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#46
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
| 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. |
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#47
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
| Sounds nice, but not very convincing to me. I am still using Word 2000
| and I have tried many others. But nothing does what I need better than | Word 2000. | Just as well. MS is trying to move to a rental system. I saw an article the other day explaining that the next Office Academic version will require a Windows Live ID. (Read "online tracking collar".) Then the student will have to register online with a valid school email address. There will be no activation code. It will be a machine-locked download. It's a very clever strategy. MS just brings in one little limitation or intrusion at a time: Constant automatic updates; services that go online without asking; product activation that provides an excuse for calling home, and establishes a tradition of OEM licensing that essentially locks a Windows license to the hardware it comes on; system lockdown that allows MS to access files that you can't access... There are good excuses for all of the above. Nevertheless, after all these years Microsoft have got an OS that they can control remotely, allowing them to control what runs on it. And most people never actually bought Windows, so it's not much of a stretch to tell them that "this is how PCs work". People are becoming so accustomed to the intrusion that MS can begin converting software to paid service. It's reported that IE and MS Office will be pre-installed on Win8 Metro on ARM chips, and will be the only compiled software allowed on ARM. (Tablets, phones and perhaps eventually low-end PCs.) That sounds to me like a subscription plan. And they won't have to worry about Libre Office. It can't be installed unless it's a web-app trinket approved for sale through the online Microsoft Store! ....Which doesn't even address the bloat and ridiculous prices for MS Office. It's the same situation as with Windows: No one with any sense "upgrades" simply because there's a new version. They upgrade because the office workers in the company down the hall have a newer version and they're embarassed. They don't want to have to say, "Can you convert that file to the old type? We don't have Office Current here because we're losers." (Sounds snide, I know, but I've known a number of people who have told me as much. People are quick to feel stupid if they don't know about Office, and to feel cheap or unsuccessful if they don't have the latest version. When you think about it, the MS Office market altogether is mainly built around the desire of people in offices to write files that look as official and logo-festooned as the files they write on paper -- files that make them look like important people. The lingua franca of the white collar world is officiality. And MS Office is an officiality standard. To have an outdated version of an importance-creation device like that is a unique sort of embarassment. |
#48
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"Mayayana" wrote in news:jhj4qk$fdv$1@dont-
email.me: | 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. Sounds like you found a way to keep a good thing going. Forced obsolescense should be a crime. People are being put out of work then beign punished for being jobless, in an economy that seems to be dying of multiple organ failure. Firms who force obsolescense for private profit are the lowest of the low, it's the same as peddling hard drugs at school gates, or bribing kids into sex games with the promise of a 'sweetie'. To resist that crap we have to recognise the value of what we have, and not reject it lazily or stupidly. I usually post in the W98 group so I'm not sure how much of my thoughts on this get seen by people in the groups this thread is crossposted to, but I suspect that many using WXP are thinking this way too, now that Microsoft is telling them they have to move or die. FIGHT THE POWER. It's more fun that way, almost always. One good way to resist is to go for recent top-end gear that has fallen in price and come within reach. If fools want to reject multichannel audio I/O gear that used to cost a grand, and now sells for a few tens of bucks because too many people reject it foolishly, I'm ok with that, all the more choice for me. But apart from selfish reasons like that, I think they should value it more. |
#49
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote: 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. I don't know why they said FF2 renders ok? As I rather use Xandros EeePC any day over than Ubuntu. But Xandros EeePC has an older kernel that only works with FF2 tops. And FF2 just doesn't render the web pages I go to worth a darn since the last year or two. I have some computers here that still has IE6 installed. And IE6 does a far better job than FF2 does. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
#50
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"BillW50" wrote in :
In , Lostgallifreyan wrote: 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. I don't know why they said FF2 renders ok? As I rather use Xandros EeePC any day over than Ubuntu. But Xandros EeePC has an older kernel that only works with FF2 tops. And FF2 just doesn't render the web pages I go to worth a darn since the last year or two. I have some computers here that still has IE6 installed. And IE6 does a far better job than FF2 does. I bet none really work as well as they ought. Turns out that even at low level C compiling, there are as many silly headaches as web designers face when coding for compatibility between browsers. (And I just stayed with OperaUSB v20.63 because it offended me least. I don't think I ever saw a browser I actually liked. They all have the appeal of a gum-soaked seat on a train. I pick a moderatly clean one that gets me where I need to go. |
#51
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Lostgallifreyan wrote in
: 20.63 10.63... |
#52
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
In ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote: "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. 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 were enough to drain all of the W98 System Resources. 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. 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. :-( 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. 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. ;-) -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
#53
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"BillW50" wrote in :
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. ;-) What might help this is those ARM chips because they are aimed at small machines, efficient code, not too much stuff between the API and the user dode. They're even trying to get them into schools ('Rasperry PI' and such) to teach kids to code. The gap between the low level and high level had become all but unmanageable, and those new chips might be the answer. They won't run our old Windows software, I imagine, but they do give a way out of a mess. About big software and resources, while there can be a correlation, I'd rather run a big program that cleans up after itself than a small one with a GDI leak. Making sure that code does behave well is the real key, and those ARM chips will help a lot with that, but the same skills apply equally to W98's API so I guess all will benefit from each other. (Coding at low level on any machine is a gateway into the heart of another). |
#54
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
In ,
98 Guy wrote: 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. I see. And that would bother me. As early 2006 machines just doesn't cut it for me today. Although later 2006 to 2008 are my favorite machines. I am not impressed with newer machines than that. 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. You are running W98 with SATA drives? How do you get that too work? And what good is 512MB or even 1GB of RAM for a W98 machine? Sure I have added more RAM than 64MB to a W98 machine before. But I never saw any advantages to using more. 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. You see, something just doesn't sound right to me. As my experience with such stuff in the past was they are never quite as great as the claims. Remember Lindows? Yes impressive, not. 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. The last year or two, using FF2 I thought it stunk. People say using IE6 is bad at rendering nowadays. Heck that is nothing compared to how bad pages look under FF2. 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. Yeah I could open 50 Notepads with Windows 3.1 too. I am not sure who would want to, but you could. Although one Yahoo Instant Messenger would pull down the whole W98 system. That isn't too useful to me either. Windows 98 lacked unlimited System Resources and limited USB support. Time to upgrade. There are universal USB drivers for win-98. Really? Since when? That would be really sweet. As it would be wonderful if I could plug in any FAT32 formatted flash drive and W98 could actually read it without a special driver for that flash drive. System resources are no problem. I don't see how? W98 uses 128kb heaps if I recall correctly. And enlarging them is said to be only possible with a major OS rewrite. And I don't see this as being worth anybodies time to do so. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
#55
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
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. Colin --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to --- |
#56
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:47:23 -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. 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. |
#57
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
Char Jackson wrote in
: Maybe they meant that they no longer supported that OS. That wouldn't have been a lie. I agree with that, they can do what they like. That cuts both ways... If people tend to avoid expensive upgrades in hard times, that might make firms a bit more willing to support older things. The main reason they drop the old is because they feel compelled to spend all their time money and effort on the new. Maybe a big slowdown is the best thing for all of us, it's time to catch up, to think about what matters before assuming that we don't already have what we need. Suppose a lot of people get wind of Via's supporting W98 with drivers for stuff, and people take the time to know this. That could embarrass other firms into not acting like it's not true. And when it really IS time to upgrade, the process will be a lot less irritating (or even traumatic) for everyone because compatibility will be better. |
#58
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"BillW50" wrote in :
You are running W98 with SATA drives? How do you get that too work? And what good is 512MB or even 1GB of RAM for a W98 machine? Sure I have added more RAM than 64MB to a W98 machine before. But I never saw any advantages to using more. Rudolph Loew managed to make 4GB work, but natively it doesn't need so much. I have 1 GB in my boards, and I use some of it for a RAM disk to put a swap file on. That sounds REALLY perverse, but it works very well because as far as the OS is concerned it thinks everything is optimally configured, and I get all the speed that RAM can give me, and no disk thrashing. I can shut disk motors down at will (on a solar powered system) and know that unless I use the machine, the OS will not keep forcing them to start up again, so I save power and get long disk life. No advantages to more than 64 MB? Curious. I'd set between 256MB and 512 MB as standard, based on seeing how large audio files and programs handle when they have it. I use a small tool called RAMpageto monitor RAM use. It also recovers RAM if too much is used, but I set it to do that very gently. it rarely does it now I have more than 256 MB. Currently there is more than 570MB free, and 200MB of swap usage, so my best (simplest correct) move there is to increase the RAM disk size. About SATA, I try to avoid it, but there are very small and cheap adapters that will connect to EIDE and let SATA plug to the adapter. I bought a couple in case of need, but they're still unused except for testing. |
#59
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
"BillW50" wrote in :
There are universal USB drivers for win-98. Really? Since when? That would be really sweet. As it would be wonderful if I could plug in any FAT32 formatted flash drive and W98 could actually read it without a special driver for that flash drive. Google for 'NUSB'. It replaces a few core files, and may be best done on a new install, but it is good, it has proper support for TWAIN stuff like cameras and scanners, much wider generic USB mass storage support, and it reliably flushes caches and reports when it's safe to eject the device. Just remember that if you have a VIA chipset, you need the Via USB driver's copy of USBHUB20.SYS instead of NUSB's copy, which is a generic one taken from Windows 2000. Similar conditions may apply with other chipsets, so this is the first thing to try if NUSB appears not to work after install. (Ideally, image the whole OS to a file with Ghost or Acronis, because NUSB is not designed to uninstall as far as I know. This way you can try it safely). |
#60
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Why do you still use Windows XP?
| And
| what good is 512MB or even 1GB of RAM for a W98 machine? Sure I have | added more RAM than 64MB to a W98 machine before. But I never saw any | advantages to using more. | Why not? Though I never went above 256 MB RAM on Win98 and it was plenty for me. There's also a patch to allow CPUs over 2.2 GHz: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];312108 (Unfortuanely MS has removed the download link.) |
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