as much as i opt for this OS - the company was shutdown,no future dev ,no future . so why do you bother with it ?

development is still taking place, in the form of open BeOS and others. Open BeOS will first attempt to make its OS identical to BeOS 5, then further develop it.

It still works on my new machine and it boots so much faster than winxp I can get on and do what I need and shutdown. It does what I need it to! My time is important to me at least.

I use it simply because it works. It makes my computer work properly. That's all I care about. I want to be able to turn my computer on and have it work without having to jack with it. I got sick of having to reboot every time I made the slightest change to my system. I prefer the flexibility offered by x86 hardware; otherwise I’d use a Sun workstation or maybe even a G4-based system from Apple. Of the operating system offered for x86 systems, BeOS seems to work best for me. There's just waaaaaaaaaaaay too many conveniences. Installation doesn't get much easier--or faster. I can install BeOS faster than I can install FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, or any version of Windows. The only thing I've ever seen that installs easier is DOS. If I install Windows, Linux, or some other operating system, there's all these drivers to install, settings to specify, things to configure, etc. With BeOS, it's much simpler. With Windows, I have to reboot half a dozen times or more during installation because a driver got installed and the system needs to reboot, or an application was installed and I need to reboot, or a system setting changed and I need to reboot. When I install BeOS, I install the OS, boot it, and that's it. Re-installation is even better. If you screw up your installation of BeOS, you can re-install the whole damn operating system just by dropping and dragging the BeOS folder from the installation CD onto your hard disk--just drag and drop! Best of all, you don't lose your applications, desktop settings, scripts, networking configuration--it's all still there (stored in your /home, away from core OS files). If I re-installed Windows from the installation CD, I'd have to re-install all my applications, re-enter all my networking information, re-configure the display, re-edit the registry, etc. I can re-install BeOS and not have to redo anything. Just last night, I needed to crop some photos. All I had to do was click the files to display them in a viewer and then use the mouse to select what I wanted and simply drag the selection onto the desktop! BeOS automatically created files containing the selection! (These are known as “clippings”.) There is no way I could have done this as simply, quickly, and easily with anything else. Last month, I needed to set up an FTP server so some friends of mine could log in and download some things from my system. All I had to do to set my system up as an FTP server was click a check box and type a login for them to use! That was it! I didn't have to install anything and I didn't even have to reboot. Just click a check box. If I did this under Linux or Solaris, the process wouldn't have been nearly so simple--and Windows does even include an FTP server at all--I'd have to install a third-party server app. So sure, I could have done the same thing with a different platform, but there's no way I could have done it simpler, faster, or easier. Recently, I needed to copy a so-called "enhanced" music CD. I happened to have Windows up and running (I was testing some Windows software), so I tried doing this under Windows. I tried using Nero Burning ROM to copy the disc—it couldn't. I tried using Plextor's DiskDupe (also from Ahead)--no go. I even tried Easy CD Creator without success. I booted up BeOS and copied the disc without hassle. I'm sure there's software for Windows that could have copied that disc (I don't remember if I tried CloneCD or not), but with BeOS, no additional software was necessary. So many things are simplified. With BFS, I don't have to bother formatting hard drives. Just create the partition--it formats on the fly. I don't have to worry about fragmentation. Although BFS resists fragmentation remarkably well, fragmentation is a non-issue. Due to the pervasively multi-threaded nature of BeOS, the drive heads are going to be skipping around all over the place anyway with or without drive fragmentation. I don't have to worry about improper shutdowns, thanks to the journaling. None of that "Your computer was not properly shut down" crap. Converting MP3 files to CD audio and burning them onto a CD-R disc all in real time is certainly possible under Windows, but every time I've done it, I've felt as if I were walking a fine line between making a playable disc and a coaster--probably because I was. It worked, but I always had to choose really slow burn speeds (2x - 4x). Under BeOS, I can do this at 16x AND surf the 'net, play a game, listen to MP3s, or whatever else--and not have to worry. Multitasking while burning discs is no problem. Under Windows, I get coasters if I try this. Even better, BeOS includes a CD burner app! Sure, it ain't fancy and offers only basic functionality, but it works and it works very well. I can listen to MP3s without having the irritation of occasional clicks, pops, or zippering if I'm doing something CPU-intensive or rapidly scrolling up and down windows. I'm a big WinAmp fan (I actually *paid* for it, back when it was shareware and there was a convenient way to do this.), but Sound Play on BeOS beats the crap out of any other MP3 player I've ever seen. Sound Play does everything WinAmp can, including using WinAmp skins and plugins, but it can also use professional VST plugins. I can adjust the pitch of MP3s without affecting the speed, allowing me to play along without tuning annoyances. Of course, being able to play MP3s backward, albeit a trick of dubious value, is also I always get better full screen video playback under BeOS. I have never gotten Plug and Play to work flawlessly under Windows. There were always odd little problems. I had an audio card that didn't like IRQ9. I would assign this card IRQ7 using my motherboard's Plug and Play BIOS through the CMOS setup utility. Windows kept changing the assignment--to IRQ9! It was quite irritating. Device Manager would not allow me to change the assignment. I had specified the correct setting using the Plug and Play assignment features of the motherboard CMOS setup utility, but Windows may override this. Once when I booted Windows, it assigned every PCI device to the same IRQ, saw that they were all conflicting, and then disabled them all! I have never had a single problem with Plug and Play under BeOS. If I set something manually, my setting doesn't get overridden. Honestly, I don't really care about operating systems. I don't want to think about them. I don't even want to have to know how they work. I don't want to fiddle with crap. I want to spend my time doing things rather than figuring out why something doesn't work or setting something up. With BeOS, I don't have to worry with crap, I can just turn my computer on and use it I should mention, though, that all my system hardware was already fully BeOS compatible. I built my system with hardware carefully chosen to work under the widest possible range of operating systems. If BeOS didn't work with my hardware, I might be willing to make a few small changes like replacing a NIC, but I would not go out of my way to make it work. If, like some people, I had a lot of unsupported hardware, I would not bother with it. Some things do bug me. I don't have a proper hard disk recording solution for BeOS. I wish printer support were just a little better. I wish 5.x had support for hardware-accelerated OpenGL. Nevertheless, even an incomplete BeOS gives me less stress and fewer headaches than Windows. The fact that BeOS is officially dead doesn't mean that what I have no longer works. As long as it works, I'll use it. However, if and when the time comes that BeOS doesn't do what I need it to do or the moment something better comes along, I'll stop using it. I have no loyalty to any platform. I just want a solution that works right and right now that happens to be BeOS.

Damn, nice book you wrote there. I can't wait for OpenBeOS to be released so I can install it on my gaming rig.

"as much as i opt for this OS - the company was shutdown,no future dev ,no future . so why do you bother with it ?" Seems you have some major typos, as well as mistakes. I'll let the typos go for now. "The company was shutdown" No, not exactly, they just sold their property to Palm and sued M$. "No future development" No, sorry, OpenBeOS is doing that as you speak. "No future" You're in no position to say for sure.

Hey BeOS worked wonderful for me...i'm an impatient guy when it comes to boot up & BeOS was booting so damn fast!! Damn,even my redhat,debian & slackware systems couldn't boot as fast as it! :)