Operating System Comparison

[Guest]

Just thought someone might find it interesting...http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/hardware/features/os_shootout/Notice the Win98 lite version!Tony in Miami

[Hans_Petter 1]

I used 98 Lite for years when my sim was FS98. It really helped getting rid of some "overhead" that we don't need while we're running games. Just notice that you'll have to put DirectX back since 98 Lite deletes it. No big problem since we want the latest version of DirectX anyway. (Well, maybe not v 9 yet since some people have reported problems). However, as the article stated a primary issue with any OS is to get rid of "dormant" tray icons that sap resources. It seems that any application we install these days want to place a tray icon and be ready to launch at short notice. The problem with this is that it's sort of launched already and competes with the resources needed to run the sim. The latest versions of Norton AV seem to be the exception -- they used to be major frame rate hogs but now they won't interfere with game performance, all according to a British developer named Roy Chaffin.Today I use Win 2000. It's hard to compare performance since I've switched to a more powerful PC as well. What I can say is that the NT based OSes don't require reboots all the time and a crashing application won't freeze the entire OS. Thus, if something hangs I go control - alt - delete on that particular application and I'm back in business. The NT based OSes don't "tire" since they're better at finishing tasks rather than clogging the resources with not-so-fond memories of what you did an hour ago. The importance of a fresh reboot and the occasional need for a hard reboot when everything hangs are both gone.best regards,Hans Petter