of 'high-end' notebooks I've seen in catalogs lately advertise "dual installs" of o/s win95/98. Since this feature seems to be found in only the most expensive models . . . why are people willing to pay extra for it, do you think? A friend of mine has a licence to install win98 on a second machine and is willing to do so on one of mine. The idea of that "dual install" greatly appeals to him. For my usage I don't seem to be crowding my hard drive. What are the pros and cons of a "dual install" ? . . . and in a mini LAN such as i have can both operating systems talk to each other?" one answer: I can't actually think of a single benefit to a dual-install of 95 and 98. They're both so similar to each other anyway. The major reasons one would have for having to stay with 95 would be device drivers (old hardware not being well supported in 98, I've heard). I can't think of any normal function that 95 can do that 98 can't, and that's the only good reason for having a dual-install. My feeling is, if you want 98, install 98. Don't go mixing things up with two OSs that are already nearly identical. If you happen to find out why people would want such a dual-boot, I'd be interested to know. Here at work, the only times we set up dual-boot systems is for Windows and Linux. Does anyone in sorabjiland have any replies ?

Might be useful for a helpdesk-type person who troubleshoots both OSes to have both available for dualboot and can boot back and forth between them. Haven't heard of anyone doing it between 95 & 98 though -- 95 & NT & Linux more common. Also, of course a 98 machine can talk to a 95 machine, or a 3.11 machine or a 3.1 or DOS, or UNIX, or Linux, or Mac, whatever you got. Just need the same protocols running (more than likely it's going to be TCP/IP, but if it's just a homegrown network possibly NetBeui or a combo of both, if you have Novell then maybe IPX/SPX is in there, whatever.)

the only times i have seen a dual install of those two operating system was when 98 first came out. there were programs that had not been made compatable with 98. and they weren't going to, because the original company had gone out of bussiness. so really the only pro to it would be for software reasons (programs and drivers) when 98 first came out people were just itching to dual boot it. but with the hardware that is sold today, you could easily just use one or the other. which ever you prefer. it has definately gotten to the point where you can just choose which one you like more. the whole millinium scare made people clench tightly to their 95 praying for nothing to go wrong. many believe that 95 is a more stable OS. beyond that, i don't se any real point to dual boot it. unless you just want to see how it looks or you want to dub yourself a computer genius for doing it. but if you realy want some fun mix it up...like linux and B. or 98 and 3.1 (which is a hoot i must say!) 98 and 3.1 combo is like hell. unless you have some sort of hard copy of the drivers for you "plug and play hardware" 3.1 will not use a lot of the hardware. and 98 will have no problem. so you just switch back and forth between OS so you can listen to a c.d. or surf the internet. how nice. god, i hate computers.

98 should've been released as a service pack to 95, a la NT. However, they were stuck with that 95 name which was starting to look a little dated, so they put some bells and whistles on 95, shrinkwrapped it, called it an ugrade, and made a fortune. Still can't believe they dated it by using 98, as they do with Win2K, Office2K, etc.

Now that they've, uh, debugged '98, there's no real reason to have '95 as a fallback. All I can see is that it would take up space. Really, what's the point? Linux/'98 makes sense. But multiple versions of Windows is just silly. '98 supports a lot of hardware, actually, so I don't see that being a problem. Wierd. I've never really heard of a dual install.

> . . . it seems that my neighbor needs to have '98 in order to load and run some >video editing. (I didn't know that part before) One of the few major improvements between 95 and 98 is USB support. If you need to run USB, you need 98. So either your neighbor has USB equipment, or there's some other really subtle change in the OS. Gunther