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Now that you put it that way, you are probably right. c

It seems absurd to m that they would want to save money by not hosting older updates and drivers. They have hundreds of billions of dollars, but they can't spare a few million to host some outdated updates that could actually be useful to someone? c

I thought all versions of 10 supported Firewire, provided the correct drivers were installed? c

I think they mean to say that Cleartype (?) hurts their eyes. It doesn't bother me tons (my eyesight, while not awful enough to mandate correction, isn't a perfect 20/20), but I can still tell when it's on, and I tend to prefer how sharp and crisp text is when it's off. Why add extra blur when I don't have to? Recent MacOS versions have it too, but it's more subtle and less annoying (I can still tell the difference when it's off, though). XP had it, too, and for some reason, it wasn't so bad (maybe due to the fact that it was fully optional and off by default). I don't recall Windows 2000 having it natively, but maybe it (or something like it) was backported, perhaps by way of an XP update? c

Ah, yes. I know how to use NTLite. I also remember using it's older cousin, nlite, to slim down XP and 2000 installs (one time I think I got an XP install down to, I think, 200 MB or less, and a 2000 install under 100 MB). Is it possible to somehow pre-activate Windows 10 after I've slimmed it down? I vaguely recall being able to do that with XP. Yeah, you're probably right. I will likely go with whatever the last version is, though, because it's easier. Of course, I have the problem of finding a license key that will work. I could've sworn I had one I got free as a perk from a CS class I took at the local Community College, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I do have it in a VM, which I painstakingly upgraded – one release at a time – from 1809 to whatever the current is (22H2?). I also was able to update (a copy) of that VM further to the current release of 11, which actually isn't as awful as I thought – once I got rid of that ridiculously useless thing they call a "task bar." It feels more or less like a version of 10, to be honest. Why did they bother upping the version number? Microsoft's logic has escaped me in recent years (the naming scheme they used from the earliest Windows NT releases up to 7 made perfect sense to me). Ha! That's a bit extreme, yes? And if your range was much more than 50 feet, you most certainly would be violating lots of rules with your "jammer." I'm going by the rules and broadcasting on one frequency – 1610 AM. Interesting. Another instance of stock Windows 10 being dishonest and deceptive. An all to common theme in the industry nowadays. c

Hi! It's been awhile since I posted here! I'm mainly using Mac OS nowadays, but I still maintain a Windows 7 VM, and I have a Dell OptiPlex 7050 running Windows 7 Professional that I use for playlist automation (I run a small, unlicensed AM radio station; the neat part is that it's not illegal: look up Title 47, CFR Part 15, Subsection C, § 15.219 of the FCC rules). So, despite it being over 16 years old now and EOS since 2020, it's still perfectly usable and secure enough to at least get done what I'm trying to do, as you can see here: I had an earlier version of this running on XP, but unfortunately, it got too old to run the versions of the above apps I wanted (clockwise from top left: Butt, PlayIt! Live, Stereo Tool). 7 is still in that sweet spot where current versions of these things are still supported, so I'm going to use it while I still can (that said, I'm planning for an eventual upgrade to (ugh!) Windows 10 because, unfortunately, the fun doesn't last forever, and there's no Mac or Linux version of PlayIt! Live). Here's to keeping Windows 7 alive, one PC at a time! c

At least the acronym (BSoD) will still be valid, since both black and blue begin with the letter 'b' c

Hmm, how fascinating. It must be something about your specific hardware that only works best on Vista, and malfunctions (and sounds bad) on any other version. My hearing is fairly good, and I still can't really tell the difference between 44.1 and 96 or 192, so I just go with 44.1 to save on disk space. MP3 at the highest possible bitrate (320) is tolerable, I find, but once it starts dropping below 192, it becomes increasingly awful. My preference, of course, is uncompressed WAV or AIFF (I guess FLAC is supposed to be good, but I tend not to use it much because support for it isn't as universal as it is for MP3 and WAV). c

That's strange. I've never had any trouble with sound on XP. All cards I've tried function as they should, and I could set 44.1kHz (or any other supported sample rate) easily. Of course, I've often used USB or Firewire (IEEE1394) audio interfaces with ASIO support for top sound quality, and they usually include decent drivers; in my experience, I've found that virtually all of the so-called "HD" sound systems built into most XP-era motherboards have stupidly bloated and half-broken drivers and often are hideously noisy and cheap sounding regardless of driver or Windows version (if anything, newer Windows versions with newer drivers sound worse as the already mediocre support the bad drivers have deteriorates further). Perhaps your drivers weren't fully compatible or something was wrong with your sound card? c

I like how XP can be "tamed" and with a few simple settings, the whole "fisher-price" theme can be disabled, after which it looks and feels basically like an upgraded version of Windows 2000, especially before SP2. c

True, but I mainly used the Extended Kernel to gain access to a more modern web browser; Then-recent versions of Java and Notepad++ ran fine without it. c

Speaking of irrational hatred of old operating systems.... I just remembered an anecdote of mine from a programming class several years ago (I think it was 2017 or so). The instructor was very much one of those "newer is better" people, and actively shunned anything that wasn't "now" and encouraged all his students to do the same. So what did I do? I brought in and used my Dell Latitude D630 (then about 11 years old) running Windows 2000 (then at least 16 years old, and 7 years out of date), and, via blackwingcat's Extended Kernel, I was able to run the then-current versions of Java and Notepad++ and complete my assignments just as well as my classmates with their fancy Windows 10-based stuff. I didn't have to do this (I had a nice, then-current Apple MacBook Pro I could've used instead), so why did I? Well, mainly to prove that I could. Plus it was fun to spite the instructor and prove to him that old computers can still be useful (he was rather arrogant and I didn't like him very much). c

Over the past summer, I set up a 6th gen-based Dell Optiplex with Windows 7, and that thing absolutely flies with a nice 1 TB SSD and 16 GB of RAM. I've been thinking of *gasp* upgrading it to 10, but, honestly, I don't really see any point to it other than curiosity. 7 is doing everything I want with no problems, and there's no reason to change it unless/until I encounter something I want to use that it can't run. If I had a spare SSD that I could swap in, maybe I would try 10, so that if I didn't like it (and I probably wouldn't), I could simply swap my undisturbed Windows 7 SSD back in and pick up where I left off. c

Neither do I! My favorite Windows is 95, followed by (in order from most to least): 98 SE, 2000, XP, and 7. I don't care much for 8.x, but I've found that with some effort, it can be rendered mostly sane. 10 is harder, and it has a tendency to self destruct, so I try to avoid it. Since I use Apple MacOS primarily, I don't need to bother with the latest Windows. 2018, I believe, was about when Google (I think) told everyone to mandate https and TLS1.2, among other things, and naturally most sites complied. This, of course, broke virtually all older browsers, which lack support for modern security protocols. A couple years later (2020) for similar reasons, MS began breaking Windows Update for older Windows, like 2000 and XP (via extraordinary measures, some degree of WU functionality remains, but stock WU is completely broken now). There's not much that cn be done about WU, but as for ancient browsers, if you set up a proxy that handles the security, things get better, but then they get choked up on the rampant javascript. If you strip that out too, you can still get a weirdly rendered, but somewhat usable page which is usually good enough for basic text. This can be fixed somewhat by web proxies that can reformat a page into something more usable that old browsers can render more or less correctly, but ultimately a current browser is needed for full functionality. c

Such a thing actually does exist. It's called Windows NT 4.0. However, Windows 2000, AKA NT 5.0, seems somewhat better because it still has a similar look and feel (although the "webbified" variant from 98), but includes many of the conveniences that are often taken for granted, such as Device Manager, Plug & Play, full support for USB HIDs (and at least partial support for USB mass storage), etc. NT 4 and earlier never had any of that. Of course, it follows that XP (NT 5.1-5.3) was the best Windows overall (and in my opinion still is, at least as far as the UI is concerned; there's a good reason why it outlasted every other version, having been continuously supported and updated in some form for almost 20 years!) because it took many of 2000's firsts and refined them with new features and even better reliability. 10 and 11 may have full support for modern hardware, but all that spyware junk is just unnecessary (I've read about how people were worried about all the spyware MS was including in Windows all the way back to Windows 98. If only they had known what was to come 15 years later, maybe they wouldn't have complained so much....) c