What Microsoft Needs to Learn from Apple and Snow Leopard with Windows

[Tripredacus]

you really dont expect anyone to buy this one right? lets see! few days ago ive been called up for network being infected with malwares which had KIS installed on all systems and updated daily... you can give a total nOOb a mac and come back in one month and see no virus or malware ever infected the system...

Honestly - a large portion of that is user error. I've been running all of my Windows machines (ranging from XP Home to Vista Business, and just about everything inbetween) without additional security software for close to two years now.

The reason why you can give a "n00b" a mac and not have to deal with malware is because nobody targets them... although that's starting to change. Computer security ultimately comes down to the user. Most modern operating systems are "secure enough" by default, and as long as the system is kept up to date with the operating system patches (forget about AV definitions), most users should be fine.

I agree with Zxian. I haven't run additional security (unless you count hardware firewalls) with Windows since... um... 1996 when I used a McAfee AV floppy on a Windows FW 3.11 server... Only have gotten 2 viruses since then, and in both cases (different computers) they were there because I put them there in order for me to learn how to remove them.

[Fredledingue]

I don't think it makes sens to discuss OSX vs Vista.

What is more meaningful is that Apple said it will make teir OS simplier, faster and smaler and that's something Vista realy realy realy needs too.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has the ability to simply tell it's users "Dump that two year old hardware and buy a new computer - just so you can run Snow Leopard".

No, but that's exactely what they did with Vista.

Let's see if with w7, M$ will finaly understand that what we need is not gadgets and yet one more security app.

Criticisms of Vista is widely visible on the internet. Looks like the one who is reading is Apple. Let's see if M$ can read tech forums too...

[CoffeeFiend]

I don't think it makes sens to discuss OSX vs Vista.

I don't see why not. They're competitors, Mac OS X is the main alternative. I think it does make a LOT of sense.

What is more meaningful is that Apple said it will make teir OS simplier, faster and smaler and that's something Vista realy realy realy needs too.

Simpler as in dumbed down, and with very little choices. No thanks!

No, but that's exactely what they did with Vista.

No, Zxian was totally right. You wanna run Snow Leopard? Then you can throw that 2 year old $3000 dual CPU G5 computer right in the trash. It won't run it, at any speed, ever.

However, Vista will run just fine on a 2 year old Athlon64 X2 with a reasonable amount of RAM, that only cost a tiny fraction of the price of that G5.

Apple totally discontinued their very own hardware architecture. Abandoning people who paid large sums of money for a fancy computer only 2 years after. That's like if Microsoft ditched Intel/AMD altogether for Sparc, 2 years after selling you a proprietary box to run their software. No more updates on a $3000 product they sold you merely 2 years ago. It's the end of the line for those machines now.

Vista not running at stellar speeds on a 5 year old P4 doesn't even compare, but then again, you're always looking for an opportunity to bash Vista.

Let's see if with w7, M$ will finaly understand that what we need is not gadgets and yet one more security app.

People were ASKING for those things. "Waah! Waah! We need a sudo-like mechanism for Windows to be secure!" they were saying. MS delivers, and they keep whining as always. People didn't wanna have to buy a firewall and all that, so they made the built-in one better, and added Windows defender. I think it was a good idea. The only gadget they added is the sidebar, and most people actually like it.

Criticisms of Vista is widely visible on the internet. Looks like the one who is reading is Apple. Let's see if M$ can read tech forums too...

Criticisms of any new version of Windows ever are widely visible on the internet. There's always been people whining, and there will always be. It doesn't matter what they do, there will always be a tiny minority of people unhappy about it (usually they're the kind that likes to complain a lot too).

Edited June 27, 2008 by crahak

[Zxian]

Criticisms of any new version of Windows ever are widely visible on the internet. There's always been people whining, and there will always be. It doesn't matter what they do, there will always be a tiny minority of people unhappy about it (usually they're the kind that likes to complain a lot too).

Dig hard enough and you'll easily find XP-bashing reviews and sites from 7 years ago...

[MrCobra]

article praises Apple who has 2% of the market

Jobs could crap in a paper bag and every Mac head would chant his name and be ready to fork out money for it.

Check this out: http://gizmodo.com/tag/macheads-the-movie/

...

Also, ask anyone who runs Vista or XP on a MBP if the hardware is better - this OS (same vista x64 image on both) is almost twice as fast in almost everything but copying files (network limited, not hardware) than my almost identical (but ~$450 USD cheaper) Thinkpad. Why? Because the hardware's better, the mobo is better, the proc is probably better, the RAM is faster, and Apple can make OSX scream when the hardware is that good. Run OSX on this Thinkpad and *then* talk to me about how great OSX is .

Everything inside of an X86 based Mac is standard PC parts. And with the exception of a customied board for the PPC line of products up until the X86 transition was announced, were also just normal PC parts.

Thinkpad T61 ---

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB, 800MHz)

Memory: Up to 4GB PC2–5300/677MHz (3GB addressable with 32-bit OS)

MBP ---

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo processor (2.5GHz or 2.6GHz, 6MB, 800MHz)

Memory: 2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 memory

Based on those two observations you made alone, I really don't see how everything is better. The specs for the MBP and the ThinkPad are very similar. Looks like someone has been drinking too much of the Jobs flavored kool-aid.

In all seriousness, use whatever you like, makes no difference. But please take the blinders off before spewing Apple propaganda that isn't even true.

Windows already comes with a firewall and windows defender. You don't have to buy anything. Actually, I run without either, and it's been years since I've been infected (so much for not clicking on everything blindly, and not opening freepr0n.jpg.exe I guess!)

you really dont expect anyone to buy this one right? lets see! few days ago ive been called up for network being infected with malwares which had KIS installed on all systems and updated daily... you can give a total nOOb a mac and come back in one month and see no virus or malware ever infected the system...

All down to market share. It was the same with FF. Everyone claimed it was the second coming of Christ and that there were no exploits or holes in it...until it hit a certain market share to make it worth while to exploit it.

Edited June 28, 2008 by MrCobra

[CoffeeFiend]

Dig hard enough and you'll easily find XP-bashing reviews and sites from 7 years ago...

I can remember them saying the EXACT same thing back from when Win95 came out even. From "Runs like crap on my 486", to "the minimum requirements are unrealistic" (it WOULD install and work on a 386 -- if you were the most patient person in the world), to "it's just Win 3.11 with a new look", "It's bloated", "nobody needs this", "the old one does what I need just fine", "I have no reason to upgrade", etc. And they'll be whining just the same when Windows 7 comes out, and the following, and the next and so on.

In fact, I can't wait for Windows v7 to come out, just so they change their song to "Windows 7 sucks" while they run Vista happily. It's only a matter of time. They'll be calling Windows 7 users fanboys and such for a year or 2, while they bash it to no end. Meanwhile, everybody else is gonna install it and use it everyday without any real issues. And by the time Windows 8 is out, they'll all be happily running Windows 7 too, and saying "Windows 8 sucks"... It's a vicious circle or sorts.

Whiners are whiners. Some things just don't change. In fact, I think they LOVE to whine and complain.

@MrCobra: totally.

[Zxian]

In fact, I can't wait for Windows v7 to come out, just so they change their song to "Windows 7 sucks" while they run Vista happily. It's only a matter of time. They'll be calling Windows 7 users fanboys and such for a year or 2, while they bash it to no end. Meanwhile, everybody else is gonna install it and use it everyday without any real issues. And by the time Windows 8 is out, they'll all be happily running Windows 7 too, and saying "Windows 8 sucks"... It's a vicious circle or sorts.

We should start archiving any and all Vista-bashing forum posts, blog entries, and news articles. That way, we'll have definitive proof to make the whiners go away when they start saying "Vista's better than 7".

[Fredledingue]

I don't think it makes sens to discuss OSX vs Vista.

I don't see why not. They're competitors, Mac OS X is the main alternative. I think it does make a LOT of sense.

Well, you talk about that if you want. No problem, but the original point of this thread, was, I think, what M$ should do, in light of what Apple has said recently.

@ Jun 27 2008, 05:49 PM)

What is more meaningful is that Apple said it will make teir OS simplier, faster and smaler and that's something Vista realy realy realy needs too.

Simpler as in dumbed down, and with very little choices. No thanks!

Crahak, my dear friend, the art of programming is to make a software faster and smaler while keeping all the features.

Adding features is relatively easy when you don't care about bloat or performance at all as both Apple and M$ have been doing.

So now the next task, the most difficult one, is to turn the Frankenstein OSes (plurial) into something less monstruous.

@ Jun 27 2008, 05:49 PM)

No, but that's exactely what they did with Vista.

No, Zxian was totally right. You wanna run Snow Leopard? Then you can throw that 2 year old $3000 dual CPU G5 computer right in the trash. It won't run it, at any speed, ever.

However, Vista will run just fine on a 2 year old Athlon64 X2 with a reasonable amount of RAM, that only cost a tiny fraction of the price of that G5. Apple totally discontinued their very own hardware architecture. Abandoning people who paid large sums of money for a fancy computer only 2 years after....

I agree, but I was not talking about that.

When Vista came out in 2007, it would not run, all options turned on, on one year old computers.

M$ underestimated the number of old computers and overestimated the willingness of users to buy new ones. They also discontinued their very own hardware architecture.

@ Jun 27 2008, 05:49 PM)

Let's see if with w7, M$ will finaly understand that what we need is not gadgets and yet one more security app.

People were ASKING for those things. "Waah! Waah! We need a sudo-like mechanism for Windows to be secure!" they were saying. MS delivers, and they keep whining as always. People didn't wanna have to buy a firewall and all that, so they made the built-in one better, and added Windows defender. I think it was a good idea. The only gadget they added is the sidebar, and most people actually like it.

No, poeple asked for the next OS to be safer, not to add an antivirus and a firewall.

Adding an antivirus and a firewall offer a protection, and it's a good idea to sell your OS with such protection, but it doesn't make the OS itself safer.

And yes, poeple do like gadgets, personaly I like the new clock, but I have never heard anybody saying "I wish there was more gadgets".

@ Jun 27 2008, 05:49 PM)

Criticisms of Vista is widely visible on the internet. Looks like the one who is reading is Apple. Let's see if M$ can read tech forums too...

Criticisms of any new version of Windows ever are widely visible on the internet. There's always been people whining, and there will always be. It doesn't matter what they do, there will always be a tiny minority of people unhappy about it (usually they're the kind that likes to complain a lot too).

The unhappy minority is tiny, but who wouldn't be happy with its brand new computer, two or three times faster than the previous one? It's tiny because only very few poeple know what a computer is, and what a software is.

So, is M$ hopeless? Reading you, M$ OSes were and will always be a serie of disapointement and technical regression, because "it's like that".

I say "No", I'm not as pessimistic as you.

The tiny minority has been loud enough for Apple to hear the noise. M$ can't give a deaf ear.

And, you know what? I'm proud to belong to this tiny minority of whiners, because we make things moving.

[GrofLuigi]

Dig hard enough and you'll easily find XP-bashing reviews and sites from 7 years ago...

I can remember them saying the EXACT same thing back from when Win95 came out even. From "Runs like crap on my 486", to "the minimum requirements are unrealistic" (it WOULD install and work on a 386 -- if you were the most patient person in the world), to "it's just Win 3.11 with a new look", "It's bloated", "nobody needs this", "the old one does what I need just fine", "I have no reason to upgrade", etc.

Were those statements not true at that time? If anything, they would be a proof of Microsoft's deeds, not the users'.

And they'll be whining just the same when Windows 7 comes out, and the following, and the next and so on.

We can't whine even if there's something to whine about? If we have something to whine about, we'll whine. You're trying to say Microsoft is immaculate? Can we expect to be burned on stake?

In fact, I can't wait for Windows v7 to come out, just so they change their song to "Windows 7 sucks" while they run Vista happily. It's only a matter of time. They'll be calling Windows 7 users fanboys and such for a year or 2, while they bash it to no end. Meanwhile, everybody else is gonna install it and use it everyday without any real issues. And by the time Windows 8 is out, they'll all be happily running Windows 7 too, and saying "Windows 8 sucks"... It's a vicious circle or sorts.

True, but I'll not say Vista or 7 is great if they don't become great. And I won't call anyone fanboy if he/she presents facts that support his/her opinion.

Now, for some sad facts of life I strongly believe in:

1. Software development (and testing) always lags badly behind hardware development. It's not just Microsoft, every hardware manufacturer produces a piece of hardware and then issues endless revisions of drivers until they get it right (those who don't are even worse, it shows they don't care).

2. You know the old saying that any Microsoft OS isn't worth installing until service pack 1? I don't think it's a linear function, the SP number is increasing with time (and I suspect that's why they rushed Vista SP1, that was supposed to be RTM, they hoped to trick people). Very simple reason - increased complexity. Only after SP2 will I consider taking a look at Vista.

3. Microsoft needs to make money. Well d'uh. So they try to offer new Windows version every couple of years. But no new breakthrough in hardware was made in the last few years* and the devices are pretty much still the same (you can print with printers, copy files to/from hard disks, burn CDs/DVDs; combo devices excluded). So the basic Operating System tasks are still the same (copy, print, burn...) and everything else can be achieved by external applications. So Microsoft bundles stripped-down versions of some application for doing external tasks (emailing, photo/video manipulation) and that's the bloat. That's what I'm whining about. Make them optional.** I sure won't have trust in OE to keep my mail in if it means something to me - I'll buy a serious application for email (or photo editing or Internet browsing or...) but Microsoft's versions stay inside and consume SERIOUS resources because they are intertwined with other dll's and there are hidden checks for those components everywhere. You don't believe me? See any of the antitrust court trials/investigations against Microsoft. Again, for the Nth time, thanks God for Nuhi. But it should have been like that in the first place. And yes, even XP is seriously bloated for an OS, but yet underpowered to do serious work in any of the areas it tries to.

4. (And this comes from 3) Microsoft doesn't listen to customers as much as it listens to authorities, big hardware makers or Holywood (yes, DRM). So if a new 'feature' is to be added, it will be for catering the needs of Microsoft or the above entities, and the user comes at the last place. It's logical and perfectly normal in our world today, but because of that I will always question Microsoft's actions from this perspective.

GL

* I think that the shift to multiple-core processors was the perfect opportunity for them to say: "this is why you need to switch to Vista/Server2008, XP and its predecessors won't work well on multiple cores" (and they said this, but not too loudly, and I have yet to see any technical documentation that Vista/Server2008 kernel (scheduler) is THAT much more optimized for multiple cores). Instead, they based their Vista marketing campaign on skins (WOW!). I'm still laughing my a$$ out. Are they selling toys to kindergarden children?

** Actually this wish may come true - I read rumours that Windows 7 will be modular, but, again, in a bad way - "software as a service" so you'll have to pay for windows components or per hour of usage (yeah that's Microsoft's holy grail - direct connection to my wallet).

[MrCobra]

I don’t necessarily think it’s what Microsoft can learn from Apple. But what Microsoft needs to learn period.

I think Microsoft needs to make Windows 100% modular. Anything and everything except core functionality should be easily removable from the OS. There are too many interdependencies in Windows. They need to quit adding feature on top of feature on top of feature.

I also think that Microsoft needs start making Windows 64bit only and quit catering to the people/businesses that need to keep 20 year old applications running. Why should I as a user suffer bloat and intentional bugs just to ensure that some business can still run the same software that they ran 20 years ago exactly the same as it did 20 years ago? If legacy applications are that important then keeps the OS they were designed for or virtualize them. If anything, the NT line of Windows should only be backward compatible with the NT line. 9x code support needs to be killed.

[CoffeeFiend]

the art of programming is to make a software faster and smaler while keeping all the features.

Not at all. It's about problem solving, in a reasonable time frame and on budget. It's a business. It's about shipping on time/on budget, NOT about optimizing it to no end.

I agree, but I was not talking about that.

Well, you DID say MS did it and not Apple... Sounds to me like you were doing that precisely.

When Vista came out in 2007, it would not run, all options turned on, on one year old computers.

BS, pure and simple. Vista could run with ALL of the features enabled in my 5 year old P4 if I put a new vid card in it (it wouldn't be fast, but hey, it's a 5yo box)

They also discontinued their very own hardware architecture.

Either you don't know, or don't understand what a hardware architecture means/is. It still runs on x86 and x64 (and even IA64). Whereas Apple was for PPC, and they're not releasing PPC versions anymore. Again, it doesn't even compare, but hey, anything to bash Vista eh?

No, poeple asked for the next OS to be safer, not to add an antivirus and a firewall.

Actually most people were, and were criticizing Windows because they had to buy this/it wasn't included, even though it was "necessary"...

So, is M$ hopeless? Reading you, M$ OSes were and will always be a serie of disapointement and technical regression, because "it's like that".

I say "No", I'm not as pessimistic as you.

LOL. Much the inverse. MS has never been "a series of disappointments" -- the only deceiving version was WinME. They've ALL been great improvements besides that one. You're the pessimistic one here.

And, you know what? I'm proud to belong to this tiny minority of whiners, because we make things moving.

Nah, it changes NOTHING. MS will release what they want, no matter how much you whine. It just annoys the hell out of everyone -- that's ALL it accomplishes.

[CoffeeFiend]

Were those statements not true at that time? If anything, they would be a proof of Microsoft's deeds, not the users'.

SOME of it was. The minimum specs stated were too low, but they always have been as far as I can remember.

Installing Win95 from floppies on a 386 took what seemed like forever and a day. But it would run on it indeed. My boss at the time asked me to upgrade 3 puters in his office to win95... Eternity later, it was up and running, but at ridiculously slow speeds. A few days later, he handed me a CC, and I was on my way to buy new shiny Pentium 1's to replace them.

But on reasonable hardware, the speed was just fine (again, same for any version I can remember -- and that even applies to other OS'es).

As for being required, it wasn't. Even Win 3.11 wasn't technically speaking. Most people just used it as a pretty app launcher for their DOS apps anyways (besides minesweeper and solitaire), so DOS by itself was sufficient back then for most needs. Windows apps were far and few between, MS Office 4.3 being the main one. And Win 3.11 didn't really run too great on 286'es either (no fancy 386 enhanced mode).

We can't whine even if there's something to whine about? If we have something to whine about, we'll whine.

Whining might be a good thing sometimes. But people are ALWAYS whining about Windows -- every version of it. They always have, and always will be. It gets old after 10 to 15 years. Actually, there were even people whining about DOS (how it was a set back from other computers' environments, etc), so more than 15 years.

1. Software development (and testing) always lags badly behind hardware development. It's not just Microsoft, every hardware manufacturer produces a piece of hardware and then issues endless revisions of drivers until they get it right (those who don't are even worse, it shows they don't care).

TOTALLY agreed on that one. 64 bit Windows support to this day is still quite bad, especially when you consider they had NT4 working in 64 bit on the old Alpha architecture. And I still have hardware that has no x64 drivers, 99% of the apps I use have no x64 version so I'd be running basically everything under WOW64, lots of codecs I use everyday don't have x64 versions, etc. It's quite sad really. I WANT to use x64, but it's just not ready for use just yet.

And yes, most hardware makers have long been using us as beta testers of their drivers. That's always been a serious problem.

So Microsoft bundles stripped-down versions of some application for doing external tasks (emailing, photo/video manipulation) and that's the bloat. That's what I'm whining about. Make them optional.**

Actually, most of the included apps, I don't want of either. IE? YUCK!!! No way in hell! OE? Are you kidding me? MSN junk? eww! Windows Media Player? LOL, good one! MCE? Not a chance! ... But, most people WANT more than just a plain OS, they WANT an OS that comes with a browser and such things, no matter how much they suck (I mean, just look at all the IE users out there, if that's not a sign...)

[Fredledingue]

Crahak,

You are oversimplifying the whining history. "We" are not saying the same things at every version. What happens is that some points remain unaddressed and are reppeated again and again, and they will be repeated again and again until M$ listen, especialy if M$ makes these points even worse.

Some things are removed, some things are added. I won't go into details.

Criticism of Vista are also much virulent and widespread as then, for XP. In general XP was a success, despite the whining, Vista definetly is not. You can read any analyst who has written about Vista, they will point out that Vista didn't deliver as expected, in user view or in sales numbers. I don't remember that for XP.

I don't remember poeple asking NOT to have XP and have w2000 or w98 instead (except myself - LOL - but initialy it was for a driver compatibility reason).

I don't remember M$ charging MORE for the right to downgrade one year after XP's release.

I don't remember them writing a special letter to their customers about why upgrade to XP now.

It was unthinkable less than 2 years ago.

You are 100% wrong when you say that programming is not a matter of code optimization. Of course it is. If not Windows wouldn't run at all.

With XP and Vista, M$ choosed to ignore a little bit OS optimization, counting on rapidly growing hardware capacity.

With XP it worked, with Vista it works too, but we feel it's sort of the end of it and that it went too far, too irresponsibly.

M$ will have to do more clever coding. It's going to be a matter of business and profitability from now on.

There are enough gadgets and applications and skins, to finaly think about cleaning all this up even if it's less sexy.

I'm sure that if M$ would release a windows XP as fast and as simple to use as w98 (save the crashes and missing libraries), they would do a killing. Everybody would buy it.

No, why nobody is buying Vista (except when buying a new computer of course)?

Ho, and you said... you had to buy a new Graphic Card...?

Edited June 29, 2008 by Fredledingue

[CoffeeFiend]

"We" are not saying the same things at every version.

Yes they sure are. It's usually "waah! waah! bloat!", "waah! waah! slow!", "waah! waah! the old one works better!" and "waah! waah! too expensive!". Overall, I've seen no change at all in the whining over the years.

What happens is that some points remain unaddressed and are reppeated again and again, and they will be repeated again and again until M$ listen, especialy if M$ makes these points even worse.

Most of them concerns DON'T need to be addressed. And whiners will whine regardless. They'd make Vista run on a Vic 20, and they'd still manage whine about something.

Criticism of Vista are also much virulent and widespread as then, for XP.

I don't really see that.

In general XP was a success, despite the whining, Vista definetly is not.

LOL. Whatever. We've been over this before, do you need me to spell it out? Vista adoption rates are BETTER than XP's. Sales are a lot higher too. XP wasn't nearly as successful by any metric.

You can read any analyst who has written about Vista, they will point out that Vista didn't deliver as expected, in user view or in sales numbers. I don't remember that for XP.

Looks like I'm gonna have to repeat myself again! A direct quote of something I said before:

Vista got ~15% of the market share (of a MUCH bigger market) than XP did in a year: under 10% (see http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18829228 ) so about 25M copies of XP sold in the first year, compared to over 140M of Vista sold so far (about a year too).

Analysts did say XP adoption rates were quite bad, and Vista's is lots faster.

Maybe in your world 50% faster adoption rates and nearly 6x higher sales isn't a success... I dunno.

You are 100% wrong when you say that programming is not a matter of code optimization. Of course it is. If not Windows wouldn't run at all.

It's NOT. Again, it's about problem solving, on time and on budget. Of course it has to run on available hardware (DUH!), but hardware is dirt cheap, and talented programmer time isn't, the amount of talented developers isn't infinite, and man-months aren't exactly linear (having 2 guys on the same job won't take half the time). But hey, what do I know? I only do this for a living...

No, why nobody is buying Vista?

Yes, nobody's buying it, except they have record sales, and record adoption numbers. Makes perfect sense.

Ho, and you said... you had to buy a new Graphic Card...?

No, I said I would have, IF I wanted to run Vista with all features enabled (as in, aero glass) on my 5 year old P4 (Intel GMA 950 wouldn't exactly cut it). My main box (the one running Vista) didn't need any upgrades at all.

I don't know why you have to turn every topic where I see you post into an endless vista bashing session (especially when most of it is nonsense). I think you need to find yourself a new hobby.

Now, excuse me while I go call the whambulance.

Edited June 30, 2008 by crahak

[Zxian]

* I think that the shift to multiple-core processors was the perfect opportunity for them to say: "this is why you need to switch to Vista/Server2008, XP and its predecessors won't work well on multiple cores" (and they said this, but not too loudly, and I have yet to see any technical documentation that Vista/Server2008 kernel (scheduler) is THAT much more optimized for multiple cores). Instead, they based their Vista marketing campaign on skins (WOW!). I'm still laughing my a$$ out. Are they selling toys to kindergarden children?

So... there's no reason to move up to Vista and Server 2008? That's why Microsoft themselves moved the entire microsoft.com domain onto Server 2008 Beta 3 servers last summer. BETA! These aren't even release candidates. They removed the last of the old 2003 boxes a few weeks ago, since they had seen 2008 servers perform about 10% more efficiently. My laptop handles multitasking with Vista installed than it ever did with XP - all of this on a two year old, single core CPU. When I go to install Vista on that machine, there isn't a single piece of hardware that doesn't have default drivers. Of course, I download the latest drivers, but I can actually go and connect to my wireless network without sticking the network drivers on a USB key.

@fredilingue - Let me give you a clear-cut example of what crahak is talking about in terms of software development. I'm working on a piece of software for my research (you can download the source at www.qcadesigner.ca if you like), and the number one reason that I'm being held back is not my lack of powerful hardware, but rather the fact that the bloody thing is written in C. I was asked to implement some new functionality into the program, one part of which is a simple search. Now... the last time I looked at implementing searching functions was about 3 years ago, so I had to go back and look them up. Which one did I choose? Binary Search. The main reason - it's simple to code, and (obviously) better than linear search. Are there better search functions out there? Probably. Do I want to go looking at them to optimize the last detail about this program? No, because my searching functionality is not the bottleneck of the program. It's one area where I could optimize until I was blue in the face, but it would make no practical difference.

You say Windows98 is fast and easy to use? Having worked with XP for the past 7 years and Vista for the past year, going back to Win98 would be torture. Lack of modern hardware support would be the main killer for me (not to mention the libraries and software that simply dont' work). A lot of my work deals with high memory requirements - simulations of mine often chew up 4-5GB of RAM. Long story short, 98 is just not up to the task in this day and age. For a machine that you use to surf the web... sure, but why would you want to? Windows XP and Vista are far more secure, and chances are you could build a modern computer that would run XP faster than the old 98 box you're using, while still saving you on your electricity bill. I tested the D201GLY2 motherboard from Intel, and with a laptop SATA drive and 1GB of RAM, you're looking at a basic system that'll handle most daily tasks (short of high-def video) while pullling a mere 25-35W from the wall.