Cooperative vs. Preemptive Multitasking

In my search to discover the similarities and differences between the cooperative and preemptive multitasking methods, I have been hard-pressed to find an abundance of material. From what I can discern, there are no true similarities between the two, other than the obvious: both are multitasking methods, both require use of an operating system, etc. Differences, however, abound. Cooperative multitasking is, for the most part, obsolete. In this method, each process periodically checks with the …

…are essentially "unaware" of one another, never having to pause for the current process to "check in" with the operating system. This speeds up overall processing time in itself. Additionally, the preemptive method allows the operating system to preempt any process at any time, reassigning the time to a higher priority process. From this, we can see that in most situations the preemptive multitasking method is generally more effective, and thus, more widely used today.