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Windows 98 is better than Windows 95This is the workhorse behind the scene. Actually, I didn't buy this machine. After arrived United States, I was converted to the Macintosh camp. However, my wife is still feel comfortable with the Windows, so she bought it with pleasure. Of course, I am the technical support staff in home. The Pavilion comes with a Quantum BigFoot 4.3GB hard drive, which always crashed the poor Windows 95. From the Microsoft web sites, I learned that the Windows 95 dosen't support the BigFoot hard drive well. So I upgrade to Windows 98. As expected, the damn "Windows Protect Error, you need restart your computer..." message disappeared. First time, I learned how superior Windows 98 is, compared to the shabby Windows 95. Windows 95 always doesn't recognized the new devices on the new motherboard, you can always see the "Other Devices", "PCI bridge", "Unknown devices". After upgrade to Windows 98, all the nuance disappeared. You get the msconfig, ipconfig. and WinIPCfg. They are very useful tools for troubleshooting.Keyboard advantage of WindowsAfter I get a Western Digital 13GB hard drive, I installed a Windows NT Server 4.0 on it. I use the Pavilion as a file server for the other Macintoshes. WinGate helps me to make the Pavilion into an Internet gateway, so I can share the Internet connection with the iMac and Performa. By the way, I love the Macintosh keyboard very much, and don't like the ordinary looking Windows keyboard. However, I can do all the things without a mouse on a Windows box (except the graphic applications), but I cannot live without a mouse on a Macintosh. I think it is an advantage of Windows. You can always using a keyboard to control everything. You know, I am a keyboard freak. Sharing the Internet ConnectionSeveral months after I wrote the above paragraph, I realized how clumsy the WinGate is. It is just a proxy, you need a lot of configuration work done on the client machines. That's rather tedious. You must take care of every kind of Internet protocols, the HTTP, POP3, IMAP, FTP, ICQ, NNTP and RealPlayer. That's too much. Now I have found a much more advanced solution for the Internet sharing, that's NAT softwares. NAT means Network Address Translation. The most easy to use one I used is the WinRoute software. For the clients, the Internet connection is transparent. You can use any Internet protocols and applications as will, just as if you are on the Net from the client machine. If you are using the Macintosh, you can use the IPNetRouter, it is roughly the counterpart of WinRoute on the Macintosh platform. By the way, NAT is platform independent, that is to say, clients can be any machine, UNIX box, Macintoshes, or Windows box, Amiga box, you name it. |