JustinStacey.x

I couldn't agree more. Been using Win7 since day one of the RC and have really started liking the start menu, although I use the winkey + R for everything I possibly can. But clicking the start orb and typing in the first few letters of whatever app I need is awsome. I do agree with others as far as the Windows Explorer though. god what a friggin mess. its been like that since Vista came out... I don't think it's going to get better any time soon.

I agree with this almost wholeheartedly, however, I have to make my view clear that I find the Windows 2000/98/95 style start menu extremely annoying after having used the XP and Vista one. We have an engineer at work who (I think) changes all of the start menus to the classic style for some unknown reason, and it drives me up the wall. To get into My Computer or my Documents you end up having to minimize everything and fish around for it on the desktop. Not only that but to get to things like Control Panel and settings you have to go to a submenu. With XP's there are less clicks, with Vista's some have more clicks, but the search is useful.

Can I ask what brings you to this win-9x forum then? You don't use 98, you don't like it, and I don't think I've seen you post anything constructive or helpful here about win-98. It's a good question IMO and I'd like to know, why you're wasting your precious (as I guess) time on Win9x zealots forum? He was polite, so don't drive him out. Besides, he is telling the truth. I know it because I'm using both OSes. I had more than month uptime on XP and on 98 I never have more than 8 hours uptime, because I like to experiment with different software. On XP I've experimented even more, so OSes were in equal conditions. Lol @ them: 'not posted anything constructive'. Only because they don't see my criticism of Windows 9x as being constructive. I guess for me to be seen as constructive I truly have to start believing that Windows 9x is the best just to satisfy you lot? Heaven forbid I have a difference of opinion and evidence to back up what I've said about 9x being vastly inferior. And as I recall, if you lot think you know constructive, it wasn't me who started slandering cluberti/coffiefiend when they merely disagreed with someone's statements on here, the poster who I believe is now banned. You people are obviously just jealous of my Windows XP uptime...

Reverting to the Classic Start menu means you lose the ability to use instant search. This is one of the features I like most about Vista, and it also doubles up as the Run command. Even XP's start menu is miles better and whenever I use Windows 2000 or something older I cringe at the Start Menu on offer. jcarle: happen he just prefers the archaic navigation mode? Shock! Horror! Can't have that can we. Best get the troops out to shoot anyone who won't adhere to our new teknolojeez.

Well actually, I find it distracting seeing signatures that only go halfway across the page. It seems.. untidy. But, each to their own, I am not going to argue with the powers that be.

To be fair, they were kind of right. BSODs are rare nowadays and in Windows 98 it was pitifully easy to trigger one... say, try to save a file to a floppy and eject the floppy as the file is being written to disk? Instant BSOD. Any BSOD i've had on a Windows NT system has largely been someone else's fault, bad drivers, me doing something I shouldn't have or a knackered hard drive. Windows 9x BSODs aren't always the system's fault, but how poor it was at handling exceptions certainly was.

Neither do I. I install Service Packs, and that is it. although I like XP Sp3 so much I don't know if I will ever upgrade it unless the future SP4 (?) is so promising.

tr00f. One of my computers has IE 6 and that is because it never goes on the Internet!

You're bending my words jaclaz and to be honest it's beginning to p*** me off. You know exactly what I meant by my comment about not needing to spend more money than necessary with XP so stop twisting my words, thanks. I don't know about you, but I am not made of money and I don't think I should have to spend more when I didn't before, especially when the newer product is MORE expensive. 1GHz processor when Vista came out? Puh-leaze. Um,they didn't get rid of the activity animation.It's off by default.Like in Vista. See, this is what I don't get. Why. Why turn network animation off? Its just a pain in the a** and one more extra thing that needs doing. Yes, but reading those statements lets you think, you have to defend you opinion. I guess it will be hard to convince everybody, if you want to. Win 7 doesn't need any defending and trying to is pointless. Picking your OS is based on certain things, and those differ from user to user. Just because you choose one means, it is the right one for everybody and that other peoples choices are fundamentally wrong. I read in a forum, you wouldn't go to a supermarket and shout at other customers: "Don't by that washing powder, because it's [overpriced | not better | manufacturer is a monopolist | ... ]". Well that seems to be a valid option on the internet. Well of course. When on the internet people can use their keyboard as a weapon and get carried away. If they were to meet in person they'd probably be very pleasant and 'well, actually, i kinda see your point there'.

They want to close your forum down!

Xper, that is to do with signature text, not the size of the signature image.

I don't see why JustinStacey.x needs to defend himself because the programs he use will not adapt to Windows 98. We all use our computers differently. We should not pass judgement just because someone did not have stellar results using an older operating system with his programs. Don't worry, I'm getting it from both sides, a bunch of Windows 7 zealots are having at me now because I don't automatically fit into the masses who think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Just wait till end users get it and find that they now have to download their favourite mail program My support calls will be through the roof!

You obviously don't have the pleasure of working with end users. Remove features they have been used to for the last 10 years and you have trouble, a vastly increased rate of calls, and a lot of questions being asked. I personally like choice, yes, but it doesn't do very much harm to have Outlook Express sitting on my system if I don't use it. if I want to nLite it out, I can. People who want to remove the software often have the knowledge to. Most people who want to use it, will wonder why the heck it's gone. See my point? And don't give me this tripe about it being there from OOBE. We get phone calls from people asking to click Yes or no on an 'are you sure' message, when the question being asked is painfully obvious. Get inside the head of end users sonny Jim and you will understand where I am coming from. Maybe I should just change all of my posts to 'oh yes Windows 7 is awesome' just to keep you lot happy? I think not.

Its not the point Cluberti. To have to pay what one does for Windows 7, and then to basically be told 'right lad, off you go and download your applications, then' is utterly ludicrous. Apple Mac users pay a premium for what they get but out of the box they get a graphical backup utility that, while admittedly is just a simple concept overblown, it is easy to use and is THERE, they get a mail client, calendar and all the rest of the essentials. They can make movies and music and store all their pictures and sort them with iPhoto and if they have AIM, chat with iChat. They don't have to play 'lets go get our apps' after setting up their Mac, do they... Also, I know a very knowledgeable software programmer over in another forum who has already found many bugs and annoyances in Windows 7 that have been raised since Windows Vista Beta.

Call it as ambiguous as you like. I ain't spending more than 5 minutes faffing around trying to get a flash drive to work in Windows 98 when it will be ready in ten seconds on an XP or 2000 box. P.R.O.D.U.C.T.I.V.I.T.Y. - Learn about it.

Well, I am asking for an explanation which I think is reasonable. You're saying I am not using logic to come to this conclusion, well here's my logic for you. I do a fair amount of amateur video making in Windows Xp. Sometimes I like to take a photo with my webcam, or record a small movie of my cat purring on my lap with the cam. I might even want to read a newsgroup in Outlook Express. Guess what homie? I can do all of those things natively in Windows XP without the need to load third party software. I upgrade to Vista and I find that I can now read my newsgroup fine in Windows Mail, and can make a movie with existing materials in Movie Maker. However, in order to take a photo with my webcam, I now need to download a third party piece of software to view and use it, and also install a third party program to record and edit video from the cam such as Ulead Videostudio. I say hey ok, not bad, I have those programs on disk. I then go and upgrade to Windows 7 and find that much to my surprise, I can't do any of what I could do with XP out of the box, in Windows 7, without faffing around downloading third party apps and installing extra support which was once provided. I use Win Vista at work so I don't need a lot of that stuff that Vista has so graciously broken in half or made so horrible to use I wouldn't want to anyway, and since I'm on a high end P4 with 2 gigs of RAM I couldn't resist. However, at the house, things are very different. I want things done my way and as easily as possible without having to load a third party software. Since formatting my computer away from Vista and putting on XP, I find I have needed less software to do the same jobs. Apply the same rule to Windows 7 and I would actually have to spend money to achieve the same tasks as I was doing in Windows XP FOR FREE. Similarly, if I was to use Windows 2000, I would also have to install third party utilities to see my webcam and edit my video. Case in point, Windows XP being the pinnacle in this particular situation. And I can guarantee right now, that when Windows 7 becomes mainstream, my support calls will increase from disgruntled Veterans saying 'HELP! I can't read my emails with my new computer because I don't have an email program!' 'HELP! I can't edit the family photos because Windows Movie Maker has gone!' And so forth. Now, if that logic isn't good enough I give up. EDIT: Interesting Cluberti how you have now edited your post into something meaningful making my above largely redundant. I disagree with some of it but hey I guess that makes me wrong, because newer is always better, right? Personally I have found XP to be just as stable than Windows Vista if not more than.

The ignorance shown here is simply astounding. While they may be similiar Win7 is years ahead of Vista. MS wanted to bury Vista and try to get past the mistakes they made with it. Go ahead and explain that to me how I am showing ignorance.

Windows 7 is just a marketing ploy created by Microsoft to win back the people who were scared away by the bad reception of Vista. They think that by redressing Vista, selling as a new and 'better than ever' product, they win everyone who hated Vista, back. The sad thing is... it works. There was never anything wrong with Vista except from psychological dilusion, and Windows 7 is actively proving that with all of the people jumping up and down claiming it is the best product since sliced bread. The mojave project was a pre-emption of this, and further goes to prove that there was never anything wrong with Vista. I firmly believe Windows 7 is merely a Windows Vista service pack with an outrageous price tag. And to really take the cake, they are now removing or breaking features that were already heading down the pan in Vista. Vista's movie maker was broken and ruined compared to XPs and couldn't even record video from an input device. Nor could you view a webcam in 'My Computer', like you could in XP. In Windows 7, there's no Movie Maker at all, and if you want it you have to download the Windows Live Essentials or install a third party product. Microsoft definitely reached its pinnacle with XP, with usability particularly. You can do an amazing amount of tasks in XP natively even to this day (case in point once again, viewing a webcam right from My Computer) that you couldn't do in Windows 2000 and below, and that you now cannot do, again, in newer versions of Windows. Clearly we are taking steps back here and I just don't like what I am seeing! I also forgot to mention that with the removal of Windows Movie Maker comes removal of other items like Windows Mail (was Outlook Express) that people have come to take for granted in recent years. People will now wonder when they buy a PC with Windows 7 how they are going to read their mail, because I can be pretty **** sure they don't have the psychic ability to automatically know they now have to download their email program??

What do you consider to be "terrible uptime"? I get 3-4 days out of this FE unit without needing to reboot. That's without using KernelEX or the GDI heap extender. Don't take the vendors word for it regarding 98 compatibility. All of the hardware (internal and external) I've added to this 98FE unit installed easily and worked properly the first time. Most all of it was supposedly incompatible. My XP system at home has been steaming along for nearly a month now. And given it's a laptop with a battery (they make great arbitrary power supplies) providing I don't BSOD I am confident I could run it into next year... literally. A lot of devices I have don't work with Windows 98 because I have tried.

Dreamskape, please read the posts. What you have suggested is not what the user is after, at all.

I tend to go for a 'This is what you're getting and you're sticking with it' kind of thing. I am deploying Kaspersky at my work and I choose to totally hide the program's existance from its users. The ironic thing is, those who know it is there seem to find ways to complain that their 'computer is slow'..

At most a virus may be able to hide in a file but it won't do any harm unless it's infected an EXE. The WAV file itself won't infect computer systems, but bringing external media into a network is always a potential risk. Your IT guy is either a moron or more likely just using a cover story as a nicer way of saying 'Im in charge here, do the hell as I say'. I'm an IT tech and we always have to make up wee white lies to customers because a) they don't understand jargon and B) it's easier to bend the truth a little than to be blunt.

Well the RIAA doesn't have this power and won't. Its controlled by NASCAP, but they are bound by US Copyright laws. Anything within the free domain is fair game. I've had to deal with NASCAP in the past, and its just plain annoying. However the main point of using an older OS still comes down to one point. You only really need what can run your apps. There is nothing wrong with using Win 9x at all. Some people do it because they have no need to upgrade. My main upgrading point was always because I wanted to use a certain program and, at the time, it couldn't be run on an older OS. Nowadays, there are many programs and VMs available that allow older programs to run on newer OSes, but at one point those were not available. And you must remember, a lot of the time, people who use Win 9x likely also have other computers using something newer. The plain reason I don't use Windows 98 anymore is that compared to XP it's uptime is terrible, it's a pain in the arse to run on newer hardware and new devices either don't work with it or require too much faffing around. That said, I am liking XP so much that I will probably milk it for all its worth for years to come now.

Crap, I knew I'd get rumbled eventually.

No it doesn't. I like Sp3 a lot. It took me a bit of a while to move to it, but I found it faster (especially on machines with less RAM, it seems to stay quite fast even during a lot of Hard Disk Activity - meaning machines that have lower RAM have a perception of being faster) and more stable. SP3 so far is the pinnacle of XP. I personally disable Automatic Updates anyway.