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Vista putting a dent in 98 userbase?


TravisO

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1) I wouldn't live without tabbed browsing and also a modern browser (no IE7 on Win9x, and no FF soon either)

Oh, please. There's Firefox, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon (though it doesn't really have tabs), Flock, and Opera. There's choice enough. Just because there'll be no Firefox version for you in 1.5 years isn't reason to write off Win9x. Especially since it can still be patched to work on Win9x.

2) Nowadays' internet isn't 1995's. Youtube, google video. Embedded flash and quicktime video. Countless flash animations. That's when they're not also using music (like myspace users seem to all do -- not that I go there), or those CPU-eating javascript-based animations (like snowflakes falling down - I hate it!) Combine all this with more complex and heavier designs, loads of javascript for everything, AJAX this and that... All of it is becoming much more CPU intensive.

Browsing the web is sometimes slow-ish on a 3GHz PC loaded with RAM. On a P2? No way.

I browse the web fine on my Pentium II. You make it sound like the whole web is like that, which is far from the truth.

-An embedded video player isn't too heavy.

-Flash, I admit, sucks. But hey, you can choose to not install Flash. Sites that are Flash-based should be boycotted anyway. Those aren't websites, they're slideshows.

-Music is not a heavy load.

-More complex designs are not a big load unless the page is really big (like hundreds of kB). Complex designs that are also standards-compliant are rare, anyway.

-Good websites don't depend on JavaScript, or not too heavily. Sites using JavaScript animation are often those sites that have no worthwhile content. You aren't going to see professional sites using such amateurish techniques.

-AJAX is very new, but I doubt it is heavy on the CPU.

As for the net being slow on a 3 Ghz PC: remember that connection speed has nothing to do with how fast your computer is. You may be confusing heavy-load pages with network slowdown. And heavy use of Flash will always be a problem.

Besides nostalgia, at least so far, I can't see why I would need 9x anymore. I might install it again, but unlike in the past where it was because some stuff just wouldn't run if I didn't have 98SE, I'm finding that it is now possible to get many things to work just fine with Vista.

With Vista, your computer isn't yours, it's M$'. There's a lot of DRM thrown in there, phoning home measure, etc. You also have to activate it, which makes you reliant on M$ for getting your OS to work. Where's the sense in that?

NT also has quite bad emulation of DOS. And DOSBox is quite a poor emulator when it comes to speed.

But, for Windows, it is the most secure OS available

Joke of the week. Windows XP was the most insecure Windows OS ever, with a constant stream of exploits, and network processes just begging to be assaulted. So far, Windows Vista is living up to its predecessor. Don't believe the hype. Especially when instead of making the OS more secure they've placed 'User Access Controls' all over the place to confirm every little thing.

I'm not even touching on how bloated this thing is yet. According to a friend of mine, before he started tweaking, there were 60 (!) processes running by default.

With Win9x, you have full control, and great compatibility all the way back to the year 1981.

Mind you, no matter what the OS is, there's no way I'd keep something even remotely as ancient as a P2. I've gotten rid of anything under 2GHz (and 1GB RAM) like a couple years ago.

It really depends on what you're going to do with your computer. Web browsing, e-mail, and other basic work? A Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM is fine. Going to do development? Get yourself a reasonably fast CPU and 256 MB of RAM. How fast depends on how large the project(s) is/are, so it compiles in a reasonable amount of time. Going to play games? Well, aside from a game console, get at least a 1.5 Ghz CPU and 512 MB RAM, along with a recent video card. etc.

Don't write off Pentium II CPUs just because you've been spoiled by much faster CPUs. :)

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Just because there'll be no Firefox version for you in 1.5 years isn't reason to write off Win9x.

You're right. But the fact that a very large portion of the apps I use and need don't run on Win9x at all and the lack of features we've taken for granted for years sure is. I basically wrote off Win9x when Win2k came out.

An embedded video player isn't too heavy.

Tell that to my ex-wife's dad, who can't watch videos on the net with his P3 866 - it's just too choppy.

But hey, you can choose to not install Flash. Sites that are Flash-based should be boycotted anyway.

So because your hardware can't keep up with flash, you chose to not go there anymore (even though the content is sometimes very good, or that sometimes you just need to access the site anyways)

Music is not a heavy load.

By itself, no, but it adds up quite nicely along with the flash and embedded video.

More complex designs are not a big load unless the page is really big (like hundreds of kB).

Which I come across everyday (like this I was just reading -- 969kb for the html alone, plus 310kb of javascript, 50kb of CSS, plus images including the ads -- around 1.5MB) It's anything but uncommon. Open 10 of those pages in different tabs and that P2 of yours will be anything but "browsing the web fine".

Good websites don't depend on JavaScript, or not too heavily. Sites using JavaScript animation are often those sites that have no worthwhile content.

Yeah, Javascript is for amateurs and sites without contents. Unlike google maps, gmail, MS live maps, slashdot, and so many others. With the "web 2.0" and AJAX craze lately, there's more javascript than ever. And it's not going to change anytime soon... Expect even more coming.

As for the net being slow on a 3 Ghz PC: remember that connection speed has nothing to do with how fast your computer is.

Nah. I'm sitting on a 10mbit line, and most web servers are plenty fast. It's the pages themselves which are heavy. Heavy pages, lots of flash, lots of javascript everywhere (not just the snowflakes atrocity), and all that.

It really depends on what you're going to do with your computer. Web browsing, e-mail, and other basic work? A Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM is fine. Going to do development? Get yourself a reasonably fast CPU and 256 MB of RAM. How fast depends on how large the project(s) is/are, so it compiles in a reasonable amount of time. Going to play games? Well, aside from a game console, get at least a 1.5 Ghz CPU and 512 MB RAM, along with a recent video card. etc.

Don't write off Pentium II CPUs just because you've been spoiled by much faster CPUs. :)

I think you're TOTALLY off here. As wrong as wrong can be. None of the "basic" work I do -- using the software I normally use, would work on anything near a P2. Development? You have obviously no idea what it takes. Good luck using VS2005 (along with countless other required apps, like CruiseCointrol.Net) or Eclipse, along with SQL Server (and other DBs) and other required server stuff (like IIS for web services, MSMQ for messenging, DTC for transactions and such), SCMs and everything else on 256MB, no matter how fast your CPU could be, it would be TOTALLY unbearable, even for "hello world"-scale projects. Games? Not that I play games, but look at the hw requirements of recent games, and again you'll see you're way off... Just going to EA's website to see (hah, it uses flash - no EA for you?), first title on their page is command & conquer 3. Minimum specs? XP (no Win9x - how unsurprising), 2GHz. That's an absolute minimum, not the recommended specs if you want good performance. If one wants to play today's games (and preferably those that will come out within 6 months to a year), it would take at least a CPU twice as fast and twice as much RAM as you say.

I'm hardly spoiled by fast CPUs. It's been many years since I've seen a P2 box. I can even count the P3 boxes I've seen in the last couple years on the fingers of one hand. P2's are very old stuff, and most people did write those off quite a while ago.

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Dosbox is quite zippy these days. Granted I don't run a vast amount of games on it, but some pinball, Star Trek, Leisure Suit Larry, that kind of stuff. I think most of the later, more resource intensive Dos games use other methods such as Mame, ScummVM, Windows ports, etc. For what I run it's fine.

What DRM? All my music files are mp3, personally encoded. PowerDVD plays my DVD's. The web plugins do their thing. As long as I'm not interested in DRM based media there's nothing to call home about.

Yes, activation and Genuine checking is an annoyance. But you activate once and occasionally when you need to download something from Microsoft it updates the Genuine files and checks to see that you're not using a newly blacklisted license. Just takes a few seconds. Rather do without it, but it hasn't interfered with me at any point.

The amount of background activity is intensive. Much of what is noticeable disappears once you've gotten your programs and files installed as it gets done with its indexing activities and then only needs to keep track of changes instead of the initial full catalog with all the major software and files added, etc.

Since it's still Windows a lot of files that have been used for many years are still in the new operating system. And any bug fixes, security patches, improvements to them are focused on the current one they'll work on. That is Vista.

For me, it seems easier to figure out ways to get older software running on Vista than it is to get newer software to run on 98SE. Much of it just won't as the software companies didn't include the necessary files for 9x. A lot will! Especially for those who take advantage of some of the projects going on around here, Kernel project, etc.

98SE is still 98SE and quite capable as long as you use hardware that has a driver for 9x and software that runs on it. But I have seen that Vista runs my stuff quite well and would rather spend time doing things than keeping up with several operating systems. Installing a bunch of OS's and keeping them all updated is time and hard drive space consuming. It's getting to the point where I think I'd rather just install the latest and be done with it.

Actually I'm spending so much time in Linux right now that it is hard for me to get too annoyed with Vista.

All that said, I still love 98. I can see some folks having similar reactions to Vista that I did though. The thing does work, and as the years go on it will let you play with the latest toys. Same cannot be said of 98 anymore.

So that, and the fact that there really isn't much of a 98 userbase these days, makes me think that there's no question that some folks will just move on.

Flash? Never had a problem with it. Plays web stuff nicely whenever I have 98 installed, whether on Firefox or Internet Explorer. Pages would load slower on 98 than on XP, Vista with it but not seriously interfering with browsing. And I always installed the latest versions. Perhaps on older hardware they would cause serious slowdown and perhaps crashes though. I haven't played with my 366MHz pc's is quite some time! Break out those Voodoo PCI videocards!

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Pages would load slower on 98 than on XP

That's likely because you have an AMD processor.

Likely because it don't support the microcodes for Athlon processors.

Also, Windows 98 is more likely to be optimized for a POTS (56k and lower) internet connection.

Edited by RJARRRPCGP
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Doesn't matter which way you look at it, which numbers or who's stats. The Win9x numbers are decreasing a lot, and consistently. The win9x user base is anything but "not shrinking" like you seem to think. And it's not exactly surprising (for many reasons like I've mentioned before, like software/hardware compatibility and what not). It's been a few years since I've even seen a Win9x box.

I don't disagree win9x users will diminish as time goes on, I just don't think the immediate arrival of Vista would really have had a dramatic effect in reducing the number of Win9x users.

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Dammit! My reply didn't get sent because of this message board script's retarded quote limiting feature!

You're right. But the fact that a very large portion of the apps I use and need don't run on Win9x at all and the lack of features we've taken for granted for years sure is.

What features?

Tell that to my ex-wife's dad, who can't watch videos on the net with his P3 866 - it's just too choppy.

At that speed, it should work just fine. It could be because of the video card, or because of a Flash-based video player. I think those would be slower.

So because your hardware can't keep up with flash, you chose to not go there anymore (even though the content is sometimes very good, or that sometimes you just need to access the site anyways)

The major reasons I boycott Flash is because it's proprietary and often used in a way that's against the web. Flash should never be used as a website.

I've never come across a Flash site that actually has good content. I'd think those are rare. And hey, if you really need to access the site, you can temporarily install Flash.

Which I come across everyday (like this I was just reading -- 969kb for the html alone, plus 310kb of javascript, 50kb of CSS, plus images including the ads -- around 1.5MB) It's anything but uncommon. Open 10 of those pages in different tabs and that P2 of yours will be anything but "browsing the web fine".

A Slashdot comments page? I'm a Slashdot member, so I've browsed plenty of those. I can view them just fine on my PC. Opening 10 of them requires a lot of memory, not processing speed, so it'd be fine.

If you want a page that's actually complex (in terms of CSS) and long, look at this one.

Yeah, Javascript is for amateurs and sites without contents.

You've misinterpreted what I said. Using JavaScript for animation is for amateurs and contentless sites. I'm not saying that good sites don't use JavaScript, but that they can be browsed without JavaScript, hence they don't rely on it. It should degrade gracefully.

With the "web 2.0" and AJAX craze lately, there's more javascript than ever.

We'll see when it actually gets wide-spread. AJAX won't take off that quickly, by the way, because IE can't handle it.

Nah. I'm sitting on a 10mbit line, and most web servers are plenty fast. It's the pages themselves which are heavy. Heavy pages, lots of flash, lots of javascript everywhere (not just the snowflakes atrocity), and all that.

Examples, please.

None of the "basic" work I do -- using the software I normally use, would work on anything near a P2.

Then I don't think you're doing basic work. What is it that you're doing?

Development? You have obviously no idea what it takes. Good luck using VS2005 (along with countless other required apps, like CruiseCointrol.Net) or Eclipse, along with SQL Server (and other DBs) and other required server stuff (like IIS for web services, MSMQ for messenging, DTC for transactions and such), SCMs and everything else on 256MB, no matter how fast your CPU could be, it would be TOTALLY unbearable, even for "hello world"-scale projects.

Visual Studio 2005 is unbearable on anything but the most high-end PC. Obviously it's bloated. I use Visual C++ 6.0 to compile SeaMonkey, a large open-source project.

I have no idea about Eclipse. SQL Server is by M$, so it's probably bloated as well. Web servers actually don't need that much RAM or a fast CPU.

I think you're really pushing it for "hello world" projects.

Games? Not that I play games, but look at the hw requirements of recent games, and again you'll see you're way off... Just going to EA's website to see (hah, it uses flash - no EA for you?), first title on their page is command & conquer 3. Minimum specs? XP (no Win9x - how unsurprising), 2GHz. That's an absolute minimum, not the recommended specs if you want good performance.

I'll give you that one. Still, games should be played on game consoles anyway.

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If one wants to play today's games (and preferably those that will come out within 6 months to a year), it would take at least a CPU twice as fast and twice as much RAM as you say.

Twice as much RAM, maybe. But CPUs twice as fast? You do know that 2 Ghz CPU is only 50% faster than a 1 Ghz CPU, right? :)

It's been many years since I've seen a P2 box.

Which would explain why you have such a skewed image of them.

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From experience, these are the best stats (most broad) I can find, and I've been watching them for about 6yrs now.

It seems Vista is putting a dent in the 98 world, and while it may not apply to the kind of people that go here, but I wanted to point out that previously Win98 leveled off at 3% user base, but as of this month, it's gone down to 2%. Now the month is not over and the stats can be wrong (they're viciously rounded), but I thought you guys might find the figures interesting.

URL: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/February/os.php

Of course I'm talking about the masses here, not power users, but I'm guessing anybody that was holding onto their Win98SE is finally starting to make the jump to XP or Vista. I once read in the past that the average person doesn't buy a new computer unless their ghz is 1/3rd of the fastest advertised machine out there. Considering that CPUs have been focus on multicores instead of flat out ghz, I can see why it's taken so much longer this generation. To the uneducated user my 6yr old XP1700 (1.7ghz theoretical) box doesn't seem very slow compared to a 3.2ghz box, even though 6yrs has passed since I bought it.

So to repeat my point, I think Vista is finally taking the last of the casual (or perhaps cheap) Win98 users and converting them and I fully expect the user base to hit 1% or less by the next college season (August).

PS: I'm not trying to create flame-bait or troll, just want to hear some observations & theories on the matter.

xoring your logic, produces that you must be the village id***

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You do know that 2 Ghz CPU is only 50% faster than a 1 Ghz CPU, right? :)

You're wrong. Given the same CPU core/family/IPC/cache/bus speeds and all that, actual speed is pretty much linear to the clock speed. IPC doesn't magically become lower at higher clock speeds (unless you're using some new core that's less efficient which is rarely the case with the exception of netburst), the actual speed is pretty much a direct multiplication of IPC by its clock speed. Given that going from a 1GHz to a 2GHz chip you just might be switching to a newer chip altogether (like a Pentium III Coppermine @ 1GHz to a P4 @ 2.0GHz which have higher IPCs, faster buses, often have bigger caches and also feature new instruction sets like SSE2 which speeds up many tasks), it would likely be *more* than twice as fast. Check any CPU benchmarks worth anything and you'll see.

Which would explain why you have such a skewed image of them.

Hardly. It can't run most of the software I use nowadays, it's way below the minimum requirements of anything I use, and completely useless for many of today's tasks. P2's are 10 years old -- that's a very, very long time in the computing world. Heck, I wouldn't even have a use for a P3 anymore.

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But, for Windows, it (Vista) is the most secure OS available...

I'd rather be using the latest version of Windows with the pretty effects, updated security stuff...

The word "security" is used far too loosely these days.

Back in 2002 (and 2003 and 2004 and 2005 ...) MS and the tech press were telling us that XP was more secure than Win-98. But that turned out not to be true.

Now we're being told that Vista, with even more services running in the background, is the most secure OS yet.

Again, it's just more sugar-coated lies. Too bad you're falling for it.

You don't choose Vista because of the claim that it's more secure, because that claim isin't worth sh*t. You choose Vista either because you have no choice (it came with your shiny new PC) or because you want to be thrilled and ride the roller coaster of updates, patches, and new malware threats.

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You're wrong. Given the same CPU core/family/IPC/cache/bus speeds and all that, actual speed is pretty much linear to the clock speed.

I guess I'll take your word for it... for now.

Hardly. It can't run most of the software I use nowadays, it's way below the minimum requirements of anything I use, and completely useless for many of today's tasks.

However, you fail to rebut the points I made above, and answer my questions. You don't even specify what exactly it is you're doing.

Really, this "P2s are outdated" crap is silly. They can still do a lot of things with well-written software. Especially with Linux on them. Heck, even 486s can still be good for something nowadays. They make great IP Masquerading routers and basic web servers.

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you fail to rebut the points I made above, and answer my questions.

Looks like I had missed one of your posts (just noticed right before I hit submit on this post). I'll be replying soon (out for groceries first)

You don't even specify what exactly it is you're doing.

If I start that, we could be here all day... Just a few everyday things:

-doesn't run modern OS'es (which are required for many apps, and I want the features they offer too) at decent speeds if at all

-heavy multitasking in general (lots of heavy apps -- see below)

-work on lots of large photos (lots of raw stuff) with photoshop cs2, a few raw tools, noise removal apps, sort/tag/catalog it all, etc

-did I mention stitching lots of large panos (from 12MB raw files) and some HDR work?

-fill our mp3 players (reencodes mp3s as it loads 'em) -- in the same year

-watch lots of mpeg4 video xvid and x264 for the most part), with post-processing and scaling too. I have a fair amount of HD rips too (720p) -- soemtimes on the web too (like the stuff that can't even play on my ex-wife's father's P3)

-watch live TV off my DVB-S card (even with DXVA a P2 couldn't handle the SDTV stuff), including HDTV channels

-burn DVDs at high speeds

-compress and decompress archives of several GBs (rar, zip, 7zip) -- before I die of old age

-reencode a lot of my recordings to either xvid or x264, including the odd HDTV show

-soon I'll be buying a HD DVD drive (requires a dual core CPU and all)

-using MS Office 2007 (requires XP BTW) with some addons and OpenOffice (already slow on a P4)

-surf the web (that does include lots of heavy pages), using a modern browser (FF and favorite plugins), lots of tabs at once (often 3 rows)

-use Thunderbird for mail and newsgroups (already slow-ish on a P4 with a large enough information store)

-run database software that's required by apps I use, test and write: SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g Express, DB2 Express-C, PostgreSQL...

-run a few instances of different OS'es at once inside VMWare server (and MS Virtual Server) for many purposes

-cataloging the said vmware images (means a lot of compressing/decompressing base images)

-use several CAD / electronics / embedded development apps

-use IIS6 (win2003 only) to run web apps, web services and server middleware. Soon that will have to be IIS7 (LH server - likely inside vmware). Sometimes more than once instance at once. (also needs other server processes/features too)

-writing code inside IDEs like Eclipse and Visual Studio 2005, along with all the usual plugins (e.g. Resharper, CodeRush, Refactor, Visual Assist X, AnkhSVN, etc) and countless other apps: dotTrace, SQL Prompt, Reflector, CruiseControl.NET, NUnit, MbUnit, NAnt, NCover (etc), CodeSmith, MyGeneration, LLBLGen, Crystal Reports, Installshield, Visio, Borland Together, XML editors, UML tools, several database tools for different purposes, various apps from many companies (Red Gate/SSXX/Altova/etc), various SCM repositories and clients, etc.

-the odd game twice a year

...

Again, we could be here all day.

P2's are way beyond outdated.

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What features?

NTFS? No ridiculous file size (and partition size) limitations? ACLs?

Real multi-user environment?

Remote Desktop?

ClearType?

PowerShell?

Hibernate and hot docking (for my laptop)?

Fast User Switching?

WMP11 and IE7?

MMC 3? (oh wait, no MMC at all on win9x!)

IIS

An OS that can use the .NET framework 3.0 and apps that require it?

ACPI that actually works?

Or just a stable OS that doesn't BSOD everyday?

That list could be very, very long.

At that speed, it should work just fine. It could be because of the video card, or because of a Flash-based video player. I think those would be slower.

It's updated, had flash 8, and has recent WHQL certified drivers and all. Yet it plays for about a second, stops for one, plays another second...

A Slashdot comments page? I'm a Slashdot member, so I've browsed plenty of those. I can view them just fine on my PC. Opening 10 of them requires a lot of memory, not processing speed, so it'd be fine.

You'd be fine? Sounds like you haven't actually tried! And no, it's not just memory. BTW, it uses a lot of javascript to expand/contract posts now. Just try it. FF pegs the CPU to 99% for a few seconds when opening one of that in a tab. Just try opening a dozen such tabs and you'll see.

If you want a page that's actually complex (in terms of CSS) and long, look at this one.

There's no complex css there at all (unlike perhaps csszengarden), much less long -- only 7kb of it. It's not a heavy page at all, the tab opened instantly in FF, no CPU load peak at all.

We'll see when it actually gets wide-spread. AJAX won't take off that quickly, by the way, because IE can't handle it.

Yeah, it's not like sites like google maps or live maps or gmail or digg or slashdot already exist and are being used by a lot of people :rolleyes:

BTW, IE can handle AJAX stuff just fine. Hell, AJAX came FROM IE! They invented the XMLHttpRequest.

Examples, please.

Most popular sites nowadays. Again, did you even bother loading a dozen tabs of that /. page yet?

Looks like I've got to split my post too...

Edited by crahak
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2nd half of previous post...

Visual Studio 2005 is unbearable on anything but the most high-end PC.

Oh yes, it's absolutely unbearable on anything but a Quad Xeon X5355 with 16GB RAM. Not like a 38$ CPU with 50$ worth of RAM or anything older like a plain old P4 or Athlon XP (even 2nd hand) would suffice :rolleyes:

Obviously it's bloated.

Really, this "it's bloated" crap is silly.

I use Visual C++ 6.0

VS6 once was a OK IDE... Like 10 years ago. Even VS2003 is pretty much considered legacy by now. Hardly anybody writes .NET 1.1 code anymore, the documentation (MSDN library) is not being updated anymore, it's not supported on Vista, etc. VS6 is an horrible IDE by today's standards, but also the compilers included suck: they don't support modern instruction sets, 64 bits, don't optimize for modern CPUs, the STL sucks -- you name it, it sucks! I would use pretty much anything over that, including the new and free Visual C++ Express (and GCC, and the Intel C++ compiler and pretty much everything else). Nevermind VS6 doesn't support modern languages (like C#) and all that either...

I have no idea about Eclipse.

If you call VS2005 bloated, then you don't want to even to try.

SQL Server is by M$, so it's probably bloated as well.
It's one of the best performing databases out there, and it has a very good feature set, and halfway decent pricing. Way to bash a product you clearly don't even know.
I think you're really pushing it for "hello world" projects.

Not at all! Unless you're using a 10 year old barebones IDE with nothing else of course... But if we're going to go down that route, I'm sure writing basic on a VIC20 or a PET is just fine too (they're every bit as useful as a P2 to me -- good for nostalgia, or perhaps as a boat anchor/paper weight)

Still, games should be played on game consoles anyway.

LOTS of people disagree with you on that one, even if just because on a PC you have a mouse, and you can buy the graphics card to get the graphics you want. Personally I don't mind consoles, but saying they SHOULD be played on a console is a bit much.

It just looks like you're into retro computing. 10 year old CPUs, 10 year old operating systems, 10 year old IDEs and compilers...

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-work on lots of large photos (lots of raw stuff) with photoshop cs2, a few raw tools, noise removal apps, sort/tag/catalog it all, etc

-did I mention stitching lots of large panos (from 12MB raw files) and some HDR work?

-fill our mp3 players (reencodes mp3s as it loads 'em) -- in the same year

-watch lots of mpeg4 video xvid and x264 for the most part), with post-processing and scaling too. I have a fair amount of HD rips too (720p) -- soemtimes on the web too (like the stuff that can't even play on my ex-wife's father's P3)

-watch live TV off my DVB-S card (even with DXVA a P2 couldn't handle the SDTV stuff), including HDTV channels

-burn DVDs at high speeds

-compress and decompress archives of several GBs (rar, zip, 7zip) -- before I die of old age

-reencode a lot of my recordings to either xvid or x264, including the odd HDTV show

-soon I'll be buying a HD DVD drive (requires a dual core CPU and all)

...

-run database software that's required by apps I use, test and write: SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g Express, DB2 Express-C, PostgreSQL...

-run a few instances of different OS'es at once inside VMWare server (and MS Virtual Server) for many purposes

-cataloging the said vmware images (means a lot of compressing/decompressing base images)

-use several CAD / electronics / embedded development apps

-use IIS6 (win2003 only) to run web apps, web services and server middleware. Soon that will have to be IIS7 (LH server - likely inside vmware). Sometimes more than once instance at once. (also needs other server processes/features too)

-writing code inside IDEs like Eclipse and Visual Studio 2005, along with all the usual plugins (e.g. Resharper, CodeRush, Refactor, Visual Assist X, AnkhSVN, etc) and countless other apps: dotTrace, SQL Prompt, Reflector, CruiseControl.NET, NUnit, MbUnit, NAnt, NCover (etc), CodeSmith, MyGeneration, LLBLGen, Crystal Reports, Installshield, Visio, Borland Together, XML editors, UML tools, several database tools for different purposes, various apps from many companies (Red Gate/SSXX/Altova/etc), various SCM repositories and clients, etc.

That's not basic use at all! I'd go so far as to say that it's advanced.

OpenOffice (already slow on a P4)

Yeah, that application's badly programmed. The recently released version is better, I hear.

P2's are way beyond outdated.

For what you do, yes. As I said, it all depends on what you do.

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