I have been using the same workstation operating system (OS) for close to nine years: Windows NT4 Workstation. Yup, go ahead – roll your eyes and howl! I’ll laugh right along with you and slap you on your back after you slap me on mine. The joke is on me so I buy next round! However, notice the title of this essay is “My Workstation,” not “My Favorite Workstation” Additionally, the emphasis is on the word workstation.

Most of the people reading of this essay are techies. You know – cuuting and bleeding edge types. Bells and whitles. Gadgetry. Gee whizzery. Off course NT4 is none of that. I once was down that road, but through the years as middle-agedom won some arguements, i have been content with NT4. No, NT4 is not my dream system and is not my favorite operating system, but is my workhorse.

NT4 is always has been somewhat of a blacksheepand outsider. Never popular with the multimedia and games crowd, that’s for sure. However, multimedia and computer games are not my cup of tea. Not interest at all. My Computer is primarily a word processor and research tool. I use Word 97, some occasional spreadsheets, Eudora 5.1 Pro, Firefox, and a handful of other utilities. Along with NT4, all of the packages I use "officially" are obsolete and no longer actively supported. According to whom? Those tools continue to meet my needs!

Okay, so I don't live on any cutting or bleeding edge. Nonetheless I am productive. I have provided technical writing services for many years and have focused on print medium rahther than online help and HTML. Structured documents are my staple and I use templtes, styles, and many macros to help me work effeciently. After many years of fine-tuning this environment, I have a workstation that hums everyday. Thus, Word 97 still fits me like a glove. I have no need to change.

I migrated from Windows for Workgroups (WFWG) 3.11 to NT4. In fact, for minor chuckles and posterity's sake, I still maintain my original WFWG partition, fully functional with Microsoft Office 6 and Netscape 3 (ha!). Talk about fast on any post-486 system! Nonetheless, I joyfully bypassed all the misery experinced by many people who used Windows 95/98/ME. I always have had a stable system. I enjoy and tinker with GNU/Linuxand please don't flame me for this -- but I have seen just as many seg faults as BSODs (Blue Screen of Death). No, I am not saying that NT4 is better than GNU/Linux. I am only saying that my system is stable.

My NT4 system is rock-solid. I never have been required to reinstall NT4. Never! The primary reason? Probably that several years ago I learned how to completely strip Internet Explorer and Outlook from my system. No Active X or Visual Basic scripting engine is on my system either. I've depended on Kerio 2.1.5 firewall for many years (previously called Tiny long ago). I tend to download only software that helps my production, so I never have been infected with a virus, trojan horse, spyware, or had my browser hijacked.

Fast? NT4 is plenty fast for my needs. I use some older hardware too -- a 400 MHz K6-III+ and 256 MB of RAM. Most apps open quickly --- except two open source products installed, Firefox and OpenOffice. Hmmm. Nonetheless, I have yet to learn how to type faster than this system can display or save my text!

Has Microsoft been my buddy?Hardly! Nonetheless I have the last laugh because I still am as productive as I want to bewith NT4. Sure, NT4 is not free software and never will be, but NT4 (and Office 97) were the last of a dead breed in the proprietary Microsoft world. Back when those products initially were released and compared to today's standards, licensing was harmless and "phone home" had not yet invaded Microsoft psyche. I never will experience the nonesense of Modern Microsoft licensing and snooping. but as a classic workstation operating system, Nt4 has served me well. If I wanted, I could use NT4 for several more years.

Now ber in mind that NT4 is getting to long in the tooth, and that is why at the beginning of this essay I laughed right along with you! I started the process of moving to Slackware and KDE. Slowly but surely. Nonetheless, if choice trully matters then NT4 has done me well for many years and my choice all along has been to snub "upgrading" and the old falsehood that "newer is better." and