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Indeed. Well, I'll try it out, and see what happens. I have a fully up to date and stable-as-a-rock Windows 7 install to fall back on if need be. c

@Jody ThorntonNoted. Thanks! To clarify my earlier post, I don't intend to have a cavalier attitude regarding security, it's just that the reality of the situation is that *every* device that has a CPU in it is affected in some way, and probably 80-90% of it will never be updated to protect against this vulnerability (which is mostly FUD, I've come to realize), so there's really not much we can do about it until new hardware comes out that has the flaws corrected, and that isn't projected to happen for at least a couple more years. In the meantime, we can patch our computers (to a point; older ones that can't run a patched OS will never be patched unless something extraordinary happens), but what about our cars? And our network routers? Some of the more sophisticated cars and routers use CPUs not unlike what we'd see in a smartphone, so they're all just as vulnerable, and none will likely receive any kind of patch for it. Does that mean they'll be hacked? Not likely, because the success rate of a Spectre/Meltdown attack is somewhat variable (particularly on older hardware), and one needs to have physical access to the system in question (to my knowledge; I could be mistaken). So does this mean we should forget about security? NO! We absolutely should continue patching things as usual, because there are innumerable other exploits that are potentially much, much more virulent, and must therefore be mitigated ASAP to prevent any data breaches or other such things from occurring. I just think that it may be a waste of time to worry about this particular exploit too much, because it is mostly academic and of limited value to most hackers (in my opinion). c

Clicking this link brings me back to this thread? Copying and pasting it into the address bar gets around this. c

I'm never abandoning XP! At least not for secondary uses... c

OK, so I downloaded the most recent PM28 build and installed it on my new Vista x64 installation, and the interface is horridly unresponsive. I set it to XP compatibility mode, but it made no difference. I installed PM26 and copied the PM28 files over it. Could that have caused the problem? c

Hahaha! Thank you! I am honored to be a member of this club!! :lol: :) So I guess I'll try skipping those updates... if I knew which ones they were, it'd be easier... My system has a modest i5-2500k, so it's not the fastest to begin with, and a 30% performance cut might be too much. People lived for 25 years with this vulnerability, to no effect. Now that we know it exists, it probably won't change anything because it's a fairly hard thing to exploit (there are many other ways a hacker could steal info that are *much* easier), plus, with older OSes, we have some obscurity to protect us. c

Hi All, I've dabbled with Vista off and on over the years since it's release, and I never really found it to be too bad, although I preferred XP and stuck with it until 2014, when I began using 7 more regularly. That being said, I have a Sandy Bridge PC I built here, and I got a copy of Vista Ultimate specifically for it that I'm planning to install. However, I'm concerned to read that the Spectre/Meltdown patches wreck its performance? Is it possible to avoid installing those updates while still getting all the others? Thanks, c

Exactly. By the way, I just tried something called Q4OS today, and it has a lot of potential, and when the "wine classic" theme is selected, it looks quite similar to Windows XP with the classic theme. Right down to the font (apparently, the makers of Q4OS have managed to incorporate a functional clone of the Tahoma font into the UI, probably by way of WINE, which is also preinstalled). Anyway, if the walled garden apocalypse comes and there are no viable current-version OSes that aren't dumbed down to useless garbage, I think I'll give this a try as my main OS (even Ubuntu isn't quite what it used to be; the last version I really cared much for was 11.04, or whatever the last release was that didn't have the Unity desktop set as default with no Classic option). c

You're welcome! Having been using Macs in one way or another since 1998, I should know When that happens, the only viable OS will be Linux. Of course, I remember back in 2011 when OS X 10.7 Lion came out, that it would be the end of the Mac as we knew it. Well, in retrospect, not so much. While it was quite a bit buggier than it's predecessor, it gave way to a series of very solid versions (10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks). 10.10 came along, and I found that it wasn't *too* bad, aside from the dreadful looking icons (I stayed on 10.9 until I figured out how to change them). So, back on topic. Kinda. Windows 8.1, for all its flaws, is a much better OS than 10 will ever be for one simple reason: they're not constantly wiping away any customizations or other genuine enhancements. But frankly, if a decent, modern web browser existed and a simple way to boot it on a modern-ish computer was devised (no VMs, that's cheating ), I'd be content with Windows 95 (or maybe 98 SE, because it has better USB drivers and rudimentary Firewire support; the "webbiness" of it never really bothered me much (in fact, IE5 (and later, 6) was my favorite browser until I discovered Firefox)). If I could somehow replicate IE5's look and feel and stick a modern, Firefox-derived rendering engine in it (with tabbed browsing), I'd be very happy. Windows 2000 is very close, so I might settle on that. Or XP, for that matter... Even Vista is better than 10!! Sorry for rambling; it's been a long day, and I'm tired. c

Absolutely not! While it's true that Apple has built quite an empire of services that makes it difficult to switch away from Mac (the so-called "walled garden"), but there's all sorts of non-Apple services and software that work just fine on a Mac. No need to subscribe to Apple (that's more of a problem with their smartphone and tablet offerings; the Mac has traditionally been more open (in the sense that you can run any software you please on it*, so long as it's compatible with the OS and underlying architecture), and mostly continues to be to the present day). One thing that may bother you, however, is the lack of customization. It's not too bad though, and one can get used to it. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from running whatever OS you please on a Mac! If you get an older Mac from 2013-2015, you can run Windows 7 and 8.x, as well as whatever Linux distro you prefer. c *Since Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple incorporated Gatekeeper to lock down this ability, making it more iPhone-esque. However, since it's fairly straightforward to bypass and disable, it hasn't been a problem (they may very well make the feature undisable-able someday, but they haven't *so far*).

The local community college upgraded their lab computers to Windows 10 this semester. I'm disappointed, because I'm starting to think that a forced upgrade to it might be inevitable in most cases (there are some important software programs dropping support for Windows 7 and 8 now, and things will only get worse once those versions reach EOL). c

Finally gave this a try tonight, and it works nicely compared to IE 6! My test environment is a VirtualBox VM running 98 SE. Google seems to work well, as well as a few other sites, but several other sites seem broken, but that's due primarily to outdated CSS and JS I think. I think the mobile versions might work better, but I'd like to maybe have the user agent set on a per-site basis. I can do this on modern FF just fine (lots of plugins), but are there any such plugins that are still available for something so old? c

No, it's not! It's out though, and we're in the process of going back. So far, so good c

That's because a wild fire happened near my house, and I had to shut everything down and leave :( It'll be up within the next day ot two, all going well. c

Here's a temporary mirror of Dosghost and DOS Solutions: http://209.65.191.189/ Don't hammer it too hard, as it's hosted by a VM running MS-DOS! Plus, I don't have much bandwidth, so it won't be the fastest. I can't keep it up 24/7, but if it's offline, PM me and I'll fix it. c

Ack! It was a typo! http://209.65.191.189/ This one should work! c

I've decided to put it online for awhile after all, figuring that nobody will probably notice. http://209.65.198.189/ I've created an index page listing the sites, so all you have to do is click the link to the one you want to visit. Many of the download pages in dosghost are still broken, as the filenames of the download pages got mangled somehow (why this didn't happen to any of the others, I don't know), but I plan to fix them. As for the server, using EZ-NOS 2 on top of MS-DOS 6.22, all running in a VM (for added authenticity). This is probably why the download page filenames got mangled (no LFN support). Enjoy! c

Hmm, I guess I'm dumb then This is funny c

@dencorso @jaclaz @xpclient I thought I could have multiple mentions on a single line? Guess not... Anyway, I think you're all right! At first, XP was little more than a slightly tweaked 2000 with some extra features and a fancy UI theme, but later on, and especially after SP2, XP began to evolve well beyond 2000, gaining more advanced security and more modern features (which, I suppose was inevitable since 2000 was EOL'ed in 2010). c

Me! From 2002-2006, XP wasn't the greatest (2000 was better), but by sometime around 2007, XP matured quite nicely, and it was a pleasure to use. Who knows, maybe 10 will mature and become stable and useful someday? I won't hold my breath, though. c

Yeah, I think I remember playing with PeepHole back when the site was live. Speaking of which, with the help of someone on another forum, I was able to get a more-or-less complete offline archive of the site, and have set it up using a DOS-based web server on a VM. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's coming along! So now it won't be going anywhere! I even thought about posting an updated and fixed-up version of it online so it can be available once again, but A) the web archive already serves the original version, and B ) I'm not sure about how to get permission from Mr. Angelich's family, which I'd definitely want to do before I make it public. Oh, well, at least I can enjoy it privately :) c

@jaclaz I'm sorry, I meant the actual files offered up for download, as many of the original links are broken. I have the site itself, thanks to you c

Does anyone know if this site is still online in any form? On a different host, perhaps? The only place I can access it is the Wayback Machine, but it is imperfect, and some things are missing/broken. c

Aw, that's too bad. I never realized the creator of the site died! No wonder the site dropped off the face of the earth in 2007.... RIP, Mr. Angelich! I wonder what he died from? he was only 59! Whatever happened, I hope it was quick and relatively painless.... Anyway, Thanks for the link. Maybe I should figure out how to download the whole site and put it in safe keeping? Does the Archive have a mechanism for this? EDIT: There is one "update": On October 9, 2006 (about a month before the author died), there was a page stating that he'd disabled his forum page. It's just speculation, but it seems like he might've been killed somehow. Car crash, probably. c

Not sure if this is the proper place to post this... I'm starting to get back into vintage PC software again, after concentrating on Macs, and I'm looking up a few of my old sources. One of which was this one: http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost Unfortunately, the link is dead, and the Way Back Machine has the "teaser" page archived, but nothing else. Does anyone know if the site was moved somewhere? Or did it just disappear, lost to time? EDIT: AHA! It seems I was looking in the wrong time frame, and gave up too soon! I looked at the most recent snapshot that actually has content (July 17, 2006), figuring I had nothing to lose, and snapshot has the home page! Now to see if anything else works.... EDIT #2: link. c