In George Alper's high school television production class, students at Desert Vista High School in Phoenix, Arizona, are able to perform these functions with the help of Windows 98. For five days each week, students of Alper's class arrive at the all-purpose lab at 6 a.m. to produce a five-minute school television show. The news show, which starts off with 3-D animation introductions, includes feature stories created and edited with programs running on Windows 98.

A smooth experience
"I pride myself on providing the most technologically advanced education for my kids," says Alper. He ventures to guess that the multimedia lab is the most used classroom in the school, if not the entire school district. Not only is the lab used for production of the school's daily DVTV shows, but also to produce the school's yearbook, newspaper, and for photo imaging classes.

Since the class installed Windows 98, students have been able to make better use of their time. "When I was doing my photo-spreads for the yearbook," says Chris Grabe, a producer for the school's completely digital yearbook, "it wasn't crashing and I would be able to get more done in less time." Windows 98 provided him with enhanced performance and reliability while scanning 30-megabyte color negative files. When he had been using PageMaker before Windows 98, particularly with the color picture spreads, the computer froze too often. Eric Schmidlin, a video editor and producer for the school's show, had similar experiences. "When I capture video onto the computer and place transitions between each clip, it hasn't been crashing out as much."

Increased speed and compatibility
As 3-D animator for the school's show, Spencer Thornock created the show's introduction that featured a 3-D dancing baby and Alper in the same frame. Thornock edited the captured video of Alper, inserted the baby, and then merged the footage. With this project and many others that take up a large amount of memory, says Thornock, Windows 98 was great because it included the File Allocation Table 32-bit (FAT32) utility. FAT32 has the ability to allocate disk space more efficiently and regain unused space. "You can squeeze more space out of it--we can get more play time in terms of the videos that we save to our computer."

With Windows 98, transferring pictures from a peripheral device such as a digital camera to the computer was made easier because the operating system "has the ability to identify USB devices on the fly. You don't have to reboot," says Alper, "and it enables you to immediately use that device. That's a spectacular asset."

In addition, Windows 98 provides television reception capabilities. This enables the students to receive and display television broadcasts on their computer monitor. In the future, when recording and archiving on DVD becomes a standard process, Alper hopes to archive DVTV's daily productions on DVD. He even hopes to play feature stories off DVDs while broadcasting live directly off the computer.

Unique interface
Microsoft's new operating system has designed the Windows desktop and Web interface to look and function similarly. With the Internet Explorer 4.0 browser, users can now explore their hard drive with the same method they use to explore the Internet. "I like the integrated Web interface," says Thornock. "One time I was trying to set up a zip drive and I needed to go to their Web site. Instead of having to get Internet access, I typed in the address and right away, I was there. The entire process went really fast."

Windows 98's Web interface complements a new feature, the Personal Web Server. The utility essentially turns the personal computer into a Web server. The user is then able to create and manage a page on the Internet without subscribing to an Internet service provider. Alper's students hope to take advantage of this feature to create Desert Vista's Web site.

New features
"There's a lot of little features that are different, that make it easier to get around," says Schmidlin. "There are a lot more shortcuts and buttons that I can use."

"Right when I installed it, I could customize it a lot easier than before," remarks Doug Michaelson, a staff member of the school's newspaper and DVTV. "There are better system tools and I'm able to video and record tapes a lot more efficiently."

As a reporter for the school's yearbook, Michaelson uses Windows 98's Multiple Display Support to execute several tasks simultaneously. "Let's say I do an interview for the show. I can hook up two video monitors to one desktop. Then I can type the story in Microsoft Word on one screen, and switch over to the other screen and pull up the video of the interview. With Windows 98 I can simultaneously use a video editor and work on my Word document at the same time," says Michaelson, "without switching back and forth between screens like I had to do with Windows 95."

"We've all thought that the upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98 has been such a huge leap," says Michaelson. "It handles everything beautifully and the functionality is really cool."