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Subject:Re: Windows NT (to non-NT users) From:"Banttari, Ananda" <ABanttari -at- SDSI -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 3 Jun 1998 12:43:47 -0500
Hi all!
I have Windows NT 4.0 at work and Windows 95 at home. (The ONLY reason I
have 95 at home is some 95-only hardware.) I went from Windows 3.11 to
NT at work, so I'm much more familiar with NT than 95. The more I use
Windows 95, the more I want to use Windows NT. It's MUCH more stable. I
can count on crashing the 95 machine at least twice per evening; I've
crashed my NT machine maybe a dozen times in 9 months. In comparison
with NT, 95 is like beta software.
> I mostly use Frame, Word, Acrobat, Corel Draw, Illustrator, Hijaak,
> RoboHelp, PageMaker, Visio, and Authoware.
>
All of these will run on NT. For Hijaak, you'll need to get the latest
version,
since the previous version does not run on NT (the 16-bit version did,
the version after that did not).
You *do* need more ram to run NT than 95. With your setup, I'd recommend
128 MB. (*Especially* with things like Illustrator and PageMaker.) You
could get by with 64 MB, but push for more.
The big advantage of NT over 95: multi-threading. Windows 95 is
multi-tasking: you can have many tasks, but only one of them can
actually "work" at a time.
Windows NT is multi-tasking and multi-threaded: more than one task can
"work" at a time. I've successfully formatted a disk while printing from
Frame and cranking through a query in MS Access. That's impossible with
Windows 95: both the formatting and the printing are "exclusive" tasks
that prevent you from doing anything else at the same time.
The problems with NT: device drivers. Plug and play is nonexistent.
Getting a
postscript driver to work can be a bit of a pain, though Adobe just came
out with a new one. Administrator mode/privileges can also be a pain if
that isn't implemented correctly.
Another advantage is the possibility of access to UNIX boxes...there are
programs (like Exceed) that enable command-line or graphic interfaces to
UNIX boxes across a network. (Check with your engineering/system admin
gurus for more info on this one.)
--Ananda Banttari
Tech Writer, SDS
Ananda_Banttari -at- sdsi -dot- com
