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Windows XP is still king


Dibya

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Are you talking about windows xp vanila (without sp)?

 

Yep. :)

And please do understand how the "timing" was - to say the least - peculiar.

In the good ol' days, Windows 3.1 or 3.11 or "Windows for Workgroups" was basically indifferentiated between "home" and "professional" users.

When NT 3.1 came out (july 1993) it was "professional use only" (and was adopted anyway by a little part only of the market) , whilst soon its evolutions NT 3.51 (may 1995)  and NT 4.00 (july 1996) were used by practically all businesses.

The "revolution" was Windows 95 (august 1995) which was "home only", no businesses even thought of using it, they had just bought (at a high price BTW) a license for NT 3.51 and it just worked, there was (at the time) no need for multimedia and all enterprises/businesses waited to upgrade to the soon to be released NT 4.00.

BTW the original 4.00.950 version of Windows 95 only had FAT 16 (and its limits with partition and files sizes) and until the 2nd release or 4.00.950 B, which came out one year later (august 1996) no FAT32, whilst NT had already NTFS.

All the professional users continued to use NT 4.00 for the following four years, whilst on the "home side" Windows 98 came out (4.10.1998 june 1998) followed one year later by the second edition (4.10.2222 april 1999).

Windows 2000 was made available in early 2000 and though it had some nice improvements over NT 4.00 it required by comparison awfully powerful machines, in the very first times it was not a hit, its adoption started later in 2000, likely just after release of SP1 (August 2000).

The "natural" evolution for home users was Windows ME (september 2000) which was largely (somehow - and hard as it may seem to say so - not entirely for actual reasons) a total flop.

 

It is in this climate (with all businesses happily working on their NT 4.00 or very recently upgraded to 2000 systems and all home users happily using Windows 98 and much less happily using the more recent ME) that - out of the blue - came Windows XP (october 2001).

 

Besides the nonsense about the licences Home and Pro had very little differences, but both were too "advanced" for the "home" users and too d@mn colourful/playful for business users and initially (yet another time) they required much more powerful hardware than what was common at the time. 

The first lamented that a lot of (DOS/Win9X) games wouldn't work on the new platform, the second lamented the need to update not only the OS but also the hardware (without any measurable benefit when compared to 2000).

 

It is in the two years between (roughly) 2000 and 2002 that a "normal" amount of RAM (I would say an average 64 Mbytes for 9x and NT 4.00 users and and average of 128 Mb  for ME and 2K users) needed instantly to be doubled or multiplied by 4 :ph34r:.

Of course new machines started to ship with 256 or 512 Mb "standard" (besides faster processors) and this allowed the use of XP, which still, until SP2 (august 2004) was not exactly "first choice" in the professional world, whilst the home users, somehow "orphaned" by the failure of their ME's drove its widespread adoption.

 

In a nutshell, XP "killed" 2000 in its infancy, whilst it revived ME (that was dead having already committed suicide).

 

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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I like Win 2000 more than XP, because of it's clean GUI.

XP is only good when removed dozen of features und GUI crap. 

I started with Win 98, ME what a crap! But then came XP. Stable and fast.

What a glorious gaming time.

Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 are no successors. Filled with crap nobody needs.

Multimedia funky junky Systems.

 

Hail to the king baby, XP rules!

Despite I'm using OSX 10.6.8, XP will always have a place in my heart.

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Well...

[*]Please note how with the same SP2 the good MS guys introduced the infamous 4 Gb RAM limitation patch

Just about the time Server2k3 was being intruduced, along with XP-Prox64? :yes:

 

As for Win95 "home use", AFMC used NT4 as Server (AFAIK, maybe Linux?) and Win95 for the "workers" to save their Reports on, also to "connect" to the AMDAHL Mainframe. So, yes, for the general populace, but no when it came to US Gov via (apparently a special price). Pretty sure US Gov employees were "guinea pigs" (aka "testers") for Win95. :w00t: Indeed, we used (AFAIK) NT3.x/4.x for Servers and Win3.11 (WFW) before that but those obviously weren't conducive to pretty formatted Word Docs. (Kermit was fun!)

 

</chime in>

Edited by submix8c
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I actually liked Me. Ran most of the games I liked. Was stable for me on a computer that was built to run it. Then XP came in 2001 and it sucked horribly on that machine when first released. Tried Home and Pro. My issues stemmed from bad video drivers. Had a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 that wouldn't run right, followed by an nvidia GeForce 3 which wouldn't work at all. Finally put in an ATi Radeon 8500 that was decent.

XP didn't mature until SP1. SP2 was nearly perfect. By the time XP3 was released I'd already migrated to XP x64, which I'm still using. Tried Vista. Have Win7 on an old laptop. Sister had Win8, but migrated to Win10 on her laptop. I manage all of the machines in the house, and I still prefer XP x64.

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My biggest reservation with the latest operating systems is their tremendously inefficient use of resources.

 

There was little difference in RAM requirements from Windows 95 to XP. Then the requirements doubled from Vista to 7. Why did system requirements from XP to shoot from 64MB RAM to 1GB for Windows 7? Absolutely unacceptable in my opinion.

 

Grandma's NT4 PC is probably not accounted in those statistics above.

 

I take offense to that comment, I have a Solo 9300 with NT 4.0! Complete with Orinoco Gold 802.11b wireless!!! :thumbup

 

It's running Service Pack 4 (SP4) because that is the minimum requirement for the Orinoco Client Manager. -->

 

ntie5goo.jpg

Edited by sdfox7
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There was little difference in RAM requirements from Windows 95 to XP. Then the requirements doubled from Vista to 7. Why did system requirements from XP to shoot from 64MB RAM to 1GB for Windows 7? Absolutely unacceptable in my opinion.

Sorry to say so, but your memory is fading away:

Minimum RAM WIndows 95 4/8 Mb (in practice no less than 16 Mb):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/138349

Minimum RAM Windows NT 4.00 12/16 Mb (in practice no less than 32 or 64 Mb)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/126690

Minimum RAM Windows 98 16/24 Mb (in practice no less than 48 Mb):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/182751

Minimum RAM Windows Me 32 Mb (in practice no less than 64 Mb):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253695

Minimum RAM Windows 2000 32/128 Mb (in practice no less than 128 Mb):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000

Minimum RAM Windows XP 64/128 Mb (in practice no less than 256 Mb):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP

Minimum RAM Windows Vista 512 Mb (in practice no less than 1 Gb):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/919183

Minimum RAM Windows 7 1 Gb (in practice no less than 2 Gb):

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements

 

All in all 1 Gb/64 Mb over a 8 years period (2009-2001) is not as bad a ratio as 64 Mb/4 Mb over a 6 year period (2001-1995).

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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What I was trying to point out is that most people in an office environment are doing the same things they did 20 years ago, yet the coding has become extremely inefficient.

 

Let's be honest; I think it's safe to say most people don't use all the features of Microsoft Office (or even find them for that matter).

 

Office 2000 with the File Compatibility Pack can open and edit the same .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files as Office 2016. Yet Office 2016 needs more RAM and processing power for its fancy interface and overhead.

 

Not to mention the huge disservice we are doing to the environment with all of this throw-it-away-in-just-a-year technology. Perfectly good machines are thrown away because software engineers cannot learn how to code efficiently.

 

I am more forgiving of the RAM requirements increase from Windows 95 to XP because we were in a transitory period, going from hybrid 16 / 32-bit technology in Windows 95 and 98 to mostly 32-bit technology in 2000 and XP.

 

Computers were able to take advantage of more RAM as we moved away from strict 16-bit computing. However, XP to Vista to 7 all offered 32-bit versions and so the increases seem steep.

Edited by sdfox7
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What I was trying to point out is that most people are doing the same things they did 20 years ago, yet the coding has become extremely inefficient.

 

Let's be honest; I think it's safe to say most people don't use all the features of Microsoft Office (or even find them for that matter).

Sure :), and you have it right :thumbup , you only used the "wrong" example with the RAM requirements.

Noone uses Excel or Word over - maybe 30% - of their possibilities, and - if you can put aside the stupid .docx and .xlsx compatibility, Office 95 or 97 are more than what most people will ever need.

And while I am at it, let me make a (small) plug for Spread32:

http://www.byedesign.co.uk/

(if a single guy can replicate the almost full working of Excel 4/5 in 1.5 Mbytes what could have the good MS guys done)?

An old graph about office (abnormal) growth:

http://www.oooninja.com/2008/05/openofficeorg-microsoft-office-moores.html

jaclaz

jaclaz

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But Office 2016 contains Active Directory and Exchange integration, a must for usual home user ;)

When I had used Office 2000 for the last time I was much younger and not aware of it's capabilities, I remember mainly lack of useful autocorrection (like lack of autocaps after punctuation marks) and crappy integration with polish language. Remember the joke:

How do you know someone is really famous?

His surname isn't underlined in Word

Not funny, I know. :thumbdown

I remember Office 2003 far better, and 2007 the best ;) and apart from ribbons (they can be useful, anything you want just appear in the right place) and autosnapping/intelligent resizing (which can be sometimes irritating and IS hard to turn off) can't really see an improvement.

 

And... you say... 30%? Are you aware, how many Office users can't even use Excel and type in simple formula? OneNote? I didn't turn it once! Not even mentioning features hidden like developer cards or the others, most functions are unknown, 90% of users needs writing, some formatting, fancy pictures and look :>

Ah, by the way, how many functions and capabilities of a programming language a programmer use? You see, the stronger and featurefull the tool is, the less of it you use... just what you need :>

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I actually liked Me. Ran most of the games I liked. Was stable for me on a computer that was built to run it. Then XP came in 2001 and it sucked horribly on that machine when first released. Tried Home and Pro. My issues stemmed from bad video drivers. Had a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 that wouldn't run right, followed by an nvidia GeForce 3 which wouldn't work at all. Finally put in an ATi Radeon 8500 that was decent.

XP didn't mature until SP1. SP2 was nearly perfect. By the time XP3 was released I'd already migrated to XP x64, which I'm still using. Tried Vista. Have Win7 on an old laptop. Sister had Win8, but migrated to Win10 on her laptop. I manage all of the machines in the house, and I still prefer XP x64.

I would love to go back, but I want a 64-bit browsing solution.  None exist for XP x64.  Otherwise I could use SeaMonkey, K-Meleon or Pale Moon/Atom.

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I would love to go back, but I want a 64-bit browsing solution.  None exist for XP x64.  Otherwise I could use SeaMonkey, K-Meleon or Pale Moon/Atom.

The 64-bit build of Google Chrome works on XP x64, but the browser may not be supported for much longer on any version of XP.

Edited by 5eraph
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But then the 32-bit versions of all the browsers should work just fine on XP x64, just like they do on Win7 x64, shouldn't they?  I'm not sure what the real advantage of using a 64-bit browser is.

 

Cheers and Regards

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I would love to go back, but I want a 64-bit browsing solution.  None exist for XP x64.  Otherwise I could use SeaMonkey, K-Meleon or Pale Moon/Atom.

The 64-bit build of Google Chrome works on XP x64, but the browser may not be supported for much longer on any version of XP.

 

Vivaldix64 works fine

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But then the 32-bit versions of all the browsers should work just fine on XP x64, just like they do on Win7 x64, shouldn't they?  I'm not sure what the real advantage of using a 64-bit browser is.

 

Cheers and Regards

only advantage is that it work little faster due to native processor architecture.

WinXpx64 run 32bit under a virtual machine type system so when app will be x64 doesnot need to use that.,

Edited by Dibya
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