Do you remember your first computer? I bet most of you do not still have your original computer in your home. The truth is, I love nostalgia and the way things were in olden 
days so I am one of the few that saved my old Windows 98 computer and it still works perfect.
On first hitting the On button, the hard drive came to life and soon after the retro Windows 98 screen came up on the screen. It took about a minute for the first part of the boot to take place. The system did the normal checks for hardware and you could hear the distinctive sound of the floppy drive come to life. I bet most of you have not heard that sound in a long time.
Once the system booted, I was able to access the Internet in just a few minutes. Bear in mind that this system has only a 5 Gig hard drive and 128 Megs of ram. Twinhead makes the computer and it is one of the best-crafted laptops I have ever seen as far as durability goes. It is a Slimnote 9T-166TZ and it was obviously built to last a lifetime.
A quick look at the programs installed include Ad aware, Internet Explorer 6, Adobe Reader 3, Office 97, hurricane tracking programs from 1998 and my old weather station software that I used to use to upload to my website. I think what surprised me the most was the fact that the time and date were still correct even after being in storage for years.
Looking at the screen and the interface really takes you back in time. It was the day of games such as Leisure Suit Larry and Dora The Explorer. Many of these games still were available on floppy disks. It was a real treat to find some unexpected treasures such as a memo that I wrote while I was on my honeymoon. After reading the memo, I now know that I had an oyster sandwich at Hooked On Harry’s in St Augustine on May 20, 2000!
Back in this time period, things were simple. You rarely heard of hijackers stealing your identity and hardware upgrades were more common then virus removals. There was no Remote Support so you had to take your computer to a computer shop for service. It was an era of computer tinkering. Everybody always wanted the newest video card from Nvidea so they could have the fastest gaming experience possible. Games were extremely popular back then and a trip to the nearest retailer would host counter after counter of games and software. Very few games were acquired by downloading back in the Windows 98 days. One of the reasons was the slowness of the Internet and computer hardware.
Even after I purchased a new computer in 2002, I still used this one when we traveled. In fact, I still used it as a server for several weather programs and used it to upload to my website.
While I had the old girl running, I decided to see if I could get any of the latest programs to install. The first thing I tried was to download Firefox and Maxthon. Neither was supported. I then decided to try to see if the machine would connect to Windows Update. Again, that was a no go. Two weather programs that I use Stormlab and Interwarn both worked on the Windows 98 machine. The Office 97 program worked perfect and it even had Power Point in the suite!
With Windows 98, you probably need not fear about a virus infection because in all likelihood, not even the latest Malware will run on Windows 98. As I mentioned in a previous article I did about Windows XP, the day may come when virus programmers will totally stop worrying about XP as the newer operating systems take over the universe and XP may actually be safer then it is today.
I hope you enjoyed your trip down memory lane as much as I did. It was a real refresher to have an actual working antique that allowed me to go back in a time when things were simple and computers were more of a luxury then a necessity.
Article by Joe Z.
Good Post Joe.