Why do you still use Windows XP?

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:17:30 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

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.

Not at all. Businesses upgrade when it makes sense for them to do so.
There's no digging in heels, nor is there any Microsoft insistence.
Tech refresh usually happens on a semi-fixed cycle, but it varies
based on the costs to refresh versus the costs to maintain the status
quo. Costs in this case aren't limited to dollars.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:01:24 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

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.

We're not talking about developers, we're talking about users. As
users, people don't need to know the first thing about APIs and disk
access methods. Do you have a better example to illustrate the point
you're trying to make?

BTW, have you noticed that each of your posts includes multiple
paragraphs of unrelated ranting? I snip it, of course, but I'm
curious. What's that all about?

Char Jackson wrote in
:

BTW, have you noticed that each of your posts includes multiple
paragraphs of unrelated ranting? I snip it, of course, but I'm
curious. What's that all about?


If you can't make the connections between scales of stuff, how will you
understand? Scientists have to do it all the time, that;s how we get all our
magic boxes. If you want tight, pert little answers, buy them in boxes like
everyone else who wants that. Fortunately, that';s not what I'm here for.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:17:30 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
m:

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.

Not at all. Businesses upgrade when it makes sense for them to do so.
There's no digging in heels, nor is there any Microsoft insistence.
Tech refresh usually happens on a semi-fixed cycle, but it varies
based on the costs to refresh versus the costs to maintain the status
quo. Costs in this case aren't limited to dollars.



However you cut it, what remains is that people do what they want, and
conflicts of interest DO arise. What matters to us who want to keep running
the stuff we know and trust is that we don't give it up just because it won't
run on a newer OS. The fact that any of it DOES run on newer system is
entirely due to business having to win over those customers who would
otherwise prefer to stay put. You may not want to call it 'digging in of
heels', you could just call it inertia. But don't ever confuse it with
stupidity or slowness.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:34:31 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

STILL USE XP????

I still use Win98.
I never liked XP, and never used it on my home computer. It came on my
laptop, and I found that the built in wifi dont work with anything
earlier. But that computer is just for use on the road. I can run
firefox and agent. Thats all I need on the road.

I can tolrate Win2000, but nothing later.

----
Alcoholics Anonymous - Created Under the Influence of Belladonna & LSD

In ,
wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:34:31 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

STILL USE XP????

I still use Win98.

How? While I still have a warm spot in my heart for Windows 3.1, 95, and
98, although I cannot use them for about the last 10 years or so. Lack
of drivers is probably the worst. And lack of application support is
probably number two. Another problem with Windows 98 that really
bothered me was constantly running out of System Resources. How do you
put up with that?

Windows 2000 was a godsend. That Resource problem disappeared, but it
was a slow bloated pig on a Celeron 400MHz with 192MB of RAM (maxed out)
on my Windows 98 machine. And Windows 2000 didn't normally need drivers
for such things like USB devices like Windows 98 always did. But Windows
98 really did play DVD movies really well even on modest machines. Only
if Linux could do so well.

I never liked XP, and never used it on my home computer. It came on
my laptop, and I found that the built in wifi dont work with anything
earlier. But that computer is just for use on the road. I can run
firefox and agent. Thats all I need on the road.

I can tolrate Win2000, but nothing later.

I never liked the early XP. But around 2005, I thought it was ready for
primetime and I loved it ever since. And with SP2 and SP3, I believe
Microsoft really did a very good job with XP (and it had taken them long
enough). And I believe Microsoft made a huge mistake marketing-wise with
XP by making it so good.

As earlier versions of Windows, always lacked a *must* have feature that
made me to want to upgrade. Although Vista and Windows 7 doesn't have
any must have features that I need. And I believe this is true of
millions of others as well. And thus Microsoft made XP too good.

Windows 3.1 lacked long file support. Time to upgrade.

Windows 95 lacked USB support. Time to upgrade.

Windows 98 lacked unlimited System Resources and limited USB support.
Time to upgrade.

Windows 2000 does very well, but lacked the support that XP enjoys. And
Windows 2000 is more focused on business use rather than consumer use.

Windows XP does everything I want to do and run.

Vista and Windows 7 takes a step backwards for me. As they run less
applications and has less driver support than XP has. Plus Vista and
Windows 7 runs slower than crap on a single core CPU (they really need
multi-core machines to run well). Plus they don't run games as well
either as well as XP can.

I say this after having three Windows 7 machines too. And I updated two
of them back to XP once again. ;-)

"We're thinking about upgrading from SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." -- Henry
Spencer

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

"BillW50" wrote in :

I still use Win98.

How? While I still have a warm spot in my heart for Windows 3.1, 95, and
98, although I cannot use them for about the last 10 years or so. Lack
of drivers is probably the worst. And lack of application support is
probably number two. Another problem with Windows 98 that really
bothered me was constantly running out of System Resources. How do you
put up with that?


Easily. Run code that does not wastefully consume them, and which returns
them properly to be used again. W98 had a huge base of software. Shortage was
never the problem. Drivers can be a problem, but even there ways can be
found. Sound Forge and Cakewalk and many other things like LnS firewall all
depend on their own drivers). Same goes for decent hardware, the maker
usually supports it with their opwn driver. If maker doesn't care enough to
do that, it's a BAD idea to use their hardware anyway.

Last but not at ALL least, W98 SE can be small, stable, fast, and it's a 32
bit OS with an extremely powerful API. The advances from W98 SE till now are
small, incremental, compared to the jump between DOS and W98 SE. W98 won't
ever become useless, even if the distant future sees lots of people still
around with decent living standards, and fast computers that make today's
stuff look like 1980's gear, there will still be people running W98 on a
virtual machine because it does what they want.

The only current development likely to make W98 anythign like obsolete is the
huge growth in ARM chips instead of i386 chips. And this doesn't apply to
desktop machines.

BillW50 wrote:

STILL USE XP????

I still use Win98.

How? While I still have a warm spot in my heart for Windows 3.1,
95, and 98, although I cannot use them for about the last
10 years or so. Lack of drivers is probably the worst.

Lack of drivers has only really affected win-98 since maybe early 2006.

More than 75% of the hardware (motherboards, video cards) available at
retail in early 2006 still came with win-98 drivers.

My own win-98 systems have socket-478 or socket-775 intel pentium CPU's
running anywhere from 2.6 to 3.5 ghz, with 512mb and 1 gb ram, with SATA
hard drives up to 1.5 tb in size, with Nvidia 6200 and 6600 AGP 8x video
cards.

Take a system like that, add KernelEx, and there isin't much software
that you can't run on it.

And lack of application support is probably number two.

KernelEx.

But truth be told, Firefox 2.0.0.20 (the last "win-9x/me" version) can
still correctly render 99% of web pages today. But with KernelEx, you
can go to higher versions of FF. I have Opera 11 when I absolutely need
to access a handful of web-sites, but otherwise FF 2 is my default
browser.

Another problem with Windows 98 that really bothered me was
constantly running out of System Resources. How do you
put up with that?

It's no issue, because you're recalling the days back in 1999 - 2001
when your average win-98 system was running with maybe 62 or 128 mb of
ram and had buggy hardware drivers AND application programs. Over the
next 2 to 4 years drivers and software improved.

I simply don't have resource problems - and I have a taskbar with
usually 10 or 20 apps running at any given time.

Windows 98 lacked unlimited System Resources and limited USB
support. Time to upgrade.

There are universal USB drivers for win-98. System resources are no
problem.

98 Guy wrote in :

I have Opera 11 when I absolutely need
to access a handful of web-sites, but otherwise FF 2 is my default
browser.


Do you find that FF makes a pig's ear of eBay CSS rendering? That was what
drove me to use OperaUSB 10.63.

| Same goes for decent hardware, the maker
| usually supports it with their own driver. If maker doesn't care enough
to
| do that, it's a BAD idea to use their hardware anyway.
|

I think that's a bit optimistic. I switched to XP from
98 because of hardware. There simply isn't a market
for companies to write drivers. And some, like video
hardware, are products that depend on forced
obsolescence. If they're not constantly convincing
teenagers that their video games are suffering under
last years' chip then they're out of business. And even
the few people who might be running Win98 wouldn't
have any reason to update to such advanced graphics
hardware. But they also can't just go and buy an 8MB
ATI card with Win98 drivers at Staples. The hardware
just isn't there anymore.

I had an interesting experience at one point before I
siwtched to XP. I had just built a new PC. The board was
either Asus or MSI. I've forgotten which. It had a Via
chipset. I went to the site for the board and it said that
Win9x was no longer supported. I then went to the Via
site, which was clear, informative and helpful. It turned
out that Via only had one driver package, and Win98 was
one of the supported systems. So the motherboard maker
apparently just saw a chance to reduce support costs
by lying.