I am just trying to get som information on beOS. What is so "superDuper" about beOS? What is so great about it that will make me drop Win98? What can I do with it that I can't do or do as well on any windows system? Thanks...

The Be Operating System is designed with the futurist user foremost in mind. Media creation/consumption may be BeOS's true forte, but no one can live inside a system devoid of email, spreadsheets, and word processors. Those applications are stapled in almost every user's daily diet. Just because BeOS is billed as the MediaOS, that doesn't mean it's somehow sub-optimal at handling more mundane chores. Hardware manufacturers of the world can churn out speedy hardware faster than we (or our wallets) can keep up with. But what good is a 1 GHz machine if the operating system you run on it keeps on crashing because it's so tangled and bloated with old code from programmers who never collaborated much. Why order a spanking new Porsche only to install Buick seats and a Volkswagen suspension. Operating systems like MacOS and Windows were not designed to be fully modular, BeOS is. Preemptive multitasking in BeOS is implemented automatically and transparently, unlike Windows and MacOS. BeOS uses pervasive multithreading, meaning that it will break up large tasks into lots of tiny tasks, thereby increasing the flow rate of data through the system while reducing the time that tasks must wait for the processor. Windows does not multithread much at all. BeOS makes use of 8 processors simultaneously and symmetrically out of the box, only Windows NT can do four (not as well), and for an extra couple hundred dollars. BeOS’s symmetric multiprocessing is distributed evenly and automatically, so if one CPU is busy the current task will be sent to others, therefore BeOS uses around 99.9% or greater. Moreover, Windows does not take full advantage of the multiple CPU’s in fact only 80% (approximately) at best, which is a big difference when the rest is being wasted. Drivers are installed unadorned to the user in BeOS, the drivers are not peculiarly installed from a large database usually unnecessarily taking up space like on Windows. Instead they are automatically detected and initialized in the first boot sequence. Although almost unknown to Windows users, not always are there drivers available for every piece of hardware. But this is not the fault of the developers for BeOS, since there are not very many. Even though many third party and independent developers have been working to make the most widely used hardware compatible for BeOS. Most hardware companies do not want to make drivers for BeOS on their own (which is understandable). The best bet is to build a system that is fully compatible with BeOS. Check with BeOS’s website for compatibility lists. And sure, most of the programs that you use in Windows or MacOS are not available, and that's probably not going to change. There are well over a million software titles for Windows and Macintosh, and less then a percent will be ported to BeOS. The real reason is not because of the massive amounts of software, but how the code is written. Windows is DOS, except with more dynamic link libraries or DLL's (most are no longer used). For Windows users, this is good (even though it's big), because they can use almost any program written for a Microsoft based operating system. Since its modular and POSIX compliant, almost any UNIX or Linux based software can be easily ported with the fully functional C/C++ compiler that comes with BeOS called IDE. The full version of BeOS comes with plenty of sample code. BeOS is reliable, you can run BeOS without restarting, Windows 9x must be restarted at the least once a week so it can clear its registry, or once a day for peek performance, MacOS is about the same. Windows NT 4, and 2000 can be run for a long time, however it is recommended to completely restart the machine once a month. The Professional version alone costs about $50 and has many package deals with the Gobe Productive 2.0 office suite, or with the BeOS Bible by Scot Hacker, or both for about $120. The price for BeOS is very affordable compared to Windows ME full version, which is more then twice as much, and Windows 2000 is more then three times as much for the basic version. BeOS R5 is downloadable from http://free.be.com/ and runs alongside Windows. It is almost 50 megabytes and it is free. No version of Windows can be downloaded (legally at least), and only an older version of MacOS such as 7.5.3 is available from Apple's FTP server. BeOS's Website is at: http://www.be.com To get BeOS go to Gobe: http://www.gobe.com BeBits software database is: http://www.bebits.com For news on BeOS go to: http://www.benews.com or http://www.begroovy.com

You did post kind of a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG message... but I support every point that you made about BeOS. BeOS is a hell of a lot faster than any Windows operating system that I've tried - it boots in 15 seconds flat, and past that short period, things load instantly without any waiting or ridiculously long periods of hard drive grinding. The user interface is great, and is easier to use, in my opinion, than Windows interface in many cases. It also never crashes, slows down, or bogs down the system. As a simple test, I had 4 MP3s playing in the background, as well as a video playing, and several programs running. Each thing ran independently of the other, and they all ran as if they had the full attention of the CPU. I loaded a program to see the load the CPU had, which barely came to 1\3 of the way up. That gives an example of how efficiently it can multitask. That would not work at all in Windows - the MP3s would skip, the hard disk would be grinding furiously, the programs would take forever to load, etc. You're also right about the hardware and driver detection - it all goes fairly unnoticed by the user. True, there aren't near as many programs ported to BeOS as Win and Mac, but there are emulators such as BeWine and BeBochs.

You people made some great points about beOS?

Dual D Flip Flop, I think you took alot of time typing out what is in the BeOS Bible.

BeOS is best used in dual boot with Windows, as it doesn't have enough support to compete or realistically allow for a complete switch at this point. Since personal edition is free and installs on your Windows partition, why not try it and find out?

The GUI... maybe if they ever UPD it DOH! hoping for R6.. or atleast 5.1? NEEDS GL + BONE upD BADLY.. too bad commercial developers leaving it :-\ still hope for games tho if be ever get off their arses and release GL! damnit!