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My ideas about operating systems...


Roostron

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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.

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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.

Agreed. thats very similar to my thoughts on Vista. Luna/Aero is just the supermodel standing next to the car you are thinking of buying. Aero is just a feature for mom and dad/grandma and grandpa to play with on the best buy showroom floor so they can feel like their new pc is capable of doing something more than their old one. If MS had taken the XP source and eliminated EVERY SINGLE BUG, added new 'under the hood' features, fine tuned the performance to perfection, but left Luna as the UI, mom and dad/grandma and grandpa would look at the new PCs on the showroom floor and think 'Hmm that looks just like my old one. Im not paying 500$ for that.'

There is much more money to be made from ignorant consumers than there is from educated consumers. Microsoft knows this and will always build in some stupid feature into every new OS that an ignorant customer can see. (2k/ME had new icons, XP had Luna, Vista has Aero, Office 2007 got a big button) These are features that anyone can use but are not included for our demographic. our demographic is more interested in what types of programs an OS will run, what hardware architectures it will run on, maximum amounts of memory it'll handle, etc.

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So that brings up the question: Are consumers becoming more Computer savvy?

For if they are, then the methods used to sell computers to the ignorant (not stupid, only lacking knowledge of things) will no longer work.

Just because more and more people are using Firefox for example, does not mean they are gaining some commensurate knowledge about computers in general; they might just like the logo or the name!

How would a very computer savvy populace actually effect the market, if the old methods of selling, through the use of eye candy etc---no longer work?

I really do not think the average PC user is that much different from those 12 years ago. People are still being sold down the "must upgrade" path---or allowing themselves to be forced to.

It would be very bad from the perspective of big business--to have consumers that wise up. And can you really blame the industry for anything much at all, if the consumer does not "educate their own selves"?

Most people going to a coffee house offering WiFi--with their XP, Vista, and Mac machines--would most probably laugh at someone sitting in the place using win 95 or 98--and take him or her for an id*** of sorts---never guessing that the subject of their mockery deliberately chose such an "obsolete" OS--through a sharp knowledge of what a PC should actually do and be capable of.

A so called "obsolete OS" is an altogether deferent thing when installed in a fairly powerful machine, and not on those typical of the time from which the OS originated.

But the "average" PC user of today would not know this--!

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Welcome to MSFN, Roostron!

i must say, i agree with your opinion of Windows 98SE. I currently have XP Pro and 98SE in a dual-boot system. I use Win98SE the most :) and XP is the newest OS i will use. And 98SE is more customizable (not so many DLLs to mod to get a cool effect), andit doesn't have this WGA crap. I have a GENUINE copy of XP Pro, and WGA said it was PIRATED! It proceeded to remind me on EVERY SINGLE BOOT! then i found this: --Link Removed--

but 98SE is so easy to use, and so easy to customize!

Edited by geek
removed link to WGA remover
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Most people going to a coffee house offering WiFi--with their XP, Vista, and Mac machines--would most probably laugh at someone sitting in the place using win 95 or 98--and take him or her for an id*** of sorts---

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.

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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 always been like that. Some people don't see the new features, so act like it's not there (or pretend all of it is useless, because they don't use it).

Cleartype is one nice addition, and there's plenty of others:

  • fast user swiching. the kids use that a LOT here...
  • hibernate. the kids' pc goes to sleep same time they do, and it wakes up when they're back from school. power savings, fast-on, no need to close everything
  • remote desktop built-in (also, remote assistance)
  • a bunch of new features as of SP2 (mostly security oriented: firewall, etc), and some more as of SP3 (black hole router detection, NAP, etc)
  • driver rollback -- came in handy a couple times after windows update updated a driver to a bad/buggy/malfunctioning version
  • some apps (like IE7, WMP11, etc) run on XP and newer (not that I use them or care for them, but it's still the case)
  • some small things like the built-in CD burning and zip handling (even tho it sucks, it IS there)
  • side by side assemblies (WinSxS) to try to prevent the old DLL hell problem
  • MCE is new, even tho it doesn't come with all editions, same for the tablet features

Those are new new to XP, but for win9x users, XP had even more new stuff (things that were already in win2k) And that's disregarding any changes made to the kernel too.

I can't think of any new version of windows that didn't bring significant changes/improvements/new features besides windows ME.

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So that brings up the question: Are consumers becoming more Computer savvy?
There is much more money to be made from ignorant consumers than there is from educated consumers. Microsoft knows this and will always build in some stupid feature into every new OS that an ignorant customer can see.
True but consumers are not total idiots neither and learn fast the technical things: They listen to friends, read newspapers, Pa' starts reading PC Mag.. and finaly notice that the 5 years old XP computer is doing as well if not better than their new Vista computer.
Instead they followed a line leading to Vista, the "Frankenstein OS", sold almost only as pre-installed platform (EOM) on new sold computers. No way you install Vista on a computer more than 3 years old. That's pretty silly from M$ management.

No it isn't. Business-wise it makes perfect sense. Their profits have probably never been higher.

It's also a form of "conspiracy" with hardware companies - bigger software that needs bigger hardware that needs bigger software. The perfect business model to make progressive sales of newer products without worrying about whether people actually want or need to upgrade - simply by leaving them with no choice.

....

It's too bad the main non-business oriented competition is quite nearly the exact opposite of user-friendly. It has quite the potential, but ends up trying to hard and falling far short. Us end-users end up having only 98 as the middle-ground.

I don't think this model will last forever.

M$ tought they could play that game again. Nope.

XP was a true improvement regarding stability, remote management/maintenance and network but more importantly upgrading your hardware to XP specs alone was a huge improvement already even when you didn't install it. A few more ram and a faster cpu allowed you to install XP but boosted w98's stability and speed also, so you would upgrade your hardware anyway.

Not today. Today a 1.4 Ghz processor with 512 Mb of ram is enough to run instantly every normal apps. The need for 2 Gb and dual core is not compelling.

M$ profits are stellars just because there is no concurrence (so to speak) and because IT industry has been booming and keep on booming.

What we see now with Vista is finaly discontent from end-users and businesses alike. ...and lower sales.

see my comment on this news

Interresting reading.

Edited by Fredledingue
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Facing the Microsoft stated deadline of June 30, my choice was to buy two new barebones running XP Home, with dual core procs and 2GB DDR667 RAM. There is a benefit from the added horsepower, a wide variety of compatible hardware, I can use my favorite old programs, and I can buy something new. First tried a used P3 933 with 512MB PC100 RAM loaded with XP Pro SP2. It ran my old software just fine, was not slow, and all my newbie mistakes were made using it as a sandbox. However, it had been a client to an office server, and parts of the operating system were crippled. XP squirrels away personal info in many nooks and crannies, and the photos of the last user's toddler and home interior kept reappearing, along with artifacts from the business where she worked. My attempts to repair the install nullified product activation. I could reinstall the Ghost image, but couldn't really fix it, and my posts to the XP forum got no reply. I finally wiped the drive, put on 98SE with SP 2.0.1 obtained from this forum, and got a fast stable machine after a trouble free install. I still use my old Celeron 667 box on the side as my reference library. Things like encyclopedias run faster from the hard drives and I'm still on dial-up. Can't say I've grown to love XP, with its product activation, user profiles, permissions, patches, and the general level of complexity which seems to serve no useful purpose except to obscure how the OS works. I don't feel confident in my ability to rebuild the boxes from scratch and find myself using system restore a lot, especially before trying anything new. It feels like 2003 before I dumped Millenium Edition and went back to 98. Still, this was the correct choice for me, as Vista is the things I don't like in XP carried forward to a greater degree, and the choices from staying with W98 are now too limited.

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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.

I'd dare you to run Notepad from DOS :P

Actually, while I haven't tested it, I don't think there's any program that's XP-only. Since 2000 has the same NT kernel, it's capable of running all of the same programs (drivers non-withstanding, of course), no?

Just because more and more people are using Firefox for example, does not mean they are gaining some commensurate knowledge about computers in general; they might just like the logo or the name!

Last time I've heard statistics about it was at least a year ago, but it was "80% of the common web-user use IE 6" IIRC (or was it IE 5?)

It's too bad I don't know how to rig Google trend to report statistics on the browser-reported OS. I do know that w3schools, a site that is generally targeted towards the computer savvy, still shows over 60% use of IE.

So, my point is, you shouldn't assume people are getting in any way "better" or "smarter". Simple biology dictates the universal trend is downwards - people have and are getting dumber, not smarter. The more advanced out technology become, the less "advanced" the common masses need to be in order to operate it. Or, as Rich Cook put it:

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better id***-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

I predict Microsoft's business model will continue to serve it well for decades to come. If you want, we can put this up on Long Bets. The way I see it, I've got pretty good odds there.

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Facing the Microsoft stated deadline of June 30, my choice was to buy two new barebones running XP Home, with dual core procs and 2GB DDR667 RAM. There is a benefit from the added horsepower, a wide variety of compatible hardware, I can use my favorite old programs, and I can buy something new. First tried a used P3 933 with 512MB PC100 RAM loaded with XP Pro SP2. It ran my old software just fine, was not slow, and all my newbie mistakes were made using it as a sandbox. However, it had been a client to an office server, and parts of the operating system were crippled. XP squirrels away personal info in many nooks and crannies, and the photos of the last user's toddler and home interior kept reappearing, along with artifacts from the business where she worked. My attempts to repair the install nullified product activation. I could reinstall the Ghost image, but couldn't really fix it, and my posts to the XP forum got no reply. I finally wiped the drive, put on 98SE with SP 2.0.1 obtained from this forum, and got a fast stable machine after a trouble free install. I still use my old Celeron 667 box on the side as my reference library. Things like encyclopedias run faster from the hard drives and I'm still on dial-up. Can't say I've grown to love XP, with its product activation, user profiles, permissions, patches, and the general level of complexity which seems to serve no useful purpose except to obscure how the OS works. I don't feel confident in my ability to rebuild the boxes from scratch and find myself using system restore a lot, especially before trying anything new. It feels like 2003 before I dumped Millenium Edition and went back to 98. Still, this was the correct choice for me, as Vista is the things I don't like in XP carried forward to a greater degree, and the choices from staying with W98 are now too limited.

They Just said they where supporting XP till 2014 m8...

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I have to give some respect to Micro$oft for actually supporting their old operating systems for extended periods of time. some mac user once said that i probably couldn't get much software from after 1998 that was still compatible with Windows 98SE, and it made my brain hurt. first of all, 98SE came out in 99, and second of all, most software up till about 2006 still works with 98SE, and even a lot from after that. anyways, yeah. I'm in agreement with everybody here. I had a Windows 95 laptop that was janky as hell (only had a floppy drive, parallel and serial ports, a vga adaptor and two type II PCMCIA slots, a 16 color 640x480 display panel, that died, unfortunately. that and the fact that the power cord wouldn't stay in, and it lacked a battery, made me give up on it) but at any rate, it had very little ram (not sure how much), a 66mhz 486DX2 processor, and a 512mb hdd (with drivespace 3 on it, expanding it to about a gigabyte, maybe a gigabyte and a half. I never ran out of space on the hard disk, for the short time I was using it (and there were alot of files on it from former owners, at that), and it ran only a little slower than any other computer i've used. a truly epic computer. considering that, if I had had that computer in better condition, I could have totally used it for most things, its pretty amazing. even 98SE isn't bad at all. I have a nice fast usb/cardbus supporting laptop with only 700mhz processor, 312mb RAM, 10gb hard drive that does everything I need it to. can't beat that degree of cheapness:functionality ratio with XP or Vista, now can you?

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To further prove my prior claims, consider the current state of the iPhone: A new version every couple of months, and people continue to spend all of their money on every new version that comes out.

Many shout out about how annoying and unfair it is that people who jump the bandwagon earlier simply get the shaft. Or, to put it better, people get to choose between being ripped off (buying a product that will become obsolete in a few weeks), and being left out (having to wait for a "final version" that may not come, while not being able to enjoy it right now).

But with all of that anger directed towards Apple, they are still making quite a killing on this business model. One could practically label it "the business model of the future".

In the past, one might consider releasing a product too early to be a bad business choice, risking in turning down potential customers. Nowadays, releasing and re-releasing a product all through its beta phases turns out to be quite smart - being able to make double and triple profit off of consumers paying for the same product over and over.

This business model works perfectly, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The same applies to the release and re-release of Windows versions one after another, even if there is no apparent advantage to those extra few widgets and flashes each adds.

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I agree SlugFiller, but where is the glimmer of hope---other than the sign, and it is a sign of something coming---that many people finally seem to be fed up with it all---such as many of the XP users that refuse to upgrade to Vista no matter what. I do think that Vista was the wake up call!

I do not think, that someone using the most powerful PC he or she can buy or put together---and then installing Vista---would encounter anything like unto the numerous horror stories I've read about. The mistake was the Big M trying to force all Windows users to upgrade to it---by having them buy or upgrade to computers that are far from adequate to run it as it was envisioned.; and the fact that I think it needed another year of intensive work before it's release.

I think the average PC user is looking for an OS that is stable--problem free--and easy to use---and powerful enough to run--whatever people are into these days. At the moment Vista is far from meeting that criteria in my opinion.

Individuals will remain individuals--and the lemmings will remain lemmings! Thank goodness there are people here who refuse to follow the herd over the cliff!

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I do not think, that someone using the most powerful PC he or she can buy or put together---and then installing Vista---would encounter anything like unto the numerous horror stories I've read about. The mistake was the Big M trying to force all Windows users to upgrade to it---by having them buy or upgrade to computers that are far from adequate to run it as it was envisioned.; and the fact that I think it needed another year of intensive work before it's release.

I think the average PC user is looking for an OS that is stable--problem free--and easy to use---and powerful enough to run--whatever people are into these days. At the moment Vista is far from meeting that criteria in my opinion.

I agree. Vista isnt the problem its the people they have installing it for them. MS caved to the OEMs (Dell, HP, etc) pressure that wanted to build a sub 500$ PC so they reduced their minimum system requirements to laughably low levels. (Yes I know I just opened myself of your a quip from a 98er about how they run Win 98 on their abacus but please try to control yourselves.)

Also the comparison of Apple to Microsoft is an apples to oranges comparison. Apple makes Hardware (well actually relabels other peoples hardware with their name but I wont get into that) that hardware happens to run software which they produce. therefore they are a hardware company that happens to make software. Microsoft on the other hand is a Software company that happens to make some hardware (but not PCs) the 2 just arent made to be compared. they are both evil in their own special ways.

Releasing a new product every few years is not that big of a deal people.

Are you going to go protest GM/Ford/Chrysler when the 2009 year model comes out when the 2008s have only been out for a year?

Are you going to whine that the NFL/NBA/NHL etc because they are playing the same game theyve played for the last 30+ years?

Are you gonna get mad when the theaters stop showing the movies youve seen and start playing another movie that youll have to pay to see?

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Releasing a new product every few years is not that big of a deal people.

Are you going to go protest GM/Ford/Chrysler when the 2009 year model comes out when the 2008s have only been out for a year?

Are you going to whine that the NFL/NBA/NHL etc because they are playing the same game theyve played for the last 30+ years?

Are you gonna get mad when the theaters stop showing the movies youve seen and start playing another movie that youll have to pay to see?

Your examples are flawed for one obvious reason. Auto makers for instance tempt people to buy new models with new styles, new features, accessories, etc. They don't try to disable the older models or prevent parts from being available for them in order to force people to buy a new one. That's the big difference. When a company resorts to a policy of forced obsolescence in order to get sales, that tells me that their products can't compete on their own merits, that there's nothing about them that would make someone want them or that they're any better than previous OSs.

In a sadistic way, I'm glad to see XP users in the same position we 98 users went through, having to put up with all of the "get with the times" rhetoric, being bombarded with nonsense presented as "facts", the steady diet of "it's vulnerable by design, you must upgrade" based more on lies and bad research than anything else.

Reason for edit: removed link to WGA remover

It's pretty sad when links to legitimate security site are removed just because they contain links to another site that has links something that M$ doesn't like, like the remover for M$ spyware. They should put as much effort into making an OS that people would actually want instead of trying to force upgrades, then worrying about someone pirating it. IMO, Vista and XP aren't worth using, let alone pirating.

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