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.

On 02/09/2012 07:00 PM, Industrial One wrote:
Give your reasons.

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

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

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

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
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...

Are you bored?

http://policelink.monster.com/nfs/po...JPG?1202766315

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.

"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.

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.

Industrial One has brought this to us :
Give your reasons.

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

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

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

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
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...

UAC is still too obnoxious in Win7, 'terribler' in Vista.
Aero is junk. Visual crap that makes using the OS more difficult.
Vista and Win7 removed some features that I use in XP.
Why does a single user OS have multiple levels of Admin? Junk.

Windows in general is NOT ergonomic and MS is inconsistent from Windows
to its own apps like those in office. And don't get me started on the
ribbon in Office. Why would I want to re-learn an interface.
Win8 adds another crap layer that should be left to a phone.

If MS wanted to make Windows better then add accurate voice command.
Touch is no good. Who wants to hold their arms up all day working on
the PC.

Apps are designed to have to switch back and forth from mouse to
keyboard. Not ergonomic. MS has no quality control and no ergonomic
design.

So I would rather suffer with XP than with the more sufferable Vista or
Win7.

And here is one of my favorite peeves in all of Windows: move the
mouse from one pane in Windows explorer and scroll. Only the last pane
clicked scrolls not the pane being hovered. But do this in other MS
apps and the mouse WORKS THE WAY IT SHOULD, scrolls in the pane whether
clicked there or not. Junk code. Not ergonomic!
Left hand or MS does not know what the right hand of MS is doing, it's
backhanded.

yeah, I told you how I feel.



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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?

Per BeeJ:
Windows in general is NOT ergonomic and MS is inconsistent from Windows
to its own apps like those in office.

Seems to me like it's getting worse.

Among the people I've been serving, there are those who say "Hey,
if this new solution involves Office 2007, just forget about it."

These are highly-skilled, really-smart, highly-paid people in the
financial industry who live and die by hundredths of a percent on
investment returns.

Office 2003 is doing the job for them and they just don't have
time to cope with mess that MS made out of the UIs in Office
2007. Yeah, it's ok once you reprogram your lower brain stem to
beat through all the new menus.... but they don't feel like they
have that time to invest for no particular benefit.
--
Pete Cresswell

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 21:26:47 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:

Per BeeJ:
Windows in general is NOT ergonomic and MS is inconsistent from Windows
to its own apps like those in office.

Seems to me like it's getting worse.

Among the people I've been serving, there are those who say "Hey,
if this new solution involves Office 2007, just forget about it."

These are highly-skilled, really-smart, highly-paid people in the
financial industry who live and die by hundredths of a percent on
investment returns.

Office 2003 is doing the job for them and they just don't have
time to cope with mess that MS made out of the UIs in Office
2007. Yeah, it's ok once you reprogram your lower brain stem to
beat through all the new menus.... but they don't feel like they
have that time to invest for no particular benefit.

I felt the same way until I consulted at a company last summer where
they used Office 2010. I groaned when I saw it, but I was productive
within 5 minutes and fully comfortable within 15. Absolutely not the
big deal that I told myself it would be. Disappointing, actually, to
think how small the speed bump was.

In message , BeeJ
writes:
[]
Aero is junk. Visual crap that makes using the OS more difficult.

I feel no need for it, but it doesn't bother me either.

Vista and Win7 removed some features that I use in XP.
Why does a single user OS have multiple levels of Admin? Junk.

To protect less experienced users than you, from themselves.

Windows in general is NOT ergonomic and MS is inconsistent from Windows
to its own apps like those in office. And don't get me started on the
ribbon in Office. Why would I want to re-learn an interface.

I too said "yeuch" when I saw it. We had a (voluntary attendance) "buzz
session" about Office 2010 (which we've just switched to - on XP still),
given by a chap from Microsoft; it was actually rather enjoyable seeing
his enthusiasm. He explained in a way that I understood, that the ribbon
was because the old menu system had grown and grown, such that new
features were added to whichever menu had room for them, not the logical
place.

Of course, he wasn't very good at answering why the new interface is
imposed rather than optional; those of us who were used to 2003 (or '97)
know where everything is, however illogical it is, and as many have
said, don't have _time_ to learn a new interface. (Though I'm doing so,
slowly - mainly because I have no option. Though I've come across at
least one third-party solution that gives you the old menus back, at
least in Word and Excel.)

Win8 adds another crap layer that should be left to a phone.

I've not seen it yet. AFAIK, it's not on general release (meaning in
high/main street computer stores).

If MS wanted to make Windows better then add accurate voice command.

Interesting idea.

Touch is no good. Who wants to hold their arms up all day working on
the PC.

Apps are designed to have to switch back and forth from mouse to
keyboard. Not ergonomic. MS has no quality control and no ergonomic
design.

(Mind you, a lot of users of common software switch back and forth far
more than they need to - for example, typing into a form, they mouse to
the next box, rather than tab. And then mouse to the OK button rather
than enter. Apps may be a bit more mouse-minded - I haven't got any. [I
dislike the word for a start.])

So I would rather suffer with XP than with the more sufferable Vista or
Win7.

I certainly don't like Vista. For the moment I'm sticking with XP, but 7
doesn't look as bad as I expected.
[]
yeah, I told you how I feel.

Hope it made you feel better!


--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to
---
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The reason for the oil shortage: nobody remembered to check the oil levels. Our
oil is located in the North Sea but our dip-sticks are located in Westminster.
(or Texas and Washington etc. - adjust as necessary!)

| Win8 adds another crap layer that should be left to a phone.
|
| I've not seen it yet. AFAIK, it's not on general release (meaning in
| high/main street computer stores).

There's been a lot of information and there's a
developer preview available. There was an interesting
post yesterday by the man in charge of Windows:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2...hitecture.aspx

It is, indeed, a layer of crap. (WinRT) More to the
point, it's a layer of lockdown. Microsoft is using the
excuse of tablets, phones and ARM processors to
introduce their most daring attempt ever at locking
down Windows and selling the whole thing as a
locked entertainment appliance.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:17:13 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:


I felt the same way until I consulted at a company last summer where
they used Office 2010. I groaned when I saw it, but I was productive
within 5 minutes and fully comfortable within 15. Absolutely not the
big deal that I told myself it would be. Disappointing, actually, to
think how small the speed bump was.


I wasn't, and still am not, crazy about the ribbon. I greatly prefer
the simple, standard menus. But like you, it didn't take me very long
to get accustomed to it. Am I fully comfortable with it? No, not
really; I still occasionally have to hunt within it for what I want.

But I should say that I don't use Microsoft Office a lot. The only
programs in it I use substantially are Outlook 2010 and One-Note 2010.
I use Excel a little, and PowerPoint even less. But I don't use Word
at all; I greatly prefer WordPerfect.
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP