im old school 98

[Sphyenx]

I run a gateway amd athlon 650 processor, with 128 mb ram (I added 64) and a ATI graphics card.. with windows 98, old school stuff. any way that had nothing to do with my post any way. I want to actually dip my hands in to Windows and learn alot about it. Because im going in to the IT field and im not sure really what i need to learn, I look stuff up but i dont exactly know what to look up because well I dont exactly know alot to begin with. I basically just want to know some of the basic things i should know. Im not asking you to do the work, but just reply with some. (example)
Try learning ___, and ___ first. Thats pretty much all i need to know. If you think its a rediculous pst please feel free to delete it. I dont need - points. lol, ~!eNIX

[Tiger Shark]

Simply put.... You need to install a _current_ OS and work from there...

Then start asking questions.... What you are doing right now is kind of like asking "I just bought a Ford Model T and I'd like to know how to maintain it under today's standards".... It's just a little too difficult.....

[fyrewall]

Old school or maybe just obsolete .. (or bordering on obsolete)

[Sphyenx]

what i mean is well the basics to pc's cause I want to screw around on this one and get all the basics to advanced things down. if i buy a new one, im nto gonna test as much as i would on this bad boy. lol

[nihil]

Well,

Windows 98 is a home user, stand alone sort of OS. Microsoft don't make them any more so it is rather limited from a learning viewpoint.

I would say your kit was not really powerful enough to have a "good experience" with XP. Now that probably wouldn't bother a more experienced person who had another faster machine and was only using the slower one for testing.

My suggestion would be to go for Win2000, you might be able to pick that up from people who have upgraded to XP. Failing that try for NT4.0, which is another obsolete OS, but is a professional one and much closer to Win2000 and XP.

You can at least look at user profiles and accounts, user groups and authorities, concepts that have been carried forwards into XP. Also the password system is for real security wise.

just a few thoughts

[Sphyenx]

thank you. ill look up on nt.

[fyrewall]

I am not sure of the min specs for 2000 but I would definately look 2000 up first Sphyenx before you fall back to NT... use NT as your last resort

[nihil]

Fyrewall is right, Windows 2000 is actually NT5.0...............if you dig around some of the more obscure text files in it you actually see it referred to as such

Your machine will certainly run NT4 and Win2000 quite happily. Being corporate systems, they are designed to run on quite low spec "bulk purchase" boxes. By the time XP came out, most of these boxes would have shipped with at least a 1GHz processor and 256Mb of RAM.

Cheers

[gore]

Tiger, he doesn't have to install "current" anything. Microsoft allowed Windows 98 to stay alive because so many business people were using it still, and he's going into IT. It seems to me that using Windows 98 and learning it inside and out is still a valid option for learning.

My recommendations:

You should try to learn as much as you can about DOS. Use the command line as much as possible. No real admin or IT professional uses a GUI all day or they are wussy.

In this forum here, read my sticky posts, because I have links to help you learn DOS, and a few pages to get better information.

When you have Windows 98 pretty well down, go for Windows 2000 or XP, and if possible, find one of those free trials of Windows server 2003, as that will give you something to REALLY play with.

Also, learning UNIX won't hurt any, and may look even better on a resume.


Oh, try to learn at least some basics of Mac OS, so that way if you ever work somewhere and they have a couple Macs laying around you can use them too.


Windows 2000 needs 64 MB RAM and at least a 133 Processor.

[Sphyenx]

Originally posted here by gore
Tiger, he doesn't have to install "current" anything. Microsoft allowed Windows 98 to stay alive because so many business people were using it still, and he's going into IT. It seems to me that using Windows 98 and learning it inside and out is still a valid option for learning.

My recommendations:

You should try to learn as much as you can about DOS. Use the command line as much as possible. No real admin or IT professional uses a GUI all day or they are wussy.

In this forum here, read my sticky posts, because I have links to help you learn DOS, and a few pages to get better information.

When you have Windows 98 pretty well down, go for Windows 2000 or XP, and if possible, find one of those free trials of Windows server 2003, as that will give you something to REALLY play with.

Also, learning UNIX won't hurt any, and may look even better on a resume.


Oh, try to learn at least some basics of Mac OS, so that way if you ever work somewhere and they have a couple Macs laying around you can use them too.


Windows 2000 needs 64 MB RAM and at least a 133 Processor.

thank you all your helpiing me so much, also if you could let me get a look at those dos commands cause i would love to try them all out, cause the more i know the better!, thank you