Memphis is shipping
Grant King
Memphis is now shipping to a select group of testers, several of whom have
already received it. The beta test group will be expanded over the next
few months and the test is expected to run until at least this summer or
early fall. One interesting thing is that IE4 is not in the current build
of Memphis; rather it ships with IE3. IE4 will be added later, however.
--
Grant King
http://www.mindspring.com/~ggking3
For Win 95/NT news check
http://www.mindspring.com/~ggking3/pages/windmill.htm
Eric Gisin
In article <01bbf8ff$d55cd380$f535b9ce@grant>, ggk...@mindspring.com
says...
> Memphis is now shipping to a select group of testers, several of whom have
> already received it. The beta test group will be expanded over the next
> few months and the test is expected to run until at least this summer or
> early fall. One interesting thing is that IE4 is not in the current build
> of Memphis; rather it ships with IE3. IE4 will be added later, however.
The InfoWorld web site has an article that says MS is debating whether to
ship two versions of Memphis, one without FAT32 (the retail?) and one
with FAT32 (for OEMs). Apparently FAT32 conversion is too "difficult" for
the average Win95 user.
I don't know what the big deal about FAT32 is. Just make sure Win9x ships
with *no* FAT32 conversion tool. That way you get FAT32 on new disks,
average users won't be able to do a potentially destructive FAT32
conversion, and experienced users can do a fdisk/format if they want
FAT32.
I expect MS will be making Win9x press releases in the next month. They
wouldn't want to repeat the Nashville build 999 incident, were the press
reported on Nashville based on a leaked beta they downloaded from the
Internet, then have MS announce Nashville (Win96) was dropped in favour
of Memphis.
--
Eric Gisin, London.on.ca -- Windows/UNIX/Internet Consulting
http://www.webhaven.com/ericg/ mailto:er...@techie.com
Gary White
I heard there will be an official conversion utility but separate from
win97. Does not matter to me since I am already converting FAT16 to
FAT32 with PartitionMagic3. Looks like MS is lagging behind the
companies who specialize in utilities again.
--
Gary White, Michigan, USA
Grant King
Eric:
I agree that FAT32 appears to be one of the main hangups with Memphis. I
posted a
newsgroup article about this a while ago. The average Joe User won't check
to see if his hardware is compatible with FAT32 before trying it, and as
such some users will end up with a system that won't boot at all (not even
from a floppy), resulting in much bitching at MS by end users and the press
for shipping such a "flawed" upgrade. Thus, MS would probably prefer to
ship Memphis without FAT32 and/or without the conversion utility, so as to
avoid a PR nightmare.
On the other end, power users really want FAT32 and a conversion utility.
Thus, MS has to decide who it wants to please. The most likely solution is
the middle ground you suggested: Memphis ships with FAT32 but no conversion
utility, and fdisk is designed to steer users to FAT via default rather
than FAT32.
Frankly, although FAT32 is a great feature, I am not planning on using it
in the near future. I am waiting (and hoping) for MS to find a common file
allocation system (apart from FAT) which both NT and Win 95 can see. I
currently dual boot between 95 and NT4, and I avoid both NTFS and FAT32 for
the simple reason that each operating system can't see the other if I use
these. This is particularly a problem for shared files, such as MSWord,
etc. My guess is that either NT will support FAT32 (more likely) or
Memphis will support NTFS (less likely due to Win 95 limitations). When
that occurs I will probably switch to one of these file systems.
I also agree that we should see a press release from MS about Memphis in
the near future, although probably not until the expanded round of beta
testing later this winter (they are still trying to keep it quiet at the
moment, particularly since the current version is really more akin to an
alpha than a beta). I don't think they want to "announce" Memphis as
a beta until they have successfully married IE4 to the current build, since
they want to give the press something better to look at rather than all of
that boring infrastructure stuff.
Grant King
According to the Memphis release notes, the FAT16 to FAT32 conversion
utility will be included in the final release (it is also in the current
build). Note that there will probably be no way to convert from FAT32 back
to FAT16 in Memphis, but third party products already allow for this.
--
Grant King
http://www.mindspring.com/~ggking3
For Win 95/NT news check
http://www.mindspring.com/~ggking3/pages/windmill.htm
Gary White <garywh...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in article
<32D08E...@worldnet.att.net>...
Cyber Demon Almighty
> The InfoWorld web site has an article that says MS is debating whether to
> ship two versions of Memphis, one without FAT32 (the retail?) and one
> with FAT32 (for OEMs). Apparently FAT32 conversion is too "difficult" for
> the average Win95 user.
All you have to do is exit to DOS mode, and run CVT.EXE. That's all! (I've
got Win97 Memphis December release)
> I don't know what the big deal about FAT32 is. Just make sure Win9x ships
> with *no* FAT32 conversion tool. That way you get FAT32 on new disks,
> average users won't be able to do a potentially destructive FAT32
> conversion, and experienced users can do a fdisk/format if they want
> FAT32.
It ain't destructive. Also, PartitonMagic 3.0 also has a FAT-FAT32
conversion tool, which also works fine...
> I expect MS will be making Win9x press releases in the next month. They
> wouldn't want to repeat the Nashville build 999 incident, were the press
> reported on Nashville based on a leaked beta they downloaded from the
> Internet, then have MS announce Nashville (Win96) was dropped in favour
> of Memphis.
Memphis seems as if it's real. It displays "Memphis [4.10.1351]" when you
type VER at the command prompt
Cheers!
Cyebr Demon Almighty