Questions on Windows 98
Lately I've become very interested in the era '98 was used in.
Probably too interested.
That time period is especially confusing for me, as it's a sudden shift in the OS, but not 98% of the software (Get it?)
I've tried looking it up myself, but I can't seem to find exactly all the details I want.
"How much did MS Plus for 98 cost?" "Did people use Office 97 in the early days of Windows 98?"
And sadly, it's not that simple, either. "What was the audio quality like?" "What was the most popular music player?" "What were the popular PC games in that time?"
And basically any question you could imagine about Win98.
I'll be posting a similar question in the hardware section at some point.
Thanks in advance!
Probably too interested.
That time period is especially confusing for me, as it's a sudden shift in the OS, but not 98% of the software (Get it?)
I've tried looking it up myself, but I can't seem to find exactly all the details I want.
"How much did MS Plus for 98 cost?" "Did people use Office 97 in the early days of Windows 98?"
And sadly, it's not that simple, either. "What was the audio quality like?" "What was the most popular music player?" "What were the popular PC games in that time?"
And basically any question you could imagine about Win98.
I'll be posting a similar question in the hardware section at some point.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
That was the only real difference over Windows 95, and some people were wanting it to be more of a difference than it really was. There was all kinds of talk out the yingyang about making all applications "webby", and the "browser" would become the "OS" and all that nonsense. Here it is in the far off year 2016 (why aren't I dead yet?) and they still haven't magically accomplished that. For one example, webby data entry forms still pale in comparison to the user interface (not backend, mind you) of Microsoft Access and any other desktop database.
Not sure, you might find it listed in some periodicals in Google books. I don't recall that Plus for 98 was as popular as Plus for 95 though. 98 already had enough dumb stuff bundled for most people.
Well, yes. The next version of Office was Office 2000. And I think most people upgraded from Office 95 to Office 97 fairly quickly. Office 97 was a very stable product, and still does everything anyone would ever need from an office suite.
Much better 8) Really, it depended on your sound card, but back then most manufacturers payed attention to sound quality. Those cheap on-board sound chips you find everywhere today would have been considered defective back then.
Winamp.
What? There were never any other games besides Doom. 8)
I'd disagree with you there. Particularly in the regular consumer market, the browser is the only application people really wind up using. At least on desktop / laptops... Phones and tablets are a notable exception. Also businesses still tend to use a lot of applications for various tasks, particularly as you said, databases.
Office 97 was a staple for many years. It was pretty rare to see Office 2000 or XP around... I saw a few installs, but pretty much it went from Office 97 on 95/98 machines to Office 2003 on the new fangled XP machines. 2007 saw some use, but 2003 was still king until 2010 came out.
97 would still be sufficient for most people except that it doesn't support the new XML format.... and since 2010 or so, it's become ubiquitous.
I remember in college in the 2003 to 2007 transition, nearly every professor would explicitly tell you to save in the old .doc format. Then soon after 2010 came out and everyone had upgraded, they stopped mentioning it at all.
I went from Office 4.x to Office 97 which to me seemed a more worthwhile upgrade and began to introduce internet related features. Office 2000 was relatively popular as well, but it was really Office XP (2002) that was a bit of an odd release. I guess most users were satisfied with Office 97/2000 and Office 2003 wasn't that far away which became extremely popular.
Plus! 98 was probably around the $50-70 mark when it was released. After the original Plus! for Windows 95, I felt the 98 version was a bit of a disappointment and was just fluff that didn't really add much to the functionality of Windows 98. Plus! for Windows 95 on the other hand was more worthwhile at the time and added Desktop Themes and Scheduled Tasks for example. Windows 98 already head Desktop Themes so Plus! just gave it more themes, and a 'lite' version of MS Golf 98.
Popular computer games at the time that I recall were Need for Speed (3 or High Stakes I think), Quake 2, Half-Life, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Age of Empires 2, Interstate 76, and Baldur's Gate that I can remember off hand.
Plus for WIn 98 had MSRP of $39.95 but discounts and free bundles were common. I think I got it from Compusa for free when I picked up discounted Win98SE upgrade. The major reason to buy it was compressed folders but many people already had multiple programs designed to handle .ZIP files.
Office 95 had one major advantage over Office 4.2: speed. Word 6 was slow and MS got lucky that the major competition suffered from even worse issues. Office 97 was great; Office 2000 was a minor improvement; Office XP was extremely buggy; and Office 2003 was Office XP after the bugs were squashed.