On 22 Sep 98, at 13:00, Shyamal Gupta wrote:

> On Win98, I've gained a few hundred MB's of disk space after conversion to
> FAT32. But haven't as yet noticed any other advantages. And this big
> disadvantage with uninstalling Win98 is still there. (Particularly since,
> as a matter of routine maintenance, I periodically uninstall and reinstall
> both Win98 and Win95).

There really _isn't_ much in the way of other advantages to FAT32.  It's
not the least bit more robust.  It's usually slightly slower than FAT16 --
although you'd need benchmarking tools to notice it in the vast majority
of cases.  The only other advantage, of course, is that it supports much
larger partitions than FAT16.  But after those two advantages, there
aren't any more that I'm aware of.

You'll have to clarify what you mean by "uninstall" Windows95.  Do you
mean you revert to Windows3.x (or in the case of Windows98, revert to
Windows95)?  It's either that, or you wipe your disk, isn't it?  And I would
not consider wiping my disk periodically to be "routine maintenance."  :))
But then, "periodically" is a slippery word -- no telling whether the period
is days or years.

In the end, however, FAT32 only prevents you from uninstalling Windows
in the sense that the term means reverting back to an older, prior version
of Windows.  It certainly doesn't prevent you from wiping your drive and
starting over again, which is the only way I can understand the comment
about "routine" maintenance.  (Of course, if you're doing a major amount
of alpha or beta software testing, you might actually have a need to wipe
the disk once in a while.)  And as far as reverting to an older version of
Windows goes . . . it's something I wouldn't do on a bet.  I'd wipe the
drive and reinstall the older version from scratch.  My goodness . . . MS
has trouble enough doing _upgrades_ decently!  Imagine how poorly
they might accomplish a _downgrade_.

No.  Wait.  I take that back.  I recently downgraded from Windows95 to
Windows98,  :))  and it was about the same, except that 98 runs much
slower due to Bill Gate's perverse desire to try and confuse everyone
about where their desktops end and the Internet begins.  :-o

Lance

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