BenoitRen

Most of that mockery, though, is because the name of the OS has "95" and "98" in it, immediately strapping it to a certain point in time. This ellicits a response of "Why are you using a Windows that is x years old?". If it was "Windows 4" and "Windows 5" instead, you'd have less of this.

Windows XP is not just a skin over Windows 2000. They did more work than that. ClearType being an important one for LCD screens. It's just as silly as saying that Win9x is a GUI for DOS. That's only talking at face value. There's much more going on in the code.

Posting in this thread doesn't bother me either, but that doesn't mean I should.

Unfortunately, Win9x crashing has long become part of popular culture. You can't bring the OS up in discussion without that being pointed out. I'm sure that it was crash-prone at a time, most likely when Microsoft tried to ram IE into the OS. But I get annoyed at people who claim Windows 95 is a buggy piece of s*** that crashes all the time. Last time it was by a Haiku developer who supposedly even used it for years. I find that hard to believe when I've been using it for 10 years now without too many problems. Sure, once in a half year or so I get a BSOD. Or if I try some new software and it misbehaves in a way other than just crashing, the system may glitch a bit and require a reboot. But I think that's an acceptable failure rate. Regarding Windows XP, I've never had it crash on me. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its quirks. At times my DVD drive will disappear for no reason, and reappear later. Rarely the Windows XP theme will suddenly be selected for the taskbar (I use Classic). Windows XP = Windows 2000 + ClearType + better Hyper-Threading support + much improved graphics support. Windows 2000 isn't much of a media OS.

Without OpenOffice I would never be able to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint(less) files. It's quite important in this regard. I would vote, but 1) They're the same people who say Windows 95 users should use 1.1.4 when it works just fine if they would get rid of the IsDebuggerPresent API call. 2) I need to register at yet another site just to vote. Bah.

What do you mean by limited resources? I don't see why it's not good enough for games.

1) I already knew. Old news. 2) Announcing each release in this thread doesn't help at all.

Doesn't mean much when big projects like SeaMonkey still work fine on Windows 95. It's not like Windows 98's user base is that big either. Wrong. I guess you didn't know that Win95 supports USB to a certain extent either? Install the official USB supplement, which also installs a newer kernel, and suddenly Win95 supports USB and WDM '1.0' drivers.

Thanks for the rant; I enjoyed it. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much fact.

Eh, I've tried AbiWord before. Its Windows version isn't that good. On GNU/Linux, though, it's fine.

I used to think this as well, but it's not true. You can hide rootkits with FAT32 from the kernel as well.

And Win98 SE was released 9 years ago. Your point? Yes, I know Win95 doesn't support WDM '2.0' drivers, but that's a hardware limitation, not a software one! And VirtualDub is software.

So now my question is, why did he drop Windows 95 support when Win98 and Win95 are so similar?

BZZT! Wrong! Officially version 1.1.4 is the last to run under Windows 95, but that's just laziness talking. The ONLY thing preventing version 2.x to run under Windows 95 is the IsDebuggerPresent API call, which the program doesn't even use. Patch that and everything's fine.

The latest version of OpenOffice works on Windows 98. Perhaps even on Windows 95, as recently it still did.

Oh, so they jumped version numbers? My mistake.

Uhh, right from this post in this thread?

Wrong. My standard solution for IE-related issues is "use another web browser". And I actually have a very good reason for that that's not based on fanboyism. Probably not, since there has been no Win95 support for several stable versions.

Oh, please. You know as well as I do that plugging something in your signature is something totally different. I wouldn't mind Opera fans linking their favourite web browser in their signature.

And Opera FTW. Seriously, if you're still a win9x user and don't run IE, then Opera is the best alternative. Opera is a good web browser, but there was no need to suddenly swoop in and recommend it in a thread about the end-of-life of Netscape Navigator. Opera fans can be annoying...

Uhh, welcome to the past? The last update was in February of this year.

I use ffdshow, so WMP version shouldn't matter. I didn't have WVC-1 enabled, so I enabled it temporarily. But it didn't make a difference.

With Windows Media Player 6.0. I got some weird image with Japanese signs on it, and then got directed to the WMP download page.

I wasn't able to play the WMV file linked on this page, though. Maybe it's DRMed?

WMP 6.4 needs IE installed. Version 6.1 was the last to get by without it.