Why do you still use Windows XP?

In ,
Colin B. wrote:
Industrial One wrote:
Give your reasons.

Because I bought it when I bought my computer.

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

Upgrade, no. But when I replace the computer, It'll probably have
Windows 7 (or 8) on it, and the old one will get retired.

I rarely see a need to upgrade an OS, when a computer has a 3-5 year
lifespan.

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

Of course. And 7 after that.

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

I get a current OS with a new computer. They stay together, other than
patches and in-system hardware upgrades.

I don't know if I could claim such a thing. I remember back in late
2006, many users seemed very excited about Vista. This is before the
release of Vista by a few months. And the word was to wait to purchase a
new computer until Vista came out so you could get Vista instead of XP.

And I boldly said back then, that I didn't see me needing Vista until at
least 2011. When I figured possibly when hardware and newer applications
just wouldn't run under XP anymore. Well 2011 came and went and now it
looks like I'll never need Vista at all. And all of those people who
couldn't wait for Vista just aren't excited about Vista anymore.

I have been playing with Windows 7 since 2009. Although I still use my
XP mainly even today. I don't care much for Windows 7 to be honest. As
unlike previous Windows versions like XP and before, there was a
worthwhile reason to upgrade. I don't see this with Vista or Windows 7.
Worse, it seems to be a step backward to me. As XP runs 100% of what I
want to run right now. And Windows 7 only runs 95% of what I want to
run. So why bother switching any of my computers from XP to Windows 7?
As I don't see the point.

And I am feeling pretty confident in thinking I can get another 5 years
out of my XP machines from now. Which would mean getting about 12 years
out of my XP machines. And I have been buying PCs since '81, and
previously my record was about 6 years tops before it was so outdated it
just wasn't useful to me anymore. XP just isn't following the previous
Microsoft OS cycles. And who knows? Maybe some of us might still be
using XP for another 10 to 15 years from now. ;-)

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

|
| 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
|
| Maybe they meant that they no longer supported that OS. That wouldn't
| have been a lie.
|

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.

But I suppose you're right in a way. It's possible that the
action was an expression lazy and/or incompetent negligence
rather than outright lying. Something like "innocent by reason
of systemic amorality".

I find that kind of thing is actually very common. Probably
because it's slightly murky. It's easy to think that one is
not really lying when misleading people by omission or
misinformation rather than blatant lying. For instance, I
was buying a certain type of Benjamin Moore paint for
years after 2 stores I knew claimed it was no longer being
made. They didn't want the added expense of carrying
numerous product lines, so they just discontinued some
of them. But they didn't want customers going to competitors,
so they told them the products in question had been
discontinued. In their own minds they probably reasoned,
"Well, my customers can no longer get that paint, so it
might just as well be discontinued. No sense splitting hairs."

| 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.
|
|

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:

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

You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

Win2000 is decent, but the one thing you did not say about w2000 and up,
is that while 2000 and up may have some better features, it lost DOS. I
still use lots of Dos stuff, and can not be without it.

The 2 problems I have with 98 are lack of decent USB support. Normally
I just dual boot over to Win2k when I need to use a USB device, which in
my case is just a flash stick, or USB backup hard drive. I wont buy USB
mice, keyboards, printers, etc. Who needs them? The serial/parallel
ports work just fine....

Yea, 98 can get goofy when the system resources get low, but it takes a
lot to get it there. I nearly crashed the other day from resource
overload, but this is what I had loaded.
1. Large .DOC file in Wordpad
2. Huge 21Meg PDF file in Adobe 6
3. Firefox 3 running several large downloads, with 4 open windows.
4. Several Notepad text files opened
5. Roughly 30 open windows on websites in K-Meleon
6. Two copies of Agent 2.0 newsreader opened
7. Connection to the internet via dialup
8. Winamp (on standby)
9. Media Player Classic playing a large MP4 video

All my icons turned black. I opened system resources and was down to
5%.

I immediately closed Adobe 6, and Winamp, saved my .Doc file and closed
Wordpad. Then I closed half those windows in K-Meleon, and several of
the notepad files. At that point, my resources went around 35%. I then
closed the video and agent, and went up to around 50%. I let my
downloads finish, bookmarked the web pages I wanted to save, and
rebooted. The ocmputer had been on for nearly a week and was due for a
reboot. When I restarted it, I cleared out all temp files, old cache,
and defragged.

I just had too much **** opened at once. It's my fault!

Note: I have NO files open at bootup, except Windows files themselves.
There is no virus scanner, and no other crap loaded. That's the key to
using Win98.

As far as drivers, thsi computer was made in 2000, came with Win2000
installed. I made it dual boot with 98 and 2K. I've upgreaded lots of
stuff. It's a P3 1000mhz processor and does quite well for it's age.

I just have to remember to close unneeded windows, which I tend to
forget at times.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:04:47 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

|
| 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
|
| Maybe they meant that they no longer supported that OS. That wouldn't
| have been a lie.
|

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.

I completely disagree. You seem to be confused about the meaning of
the word 'support'. You originally said above that Asus or MSI said
your OS was no longer supported. They get to make that decision, and
whatever they say, goes. The fact that you found a driver somewhere
else doesn't change anything.

"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhjnds$320$1@dont-
email.me:

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.


It is at least seriously disingenous. Misrepresentations like that are
maybe part of why GNU and MIT licensing came into being, so that commercial
firms can't undercut the work of those who came before them, or claim it as
their own, or hide changes, or blame them on previous sources, to suit their
own view of how everything is supposed to work.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

I completely disagree. You seem to be confused about the meaning of
the word 'support'. You originally said above that Asus or MSI said
your OS was no longer supported. They get to make that decision, and
whatever they say, goes. The fact that you found a driver somewhere
else doesn't change anything.


Actually it does. They can claim not to support it, but they cannot claim
that it 'is not supported' as if that is universal. It may not be a crime,
but there may be cases for civil litigation agaisnt firms that trade that
way, it's similar to when banks mis-sell 'protection' or claim that no other
bank can help the customer just because THAT bank will not try. Plenty of
banks learned to GREAT cost how bad it is to act this way.

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
I don't see that working for me. As I need Microsoft OE6, Microsoft Word
2000, and the Windows Media Player v9 at least. And those by themselves

I'm interested that you "need" those, especially the media player.

were enough to drain all of the W98 System Resources.
[]
Yeah you are probably right. But I have been down those roads many times
in my youthful days. But now I am older and I rather take the easier
route. There was a time in my life when it was a big thrill to do the
things that the experts said couldn't be done. Sure it wasn't easy, but
it was fun. Although it still isn't easy, although it is no longer fun
either. :-(

I'm getting old too, and am with you. I use XP. But I still maintain an
interest in (and a couple of machines that run on) '98.
[]
I would love to run Windows 3.1, 95, and 98 once again. And I am not
talking about under a virtual machine. As that just isn't the same thing
to me. But I don't see myself getting too much done with them anymore.
As the XP world allows me to do what they can, plus tons more. ;-)

Yes; I think XP is where '98 was a few years ago - _lots_ of people know
lots about it.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever
press charges." - Jack Handey

In ,
wrote:
On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:

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

You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I wish I could say that. Get rid of the System Resource limitation and
universal USB support (the latter sounds possible I hear) and now we are
talking.

Win2000 is decent, but the one thing you did not say about w2000 and
up, is that while 2000 and up may have some better features, it lost
DOS. I still use lots of Dos stuff, and can not be without it.

I would be curious what these DOS programs are that you can't live
without? As I still use DOS programs from time to time and they still
work fine under XP (except the Windows clipboard feature under WordStar
which broke with Windows 2000).

The 2 problems I have with 98 are lack of decent USB support.

That bothers me too.

Normally I just dual boot over to Win2k when I need to use a USB
device, which in my case is just a flash stick, or USB backup hard
drive. I wont buy USB mice, keyboards, printers, etc. Who needs
them? The serial/parallel ports work just fine....

Oh? I am totally sold on USB devices and I love them. I do have two
serial devices, but they work with a serial to USB adapter too. And
while this laptop doesn't have a serial and a parallel port, the docking
station does. So I can use either USB or the docking station. The only
thing parallel that I have is a very old external hard drive that needs
a DOS driver to even work. So you can't boot from it since DOS has to
load first with the driver. Plus it is only 10MB or is it a 20MB 2.5
inch IDE drive anyway. And I don't think I fired that up in the last 15
years. And what good is a 10MB or 20MB drive today at any rate?

Yea, 98 can get goofy when the system resources get low, but it takes
a lot to get it there. I nearly crashed the other day from resource
overload, but this is what I had loaded.
1. Large .DOC file in Wordpad
2. Huge 21Meg PDF file in Adobe 6
3. Firefox 3 running several large downloads, with 4 open windows.
4. Several Notepad text files opened
5. Roughly 30 open windows on websites in K-Meleon
6. Two copies of Agent 2.0 newsreader opened
7. Connection to the internet via dialup
8. Winamp (on standby)
9. Media Player Classic playing a large MP4 video

All my icons turned black. I opened system resources and was down to
5%.

I immediately closed Adobe 6, and Winamp, saved my .Doc file and
closed Wordpad. Then I closed half those windows in K-Meleon, and
several of the notepad files. At that point, my resources went
around 35%. I then closed the video and agent, and went up to around
50%. I let my downloads finish, bookmarked the web pages I wanted to
save, and rebooted. The ocmputer had been on for nearly a week and
was due for a reboot. When I restarted it, I cleared out all temp
files, old cache, and defragged.

I just had too much **** opened at once. It's my fault!

I could get Windows XP to act the same way (I believe this is true of
Windows 2000 too) if I use no swapfile and don't have enough RAM to run
everything I have opened. And XP then does the very same thing. I know
this well because I run XP on netbooks with SSDs and I use no swapfiles.
But I remember the same thing with Windows 98 and under. This is easy to
fix under XP, but not with Windows 98.

Note: I have NO files open at bootup, except Windows files themselves.
There is no virus scanner, and no other crap loaded. That's the key
to using Win98.

Oh really? I loaded lots of crap at boot with Windows 98. And what is
the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total protection all you
need is a stealth firewall (a router works too) and a real time AV
scanner. Nothing else is really important besides maybe a sandbox if you
are really freaked out.

As far as drivers, thsi computer was made in 2000, came with Win2000
installed. I made it dual boot with 98 and 2K. I've upgreaded lots
of stuff. It's a P3 1000mhz processor and does quite well for it's
age.

I just have to remember to close unneeded windows, which I tend to
forget at times.

I dunno. I used both Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 on two Toshiba
2595XDVD laptops ('99 era) both with 192MB of RAM and a Celeron 400MHz.
And Windows 2000 is super slow and can only handle 100kbps video streams
while Windows 98SE can handle 700kbps streams. And 98 is far better at
playing DVD movies and booted far faster on these machines. Even though
Windows 2000 was slower under these conditions, Windows 2000 could have
far more open applications than W98 ever could. So I generally used
Windows 2000 more often just because of this back then.

Today I know why Windows 2000 was so slow under these conditions. As it
wasn't the 400MHz Celeron, but the 192MB of RAM. Give Windows 2000 at
least 450MB and it really flies. And XP needs about 850MB and it too
really flies. They say that Windows 7 needs more RAM than XP, but I
haven't seen this. As Windows 7 runs well with the same RAM amount as XP
does (talking about 32 bit only). But Windows 7 does eat lots more CPU
power than XP ever did. So to run Windows 7, you need far more CPU power
and multiple core helps Windows 7 out a lot. As I can't stand Windows 7
under a single core CPU. As it is just so slow. This isn't so with XP or
earlier.

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

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
:

I completely disagree. You seem to be confused about the meaning of
the word 'support'. You originally said above that Asus or MSI said
your OS was no longer supported. They get to make that decision, and
whatever they say, goes. The fact that you found a driver somewhere
else doesn't change anything.


Actually it does. They can claim not to support it, but they cannot claim
that it 'is not supported' as if that is universal.

Now you're playing word games. I don't know what they claimed.
Everything I know about it came from this thread, and I saw no
evidence of the mobo maker lying in this thread. They get to choose
what they support or not.

If I'm reading you correctly, when you see "not supported" you assume
it means "not supported by anyone, not supported at all", where I
assume it means "not supported by us". If support was found elsewhere,
that's great, but it doesn't mean anyone lied.

"BillW50" wrote in :

Oh really? I loaded lots of crap at boot with Windows 98. And what is
the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total protection all you
need is a stealth firewall (a router works too) and a real time AV
scanner.

I agree about the firewall, but no AV here. Instead, I use the firewall to
catch anything trying to get online. The only other thing a virus might
profit from is nuking its host, so I watch the boot sector and keep backups
of it (and entire OS partition images).

AV sounds useful, but there are many false positives, especially when
'heuristics' are used. Looking for specific signatures is a bit like a doctor
taking a blood sample, finding sickle cell anemia, 'deducing' that the
pateint is likely black and therefore a thief! Harsh, but the analogy is fair
in principle if not in degree (and plenty of innocent program writers will
agree, as all it takes is ONE major false positive published as if it were
a certainty, to seriously harm their reputations). At least with a good anti-
trojan, we catch the thief by his actions.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:11:27 -0600, wrote:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:


You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I guess we all have opinions, and it's no surprise that they differ. I
would say 98 was the best for a very short time, only until 98SE
became available. After that, 98SE was only best until 2000 became
available. Then XP became the best, and now 7 is the best. IMHO, WinME
and Vista never carried the crown, but it seems completely whack to
claim that an OS that was long ago obsolete was and is best. I guess
there's no single definition for 'best'.

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:19:53 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhjnds$320$1@dont-
email.me:

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.


It is at least seriously disingenous.

I don't see how.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote in
m:

I completely disagree. You seem to be confused about the meaning of
the word 'support'. You originally said above that Asus or MSI said
your OS was no longer supported. They get to make that decision, and
whatever they say, goes. The fact that you found a driver somewhere
else doesn't change anything.


Actually it does. They can claim not to support it, but they cannot claim
that it 'is not supported' as if that is universal.

Now you're playing word games. I don't know what they claimed.
Everything I know about it came from this thread, and I saw no
evidence of the mobo maker lying in this thread. They get to choose
what they support or not.


Of course. Not contesting that. What they do NOT have a right to do is use
another firm's drivers, as if they were their own, and attempt to claim that
the limited support is universal when the original supplier does offer that
support. The ONE exception is if there is some specific written clause in
their contract with the driver supplier than lets them do it.

Most times I've seen drivers supplied with hardware, and they are a variant
of Via's generic ones, this is clearly stated by the people supplying the
board, as an option if I want to take it. WHich strongly suggests they are
keeping their legalites in order as much as anything else.

If I'm reading you correctly, when you see "not supported" you assume
it means "not supported by anyone, not supported at all", where I
assume it means "not supported by us". If support was found elsewhere,
that's great, but it doesn't mean anyone lied.


Note that 'lying' wasn't my charge. I just agreed with Mayayana to some
extent, sayign that is at least disingenous. It is, given that they likely
knew what he also discovered to be true.

I'm not actually playing with words. (You'll know too well when I do that.
The vagueness of this interpretation is exactly what is being used to lead
people to beleive that the OEM's limitation is over-riding, when it isn't.
The equipment manufacturer has control (are legally to BOUND to it in fact)
over the way they use the product they receive and add to their own. They can
limit support and abilities to maintain that in ways they feel safe with
(especially important in laser hardware), but they can't make claims on
limits on original parts fitted to that hardware. They have to say that THEY
limited it, or alternatively specify the end product without reference to
the parts used. To do otherwise likely infringes claims made by their own
suppliers.

I'm not a judge so I won't try to say which one will win in law, but I bet
either interpretation could, depending who spent the mosty money on lawyers's
time to keep pushing their angle. There may ne a test case, but I don't know
if there is or not.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:19:53 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhjnds$320$1@dont-
email.me:

No, they lied. They offered a driver download. And they said
there was no Win9x version. But they didn't mention that
actually the drivers were not theirs in the first place. The
drivers are for the chipset. The chipset was Via. Via
supported Win98. To offer repackaged drivers but say Win98
is not supported was deliberately misleading.... which was known
as "lying" in the days before P.C. speech.


It is at least seriously disingenous.

I don't see how.



I just posted about that.. Basically, unless Via gave them leave to claim
less for the Via driver and chipset, they're limited to making claims ONLY
about their own end product.

Char Jackson wrote in
:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:11:27 -0600, wrote:

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:38:21 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:


You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I guess we all have opinions, and it's no surprise that they differ. I
would say 98 was the best for a very short time, only until 98SE
became available. After that, 98SE was only best until 2000 became
available. Then XP became the best, and now 7 is the best. IMHO, WinME
and Vista never carried the crown, but it seems completely whack to
claim that an OS that was long ago obsolete was and is best. I guess
there's no single definition for 'best'.



Context is everything. If we want a strong 32 bit Windows API, but also want
easy boots to real mode and DOS, then W98 SE is pretty much the only game in
town. Add NUSB and a few other things like 48 bit LBA addressing, and it
starts to give later OS'a a fast run for their money. I'd never argue that it
was absolute best in any way, but I'd also never give it up. I might use
other stuff, as I do at times, but W98 SE in minimal and improved form is
amazing.