In . 97.131,
DanS wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Tom Lake wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
in message ...
In message
,
Mortimer writes:

No, I would say it _is_ Microsoft's, for making an OS (or
OS variant) which can't use older drivers. Why should
hardware manufacturers have to keep producing new drivers
(especially for kit they no longer make - don't know if
that's the case in this case)?

Why should MS (or ANY OS maker) support all old hardware
ad infinitum? In order to advance the OS, keep it able to
use the latest hardware and keep it secure, some things
must be left behind or you'd end up with a huge, ungainly
mess. If the manufacturer doesn't support the newest OS,
then MS certainly doesn't have the resources to write
drivers for every piece of obsolete equipment out there.

Tom L

In the early days, an OS was screwed big time if it didn't
support the legacy factor. You can have the world's
greatest OS ever seen, but it is totally worthless if it
doesn't support the past. Same is true today. If you burn
bridges as you go, you will always lose.

"In the early days"....of what... teletypes and ASCII only
printers ?

Do today's printers even have an ASCII mode anymore whe

copy file.txt lpt1

actually prints the text file ?

Who's burning bridges here ?

The printer mfg's, not MS.

Actually Microsoft is burning bridges here. There is no good reason why
you can't use a Windows 95 printer driver under Windows 7. Have you ever
written a printer driver for Windows before Dan? I have. And in the
past, Microsoft didn't break older printer drivers. But those were
people at Microsoft who had learned those hard lessons before. Nowadays
Microsoft has new programmers who are naive about such lessons.

Since most of the old people at Microsoft has retired. The
new replacements just don't know any better. And I see
Microsoft getting into trouble because of this. Even
Microsoft had to layoff people in recent times because of
this (the first time in history).

I'm sure the layoffs were just like every other company on
Earth, the economy.....

In today's world, people can't live without computers. Far different
than just a few decades earlier. And computers are not going away soon.
And if Microsoft can't convince the masses that newer is better, then
they have to have layoffs. Just the same as it was decades ago. Remember
WordStar and Lotus? The economy was great back then but they couldn't
convince the masses either.

....not anything to do with whatever you're going on about
above....or below.

Everything to do with it actually. As Microsoft had to learn the lessons
of becoming successful just like everybody did, or die. And Microsoft
learned and survived. Although they have retired and now there is a
bunch of new people who are clueless about being successful. And if they
don't learn the lessons quick, they will drive Microsoft into the
ground.

And it isn't going to get
better for Microsoft until they relearn this lesson. And if
they don't... well either Linux or the Mac (or something
unknown to us today) will just take over.

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