July 24, 1998, Hour 1: Beyond Windows

THIS WEEK ON
SCIENCE FRIDAY...

Science Friday > Archives > 1998 > July > July 24, 1998:

Hour One: Beyond Windows

Copies of Microsoft's Windows 98 operating system are selling better than many computer industry analysts had predicted -- in the 5 weeks since its release, over a million copies have been sold. Of course, some people don't want to jump on the bandwagon, choosing to stay with previous versions of the operating system, or to wait for the next revision. But there are some people who are choosing another route entirely, discovering the many other operating systems currently on the market.

Apple's MacOS continues to evolve, with Mac OS X (ten) scheduled to ship in the fall of 1999. And while OS X is dependent on Apple hardware, another Apple OS, named Rhapsody, is designed to operate on other platforms as well - which could be of interest to the nations' PC owners. Continuing the Apple theme, a company started by several ex-Apple employees, Be, Inc., is selling BeOS, an entirely new operating system that supports more powerful computers and provides extensive networking and media capabilities.

FreeBSD and Linux, two UNIX-type operating systems, are legendary for their reliability -- months between system crashes, in some cases. Many users also like these operating systems for their support for different programming languages and networking capabilities. And both of these operating systems have another feature - they're both free. Still other users swear by OS2, an operating system created by IBM. Even the Amiga operating system, designed to run on computers made by a company that stopped production years ago, has its fans.

Plus - Last week, Sun announced details about a new computer system called "Jini." Called a distributed computer system, Jini relies on extensive networking and sharing of resources among many different devices. Instead of needing a powerful central computer to guide interactions between, say, a digital camera and a printer, the two devices could speak directly to each other in snippets of Java code. It's a design that, if it works, may make our current ideas about operating systems obsolete. We'll find out more. Beyond Windows - on this hour of Science Friday.

We asked you:
What operating system do you use? What would make would make you willing to switch?
Here's what a few hundred of you had to say!

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Larry Augustin
President and Co-Founder
VA Research
Mountain View, CA

Nicholas Petreley
Contributing Editor, Infoworld
Columnist, NT World Japan
San Francisco, CA

Bill Joy
Co-Founder and Vice President for Research
Sun Microsystems
Aspen, CO

Jamie Love
Director
Consumer Project on Technology
Washington, DC

Books/Articles Discussed:

Talk of the Nation: Science Friday^® is a science talk show which can be heard each Friday afternoon, 2-4 pm Eastern Time over public radio. SciFri is hosted by veteran NPR science correspondent Ira Flatow. Have questions, comments, suggestions about the show? Contact us at scifri@npr.org. Send questions, comments, suggestions about the site to producer@sciencefriday.com .

Science Friday^® is produced by ScienceFriday Inc.., and is a registered service mark.

The Science Friday^® Web site is a production of ScienCentral, Inc.

Executive web producer: Ira Flatow
Web producer: Charles Bergquist