The Microsoft Curse

Windows . Microsoft windows . This has become one of the biggest names in history . My life is intertwined with the manipulation of the various forms of windows and the hundreds of intricate settings inside it . Windows 98 and XP both have their positives and negatives as far as I am concerned . Windows 98 has become a necessity on my computer since it is plagued by bad sectors and strapped for RAM and video memory . Installing it is easy on the nerves for me , with the installation completed within 15 mins . The drivers and setups are all at easy reach in the D: drive , and that too finishes within 15 mins . So my OS for all diagnostic purposes is up and running . But running on 98 is like riding a Hero Honda CD100 . Somehow it lacks juice , although it can be kept in spic and spank condition , it gets to your nerves in the end . Response is great , with under 10 seconds bootup and 2 second shut downs . Disk Doctor and Surface Scans can be called into action through DOS and everything is fine . But you still feel weak and pre-archaic .

This is where XP comes in . Once you start runnig XP its hard to go back . Each time I abandon a slow XP and go back to 98 , I yearn to return back to the cosy XP base . It feels like a cushion under me . I cant explain it but I feel pampered and a deep fulfillment . But then comes the drawbacks . Since I dont trust my motherboard and that too with enough reason , its mandatory that I run my disk checks . But here is where XP lets me down . Even though it can be done at startups , it is too messy to be done correctly and frequently enough . And XP does tend drag on after a few months or so ( I have'nt had even a single install on any OS last for more than 2 months ) . But being online in XP is soothing . I can open any number of tabs and windows in Netscape or Opera or in Yahoo! or MSN and still expect it to run even after a few hangups . Nothing gets completely stuck on XP .

Linux is something beyond my grasp . So running linux is not an option even though I have redhat 8 and fedora CDs lying around .

So the new hard disk is on and running XP . Lets see how this goes .