In message
,
Industrial One writes:
Give your reasons.

Do you plan to upgrade ever? If so, when and why?

At present, I have no plans to change (I wouldn't use the word
"upgrade"); however, I'm not wedded to not doing so.

If you use both XP and 7, do you ever plan on ditching XP for good?

I can't honestly answer that as I _don't_ have 7; however I'm in the
slightly unusual position of having had a 7 machine for 4 to 6 weeks (we
were buying a new PC for a non-computer-minded person, and we decided
[since she was/is unlikely to change again for many years] that a 7
machine was probably more future-proof. I was to "set it up" for her). I
found 7 not at all as hard to get on with as I expected; I found the
search-box-in-lots-of-places actually quite useful, in contrast to what
lots of people have found: possibly I found that the search function
actually worked better than I expected.

I will agree that they seem to have "moved the furniture around", as
someone else in this thread has put it, for the usual little good
reason. I also find the eye candy spurious, though not actually
irritating. (I have certainly noticed, from Windows 3.x on, that as
monitors have got higher resolution, icons etc. have got bigger and more
complex, so that the number on the average screen remains about the
same! And colour schemes have got more and more pastel - initially
that's because they could, originally there being only 16 colours, but I
genuinely find the default text colours in lots of Office 2010 - which
we've just moved to at work - harder to read, as they seem to be a
mid-grey. [I know I'm speaking of Office 2010, but it shares much of the
philosophy of Windows 7, IMO.])

What will you do when support is dropped to the point where this OS
will be problematic with new hardware?

Probably switch. That's what moved me from '9x to XP - though I went out
of my way to find an XP machine rather than, as was becoming the norm
when I bought this machine (netbook), Vista. (I think that's recognised
as wise in hindsight!) It was getting just too much hard work to make
new kit work with '9x (or to find kit that would).

I'm not a must-have-every-latest-gadget person, which is possibly why I
was able to stay with '9x for as long as I did. Similarly, I don't need
the latest in software tricks - particularly games, though unlike many
old-OSers, I don't have antagonism for those who _do_ enjoy games.

I must admit that XP seems a lot more stable (once I'd stopped using the
latest video driver that is buggy), though as another has said, 98
crashes were rarely catastrophic.

Personally I'm waiting for Windows 8 to release a second service pack.
XP sucked when it first came out until SP1. Even then, I find the

Certainly, each version - 3, 95, (98 to a lesser extent,) XP - have
always been better after a service pack or three.

Actually my own philosophy - though I'm not actually as organised as
this implies - is that the OS to have _for me_ is the one Microsoft are
trying to kill off; it's been around a long time, and there is a huge
body of people who know how to beat it into submission. XP is more or
less in that position; '98 was, maybe four or five years ago.

moron-babysitting idiot trend really annoying. It took me forever to
figure out how to shut off that piece of **** UAC on Win7 because
simply disabling it didn't work, it had to enabled then disabled to be
disabled for real. Sigh...

For us, yes. But for the ever-increasing numbers of new computer users
(at least I _think_ it's still increasing), such protection from self is
perhaps desirable - and it's for them that new OSs are mostly being
written. (Plus, as well, there's the move towards walled gardens like
the app. store, and the cloud, and similar; I dislike these trends as
much as anyone here, but there are sound commercial incentives driving
them. And many people new to computing, especially those who think they
have no use or want for a computer, it's what they want: I wonder, are
there more Apple users - including of those computers that pretend to be
telephones - than Linux users?)

Remember, half the population is of below-average intelligence ...

There, that's probably stirred things up a lot, especially with the
cross-post ... (-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London: Any member introducing a dog into the
Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a
blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.