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Why do you still use Windows XP?
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. |
#2
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
: Remember, half the population is of below-average intelligence ... There, that's probably stirred things up a lot, especially with the cross-post ... (-: I'll just go with that bit... more than half, if it's a bell curve. If it's a sharp thornlike peak, much more than half. The cloud/walled garden thing is what bothers me. It was never really so much what OS we choose, but why we choose it. Choose one to live by, is my advice. Make it home. Otherwise it will always someone else's home. Anyone who is unaware of the perils of the walled garden should watch an X-File called 'Arcadia'. Never mind the tulpa bit, those CC&R's are REALLY scary. That's where 'trusted computing' will lead. We have to figure this out for ourselves. Even stupid people are expected to look and cross the road in a manner that protects their own safety. If this were not so, then everyone else, smart and stupid alike, would be diving into traffic like lemmings off a cliff, trying to save those who won't save themselves. |
#3
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:13:34 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote: The cloud/walled garden thing is what bothers me. It was never really so much what OS we choose, but why we choose it. Choose one to live by, is my advice. Make it home. Otherwise it will always someone else's home. I think you're in the tiny minority, though. Most people use applications, not an OS, so endless OS customizing isn't something most people are interested in. Does it do what they need? If so, then they use it and move on. Most people I deal with couldn't care less which version of Windows is running, as long as they can do what they want to do, such as get their email and Facebook updates. IMHO, of course, based on what I see. |
#4
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Char Jackson wrote in
: I think you're in the tiny minority, though. Most people use applications, not an OS, so endless OS customizing isn't something most people are interested in. Does it do what they need? That specifically is true, but think through the implications. People expect what they pay for to last, especially these days that Europe looks like splitting up or dragging the OS down with it. People have been sold a disposable way of life and come to realise how extreme the cost is. If an OS fails to support their applications they won't use it. That cuts both ways! It's not just about programs that won't run on W98 anymore, if people are forced into expenses they can't afford, they will keep their programs, and reject any new OS that fails to run them. So if people dig their heels in a bit, they will not only protect themselves, but the rest or us too. If people believe promises more than the reality in front of them when it comes to technical stuff, we're in trouble. We've already sleepwalked into a global financial nightmare. How many more nightmares must we walk into before we wake up? |
#5
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Lostgallifreyan wrote in
: dragging the OS US... I guess that particular typo comes with the territory. |
#6
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Char Jackson wrote in : I think you're in the tiny minority, though. Most people use applications, not an OS, so endless OS customizing isn't something most people are interested in. Does it do what they need? That specifically is true, but think through the implications. People expect what they pay for to last, especially these days that Europe looks like splitting up or dragging the OS down with it. People have been sold a disposable way of life and come to realise how extreme the cost is. If an OS fails to support their applications they won't use it. That cuts both ways! It's not just about programs that won't run on W98 anymore, if people are forced into expenses they can't afford, they will keep their programs, and reject any new OS that fails to run them. So if people dig their heels in a bit, they will not only protect themselves, but the rest or us too. If people believe promises more than the reality in front of them when it comes to technical stuff, we're in trouble. We've already sleepwalked into a global financial nightmare. How many more nightmares must we walk into before we wake up? Now,now, was that a rhetorical question??? (I, for one, already know the answer, based on my observations of mankind over time) |
#7
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:52:15 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote: Char Jackson wrote in : On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:13:34 -0600, Lostgallifreyan wrote: The cloud/walled garden thing is what bothers me. It was never really so much what OS we choose, but why we choose it. Choose one to live by, is my advice. Make it home. Otherwise it will always someone else's home. I think you're in the tiny minority, though. Most people use applications, not an OS, so endless OS customizing isn't something most people are interested in. Does it do what they need? If so, then they use it and move on. Most people I deal with couldn't care less which version of Windows is running, as long as they can do what they want to do, such as get their email and Facebook updates. IMHO, of course, based on what I see. That's true. It's still a problem though. I'm ignorant too, I didn't know much about how different the way NT kernel OS's access disks was from how W9X does it. I mean, like many of us I knew that W9X does it the same way real mode DOS does it, but how many knew about thunking (the conversion between 16 bit and 32 bit code), and the different API calls needed to do the simplest disk accesses depending on which OS is used? The typical user, the average user, doesn't need to know the first thing about disk access, so that probably isn't a great example. In fact, I don't know what you were trying to point out there. :-) My point there is that it all takes work. Underneath it all, the average office user is having to upgrade again and again just to stay where they want to be! That's actually not true, at least in my experience. Plenty of office users around my area are still using W2k and XP, I'd say a large majority, quite a few years after Vista and 7 have been released. In the same way, lots of those same users are using Office 97, 2000, 2003, and 2007 without any pressing need to upgrade to Office 2010. In the browser space, IE seems to rule the office rather than its competitors, and IE6 is what I mostly see. Look how long ago that relic was obsoleted, and yet it's still in wide use, partly because internal IT teams have coded something that requires it. |
#8
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Char Jackson wrote in
: The typical user, the average user, doesn't need to know the first thing about disk access, so that probably isn't a great example. In fact, I don't know what you were trying to point out there. :-) Their ignorance costs. Every time the underlying OS changes methods to access files and hardware, someone has to write that new code. Not knowing this doesn't make the problem go away. It just puts the burden on others. There IS a reason that Microsoft want so much money! Same goes for Apple. So if you don't like the price, stay with what works already because the newer stuff isn't going to do so much more that you can't afford to watch and wait a bit. Too many people beleive older stuff doesn't when it does, and they only have their own ignorance to blame. Put it this way, it hurts my head that I have NO clue how to create a file in W9X using ANSI/ISO C code because every reference I can see tells me only how WXP does it. But obviously people did make files in W9X, they just decided to forget when finding difficulty, beleiving instead that the newer would always be better. It's like shareholders forgetting that share values CAN go down too. BAD things happen when people beleive hype and forget their own history. This isn't just a lesson about computer operating systems. Never mind what a majority think. If we trust to that instead of thinking for ourselves, we might as well give up now. |
#9
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"Bill in Co" wrote in
: If people believe promises more than the reality in front of them when it comes to technical stuff, we're in trouble. We've already sleepwalked into a global financial nightmare. How many more nightmares must we walk into before we wake up? Now,now, was that a rhetorical question??? (I, for one, already know the answer, based on my observations of mankind over time) No. Practical. Specific to the notion of human development using technology. Want a really BIG example of why this matters? Tech is runnijg so fast ahead of people's willingness to catch up that thry put blind trust in in it like in a preisthood. Meanwhile (as Radio 4 on the BBC recently aired a program about) some smart kid knowing little more that basic electronics and with 400 bucks to spend on eBay can get a gene sequencer together and make self- replicating, modified biological organisms. Never mind computer virus, this is the real deal! people REALLY need to wake up, or the price will be a LOT heavier than paying some big firm for a 'solution'. Never mind that people find it hard. Technology hasn;t softened our world, Easy oil has done that. When it runs out, life will be as tough as it ever was before. Maybe tougher, because all we did was built reasons to understand our lack of control as well as merely having them thrust on us as before. The idea that we are bound to extinction has been with us a long time, but now we have means that make nukes irrelevant. Same goes for border crossing, etc. it may be that 'waking up' to all this won't save us from our own disasters, but acting like the future will magivcally make solutions in clean white shiny boxes sure as hell won't. This is true for little computer apps and big nasty outbreaks of lab-engineered diseases too. |
#10
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Char Jackson wrote in
: My point there is that it all takes work. Underneath it all, the average office user is having to upgrade again and again just to stay where they want to be! That's actually not true, at least in my experience. Plenty of office users around my area are still using W2k and XP, I'd say a large majority, quite a few years after Vista and 7 have been released. Good. Just means they ARE digging their heels in. Not that many firms can upgrade whenever M$ insists on it. Those who do are effectively useful idiots. Both groups exist, with many people in each. But the ones who have to know their stuff, use it, live with it, pay for it, or rely on it for specific hardware they invested a lot of money in, they will save the rest of us from the sillier excesses of 'cloud computing' and the like. Most of 'Web2' is driven by celebrity gossip pages, overloaded blog pages, and people think they need that stuff. The demands it makes are equivalent to having a never-ending direct debit mandate on the bank accounts. Once they have to pay for the profligacy they'll change their tune. eBay already set seller contract terms to exactly that kind of bank account access, largely because of the extra costs careless sellers incurred. If we want to avoid being hit by measures aimed at curbing excesses by idiots, we have to stop thinking like those idiots. Until we do that, it doesn't matter what else we do. |
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