By Lars Kongshem Windows XP and Mac OS X: Will X mark the spot for schools? JULY 2001 -- If Microsoft and Apple are to be believed, this could be the year when computer crashes are finally expelled from schools. But will the release of Windows XP and Mac OS X herald the end of the three-finger reboot? One can only hope and pray. One thing's for sure: Schools can no longer afford to buy computers that crash when kids look at them cross-eyed. It's been more than 15 years since the launch of the first versions of the Macintosh and Windows operating systems, and we've been rebooting ever since. Apple and Microsoft have trotted out countless upgrades and new features over the years, but the wobbly underpinnings of these consumer-grade operating systems have remained mired in yesterday's technology. (Quick: What was the difference between Windows 95 and Windows 98? Answer: Three additional minutes of uptime between reboots.) But this year, the folks in Redmond and Cupertino are finally ready to make a clean break with their crash-test-dummy past. By switching to much more stable foundations while promising compatibility with older applications, they pledge to deliver everything we always wanted -- computers we can count on. An experience worth waiting for? It's been a long journey to get desktop computers with robust mainstream operating systems. Take Microsoft, which tried to make a fresh start with Windows NT in the early part of the 1990s. Aimed at the server market, NT was much more stable, but it was also incompatible with a great deal of software designed for the consumer version of Windows. It wasn't until last year -- when NT was renamed Windows 2000 in its fifth incarnation -- that NT's not-so "New Technology" finally started making serious inroads on the desktop. Nevertheless, most school IT professionals rightly considered Windows 2000 a better choice for the server room than for the classroom, due to steep hardware requirements, a difficult upgrade path from Windows 95/98, and lingering incompatibilities with many device drivers, applications, and multimedia hardware. But that was then. What Microsoft is doing now, of course, is joining the two operating system families into one by taking the best parts from each. The idea behind Windows XP (think "experience," though I suspect it actually denotes "extra profitable") is to combine the stability and security of NT/2000 with the device and application support of the 95/98 family. Can we really have the best of both worlds? Early reports indicate a cautious yes, but this holy grail comes at a heavy price in hardware requirements: In other words, don't even think about running Windows XP on a PC with less than 128 MB of RAM -- or on hardware that is more than one year old. On the other hand, purchasing new PCs with Windows XP pre-installed appears to be a pretty good idea, once Windows XP begins shipping on October 25. Naturally, hardware manufacturers are already announcing "Windows XP Ready PCs" that are certified for XP upgrades, but don't push your luck: In the school district enterprise, it's the pre-installed OS that counts. Of course, one has to wonder at Microsoft's timing in bringing out Windows XP so close on the heels of Windows 2000. Many school districts are just now getting around to planning upgrades from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000. For large districts, this transition could take several years. My advice: Scrap those plans and wait for Windows XP. For school districts, the best strategy is to begin phasing in Windows XP with new hardware purchases. As for the vast majority of existing school-based Windows 95/98 PCs, they are frankly not worth the trouble or expense of upgrading. In most cases, they won't even meet the minimum hardware requirements. Let sleeping dogs lie, and by all means retire those mutts at the end of their useful life spans. And don't forget: Microsoft will discontinue support for Windows 95 by December 31, 2001. You have been warned. Back to the Unix future, Apple-style Apple's track record hasn't been much better than Microsoft's, with several aborted attempts to produce a next-generation operating system. (Remember "Copland" and "Rhapsody," not to mention "Pink" -- the bizarre joint venture with IBM that went absolutely nowhere?) In the end, Apple threw in the towel, lured Steve Jobs back into the fold, and borrowed the Unix underpinnings of Jobs' NeXT OS as the new foundation for the Macintosh. Good move. And now, Apple has actually delivered a next-generation OS, whereas Microsoft's is still in beta. In fact, Apple began selling OS X (think Roman numeral 10, not the X Files) in late March, and started shipping it on new Macs in May, two months ahead of schedule. (But tellingly, OS 9 is still configured as the default OS on new Macs.) Apple badly needed a new OS, as the previous generation lacked pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory, and still forced users to manually allocate memory for each application. (Hey, even Windows 3.1 managed to do that on its own.) It's no secret that the previous-generation Mac OS was a museum artifact. Clearly, the new Mac OS will rock -- but not until the majority of Mac software applications are rewritten to run natively under OS X. Older applications will run, but only in sluggish emulation mode (picture bolting bicycle tires to a Ferrari). My prediction: Mainstream users won't benefit from OS X's advertised gains in stability and speed until next year, when developers start releasing native OS X apps. The bottom line: Schools should hold off on OS X for now and wait until third-party software development catches up. The sweet spot will likely come in early 2002, when more OS X-compatible software titles become available. (As of late March this year, less than 2 percent of Mac apps were rewritten for OS X.) Upgrades should be avoided, as only the very latest Mac hardware will accept OS X. And, naturally, you'll need at least 128 MB RAM in each machine. A final thought: It's quite ironic that Apple has chosen Unix (which dates back to the 1960s) as the foundation for its new operating system; after all, Apple's current lame-duck OS was designed in the 1980s. It just goes to show that age is less important than good breeding. Lars Kongshem, former senior technology editor of Electronic School, is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. Socket archive: April 2001, September 1999, June 1999, February 1999, November 1998