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Why you should avoid buying Windows 8


LeaflameSD

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When I first used Windows ME I immediately noticed three things, and to use the baseball analogy, three strikes you're out.

  • System Restore ... wasting disk space ( which was still at a premium ) by saving oodles of files in that locked down folder structure which led to virus persistence even after a rollback.
  • System File Protection ... much more aggressive than previous attempts, it did realtime replacement. IIRC there were only two files in Win98se that were not modifiable ( VER.DLL and another I forget ). It wouldn't be such a big deal if you could just boot F8 to DOS command line to bypass it, except for ...
  • F8 DOS Amputation ... killed the best part of Win9x by removing the ability to just drop into the "pure" F8 DOS and do stuff outside of Windows. This was achieved by radically altering IO.SYS.

The 4th biggie was the adjustment to the registry by moving HKLM\Software\Classes from SYSTEM.DAT into CLASSES.DAT which was a kludge to stave off the large registries from crashing at startup ( my guess ). This was fine if all you ever used was WinME, but it broke backward compatibility by using three registry files instead of two, so all specialized software that dealt with the registry ( or custom script or batch files etc ) needed to be re-written. They should have revised the kernel instead and solved the memory problems there.

There was more bad stuff of course, and some good things as well like better memory management, fixing up certain utilities to handle large disks like the Windows DEFRAG and SCANDISK. However I believe all the same resource heap limitations exist so you could still crash the system by running certain 16-bit programs and suddenly the icons go crazy ( change or disappear ) and the system stops responding.

I guess it depends upon your point of view and I certainly understand if someone thinks of these as improvements. Not me though. These items essentially changed Win9x from a power-user's dream to an OS for the sheeple.

WinME seems to have been a testbed for the bells and whistles being refined for the eventual WinXP RTM. But it also might have been the Win9x proponents inside Microsoft trying to save the branch from its impending execution. I'm not sure we ever got the whole story on how this went down.

EDIT: After thinking about it, it might simply be that WinME was the baby step to prepare the masses for the forthcoming WinXP. This precedent would place Windows 8 into the possible perspective of being the baby step to fully eliminating the desktop in the next version. They quite probably look at the desktop and all "legacy" 16/32bit compiled x86 software as the enemy of their wonderful walled garden of glorified HTML-CSS crApps.

Edited by CharlotteTheHarlot
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Well, no.

Before 2000 there was NT 4.0 a "professional only" Operating System and 98 a "home only" Operating System.

2000 is substantially NT 4.0 with some betterings.

Me is substantially 98 SE with some betterings (and of course with some new "features" - some of which actually worsening the OS - that would have needed time to "mature").

BOTH (of course Me was much more affected that 2K) were simply killed too young by the advent of XP which was for some aspects a bettered 2K, only worsened in many others.

The real point that people sometimes forget is the utter stupidity of XP Home for Home use and of XP Professional for Professional use.

You have a "professional only" Operating system (basically a NT 4.00 with a bettered filesystem and easier to install = Win2K betttered for some marginal aspects and with a lot of completely unneeded bells and whistles = XP) that you dumb down for professionals by adding all sorts of senseless graphical additions, wizards and what not (and this may - with a lot of tolerance be called "progress") but you force upon home users a senseless piece of bloat (compared to the previous 98/Me), normally pre-installed on senselessly underpowered machines, with a number of features that only make sense in Corporate/Office use :w00t: (and some of which actually only useful on "servers").

Okay, raise your hands anyone that has set an XP (Home or Professional edition doesn't matter) on his/her own "home" laptop with:

  1. Admin + multiple non-admin account (and please state the number, besides "Power Users", of accounts that you have EVER set as "Backup Operator" :whistle:)
  2. GPO's
  3. Disk Quota's

On the other hand, on the "professional" side they "hid" the "real" Administrator account (causing every kind of issues with LAN authentication for Admins) they added (finally) modern features (but provided not simple ways to use them, or mis- or under- documented them) such as streams, hard links, etc.

XP was as a matter of fact the first sign of the concept of an "unified" OS, good for "everyone", and for "every use" on "every machine", the same concept that will make you have the same stupid tablet oriented OS on your desktop now...

The nice thing is that since they seemingly understood how it made no sense to have (behind the bells and whistles) a "dumbed down" "server OS" on an underpowered, crappy tablet, they created a brand new OS, the RT, with the same bells and whistles, that will create each and every compatibility problem possible +1 (beside having succeeded in completely disorienting customers)

jaclaz

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Well, no.

Before 2000 there was NT 4.0 a "professional only" Operating System and 98 a "home only" Operating System.

2000 is substantially NT 4.0 with some betterings.

Me is substantially 98 SE with some betterings (and of course with some new "features" - some of which actually worsening the OS - that would have needed time to "mature").

BOTH (of course Me was much more affected that 2K) were simply killed too young by the advent of XP which was for some aspects a bettered 2K, only worsened in many others.

The real point that people sometimes forget is the utter stupidity of XP Home for Home use and of XP Professional for Professional use.

You have a "professional only" Operating system (basically a NT 4.00 with a bettered filesystem and easier to install = Win2K betttered for some marginal aspects and with a lot of completely unneeded bells and whistles = XP) that you dumb down for professionals by adding all sorts of senseless graphical additions, wizards and what not (and this may - with a lot of tolerance be called "progress") but you force upon home users a senseless piece of bloat (compared to the previous 98/Me), normally pre-installed on senselessly underpowered machines, with a number of features that only make sense in Corporate/Office use :w00t: (and some of which actually only useful on "servers").

Okay, raise your hands anyone that has set an XP (Home or Professional edition doesn't matter) on his/her own "home" laptop with:

  1. Admin + multiple non-admin account (and please state the number, besides "Power Users", of accounts that you have EVER set as "Backup Operator" :whistle:)
  2. GPO's
  3. Disk Quota's

On the other hand, on the "professional" side they "hid" the "real" Administrator account (causing every kind of issues with LAN authentication for Admins) they added (finally) modern features (but provided not simple ways to use them, or mis- or under- documented them) such as streams, hard links, etc.

XP was as a matter of fact the first sign of the concept of an "unified" OS, good for "everyone", and for "every use" on "every machine", the same concept that will make you have the same stupid tablet oriented OS on your desktop now...

The nice thing is that since they seemingly understood how it made no sense to have (behind the bells and whistles) a "dumbed down" "server OS" on an underpowered, crappy tablet, they created a brand new OS, the RT, with the same bells and whistles, that will create each and every compatibility problem possible +1 (beside having succeeded in completely disorienting customers)

jaclaz

Windows XP, in all its forms, was a great OS. Home Edition and Professional Edition had overlapping featuresets limited by license levels because they had to support the same technologies. NTFS permissions and built-in accounts are supported in Home, even if the user is never directly exposed to them, and by default Home doesn't let a typical user create accounts with Backup Operators; Only standard users and local administrators. But it can also be upgraded to professional.

Professional Edition was marketed to users who needed certain feature sets, including remote desktop and, yes, domain join features. It was heavily based on Windows 2000, which included plug-and-play, USB support, and far better support of Direct X. It was leaps and bounds beyond NT4. Incidentally, hard-links and junctions existed in Windows 2000 (strictly speaking, NTFS 3.0), but you needed the resource kit to use them. NTFS has a lot of features that get underutilized.

XP wasn't merely a crappy attempt to unify OS's; it brought NT to the masses, and it made it cheap. NT brought stability and security. DOS-based systems, including Windows 9x/ME had severe limitations to how it could use memory, so the choices were to re-engineer a broken system (potentially at the cost of compatibility; I read recently that having classes.dat divide the registry up was a kludge!) while prolonging the life of DOS, or switch people to a system that already worked and which supported a host of other superior technologies - things like NTFS, better multitasking, and which already had some developer support (including Windows 2000 driver support.

As for RT creating compatibility issues - it's true that it's a different platform. In the earlier days of modern smartphones, I seem to recall people talking about how at least one of them could run Photoshop ("it heard that it runs a modified version of MacOS!" was the word of the day) until they were educated about its features and, in some cases, disappointed. What RT offers developers is a unified platform for creating apps on a tablet and desktop OS at the same time. TL;DR: RT is a tablet OS that happens to resemble Windows in a lot of ways, but it's still a distinct OS separate from desktop/"Intel" Windows.

Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.

Edited by Whimsy
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Windows XP, in all its forms, was a great OS. Home Edition and Professional Edition had overlapping featuresets limited by license levels because they had to support the same technologies. NTFS permissions and built-in accounts are supported in Home, even if the user is never directly exposed to them, and by default Home doesn't let a typical user create accounts with Backup Operators; Only standard users and local administrators. But it can also be upgraded to professional.

No. :no:

XP is a good OS, not as good as 2K for several aspects and far less suitable to "simple" home users EXACTLY because of the features that only professionals (and only in some given "corporate" environments) actually needed.

All the rest (being cheap and having Server or Client capabilities) is ONLY related to Commercial decisions (anyone remember the differences between NT 4.0 Workstation and Server edition? so "deep" that one could be made into the second with a few tweaks).

Now, if a bunch of "single guys" (among which rloew stands out :thumbup ) have managed to have 98 run in a more than stable manner with lots of RAM and on fastish processors:

with a few patches, are you telling me that the good MS guys would not have been able to do the same?

And the NTFS filesystem being somehow "linked" to the NT series of OS is of course pure b**ls**it.

Personally I would not even consider a DOS/9x based system at work (and I actually did not since NT 3.51 times) , but the "forced transplant" of XP on "home" users, as said initially on dramatically underpowered hardware, was not in any way "inevitable" and not even a "good idea".

Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.

Well, this doesn't necessarily mean that you are as blinfdfolded as your leaders ;):) .

jaclaz

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Windows XP, in all its forms, was a great OS. Home Edition and Professional Edition had overlapping featuresets limited by license levels because they had to support the same technologies. NTFS permissions and built-in accounts are supported in Home, even if the user is never directly exposed to them, and by default Home doesn't let a typical user create accounts with Backup Operators; Only standard users and local administrators. But it can also be upgraded to professional.

No. :no:

XP is a good OS, not as good as 2K for several aspects and far less suitable to "simple" home users EXACTLY because of the features that only professionals (and only in some given "corporate" environments) actually needed.

This is probably the biggest point of contention I've got with your posts. First, the differences in experiences between NT and 2000 alone were *massive*. Basic things, like USB support and graphical differences, to Active Directory's reliance on Primary and Backup Domain Controllers, to File System and overall performance upgrades. Suggesting that MS would have been better to backport these features into NT4 would be like suggesting that Halo 4 should have been back ported to the original XBOX. It could be done, but not without some compromises, a lot of resources, and with the devotion of a team to make it all fit.

Even for third parties, some things were simplified: one driver instead of two (or three), one target OS, one established platform for everybody.

9x and NT both run Win32, but by the time 2K was released Win32 had been extended, and I'd hazard a guess that they weren't going to run two teams to reinvent the wheel while leaving customers with an OS that's fundamentally flawed from a security perspective.

All the rest (being cheap and having Server or Client capabilities) is ONLY related to Commercial decisions (anyone remember the differences between NT 4.0 Workstation and Server edition? so "deep" that one could be made into the second with a few tweaks).

The "commercial" decisions you're referring to are typically licensing conditions. Yes, NT is NT, and with a few registry hacks it may be possible to re-create the functionality of other "editions", but business environments usually want to stay in compliance. If they're not content with those options, they could look into other platforms of course! :)

Now, if a bunch of "single guys" (among which rloew stands out :thumbup ) have managed to have 98 run in a more than stable manner with lots of RAM and on fastish processors:

with a few patches, are you telling me that the good MS guys would not have been able to do the same?

I plead ignorance - I didn't know people were running 9X with that kind of memory. I did know about the back-porting projects, but not that people had been tinkering with hacks. I'd need to know more about what MaxPhysPage does. Not that I don't doubt it's efficacy, but there were certainly ways to work around the 4GB limit in 32-bit OS, but they also introduced problems and few people are pining for the 32-bit Windows days. I also noticed that some of these configurations require certain conditions and configurations. Sure, you could program a few hacks and set a few system specific settings which setting up a team to backport functionality. Or you could just reuse that tested kernel that's in its third iteration and which has a host of other new functionality to boot.

And the NTFS filesystem being somehow "linked" to the NT series of OS is of course pure b**ls**it.

NTFSDos provided NTFS support for, well, DOS; I thought you were referring to streaming, hardlinks and other NTFS improvements, which are a file system feature and not necessarily a feature of the OS. There are installable file system drivers for MacOS and Linux file systems available for Windows. There was also a service pack for NT4 that gave it compatibility with NTFS3 (yep, you could even argue that at one point NT didn't support a version NTFS!)

Personally I would not even consider a DOS/9x based system at work (and I actually did not since NT 3.51 times) , but the "forced transplant" of XP on "home" users, as said initially on dramatically underpowered hardware, was not in any way "inevitable" and not even a "good idea".

It was the dawn of the Pentium 4, and XP ran really well on P2's, P3's and the 1GHz Athlon's of that era (I'll leave out comments about first generation P4's...). The requirements were pretty similar to Windows 2000. If anyone put it on underpowered hardware, it was probably people who wanted to latest and greatest on their Pentium MMX's and K6's. That aside, many companies were putting out software that supported both platforms. Internet Explorer 6 and Office XP in particular both worked in Windows 98 and up. Nobody was forced, but people wanted on board because they thought it was pretty cool. My uncle wanted it on his Celeron 300a (I was smarter than to do it, but it would have "worked")

Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.

Well, this doesn't necessarily mean that you are as blinfdfolded as your leaders ;):) .

jaclaz

I have to put that into my posts. It's a transparency thing, but I speak for myself. I was around during the 9x/ME transition and used Windows 2000/XP for years. I also did a lot of support during the Vista launch, though not under the MS banner, but which was still pretty fun and educational.

Edited by Whimsy
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Suggesting that MS would have been better to backport these features into NT4 would be like suggesting that Halo 4 should have been back ported to the original XBOX.

I must nitpick on this one.

Did you ever realize that you make unfair comparison:

2K run on P4

XP run on P4

yet you said it was like :

Halo run on XBOX

Halo4 run on XBOX-360

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This is probably the biggest point of contention I've got with your posts. First, the differences in experiences between NT and 2000 alone were *massive*.

I see no points of contention :), actually you seem to say (just like I do) that Windows 2000 was an excellent Operating System, the "rightful" evolution of NT 4.00.

I see 2000 as a technical, or if you prefer "natural, logical" evolution of NT and XP as a (mostly) commercial evolution of 2K., in the sense that a large part (but of course not all) the "added" features of XP are "eye candy" or "bells and whistles".

Personally I rate *any* NT based system far more "stable" than any comparable DOS based one, but the argument that most people raise when this kind of discussion starts is "but NT has the far better NTFS filesystem that you cannot have in 9x/Me and thus you are limited to files 4 Gb in size" (no I don't want to start the usual flamewar about FAT32 vs. NTFS), with the not-so-hidden understatement that a Dos based OS cannot have NTFS because of technical reasons (while it has been a simple, plain, commercial one).

The great idea was evidently something like let's consolidate our two largely different Operating System branches, one dedicated to the "Professional" use and one to "Home" and let's make a one-size-fits-all OS.

It is rather obvious how in order to do that you need to impose on "home" customers that have not any need for them a number of "features" only useful in a "professional" environment, on the other hand, in order to let the "home" users be actually able to run, install, and "like" it etc. you need to add some "bells and whistles" that the "profesionals" have no or very little use for.

If you think about it, the following iteration of the "higher level" Server edition offers - strangely enough - a "Core" edition, from the mouth of the wolf:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd184075.aspx

Full vs. Server Core

Since the early days of the Microsoft Windows platform, Windows servers were essentially "everything" servers that included all kinds of features, some of which you might never actually use in your networking environment. For instance, when you installed Windows Server 2003 on a system, the binaries for Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) were installed on your server even if you had no need for this service (although you still had to configure and enable RRAS before it would work). Windows Server 2008 improves earlier versions by installing the binaries needed by a server role only if you choose to install that particular role on your server. However, the Full installation option of Windows Server 2008 still installs many services and other components that are often not needed for a particular usage scenario.

That's the reason Microsoft created a second installation option—Server Core—for Windows Server 2008: to eliminate any services and other features that are not essential for the support of certain commonly used server roles. For example, a Domain Name System (DNS) server really doesn't need Windows Internet Explorer installed on it because you wouldn't want to browse the Web from a DNS server for security reasons. And a DNS server doesn't even need a graphical user interface (GUI), because you can manage virtually all aspects of DNS either from the command line using the powerful Dnscmd.exe command, or remotely using the DNS Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

To avoid this, Microsoft decided to strip everything from Windows Server 2008 that was not absolutely essential for running core network services like Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), DNS, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), File and Print, and a few other server roles. The result is the new Server Core installation option, which can be used to create a server that supports only a limited number of roles and features.

I will however re-state how pre-made machines (OEM) on sale during the very first period of XP, and expecially laptop/notebooks were largely underpowered, as well as later this happened AGAIN when Vista :ph34r: was launched.

My personal rule of thumb has alway been that of taking the MS minimal requirements and at very least double them, whenever possible use a factor of 4x, example, XP minimal requirements:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865/en-us

  • Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) <- please read this as 1 Ghz processor
  • At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended) <- please read this as "512 Mbytes" if you want to actually run software on this OS

jaclaz

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Suggesting that MS would have been better to backport these features into NT4 would be like suggesting that Halo 4 should have been back ported to the original XBOX.

I must nitpick on this one.

Did you ever realize that you make unfair comparison:

2K run on P4

XP run on P4

yet you said it was like :

Halo run on XBOX

Halo4 run on XBOX-360

The point still stands: the hardware was a natural evolution of the platform, same as the kernel was a natural evolution of the platform. The kernel team doesn't stop building new functionality because another team is adding functions, nor should other teams preclude newer technologies introduced with that kernel in the name of backporting features. The hardware equivalent would be to nix MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNow and other support because 486's are also 32-bit processors.

We've already talked about doubling minimum requirements, but often times the OS itself is the requirement because of the changes it introduced. Sure, people have projects that do enable some of these newer features on older systems, but getting Firefox 8 to run on Windows 98 is probably a support situation that's specific to the people who have done it. If you need Windows 98 support, there's always Virtual PC/Hyper-V, VirtualBox or VMWare

Software projects typically have feature goals set for its release before any significant code is written, and then the software gets written to that spec. This prevents backporting of most features, but it ensures stability in professional environments. Bugs tend to slip in with new code and features. There's also the headache of writing to the older version's capabilities. Sure, you could re-implement everything every time, but it's expensive, and then you need to make sure that everyone running OS version 3 is using the correct version of OS version 3 (probably because you had to change a core feature that broke another core feature). The alternative - supporting DOS, Win16, and newer 32-bit software on a newer file system - did exist, by the way. Unfortunately OS/2 never took off (I still have my Warp 3 Connect CD!)

...Good ol' Comic Sans :)

This is probably the biggest point of contention I've got with your posts. First, the differences in experiences between NT and 2000 alone were *massive*.

I see no points of contention :), actually you seem to say (just like I do) that Windows 2000 was an excellent Operating System, the "rightful" evolution of NT 4.00.

I see 2000 as a technical, or if you prefer "natural, logical" evolution of NT and XP as a (mostly) commercial evolution of 2K., in the sense that a large part (but of course not all) the "added" features of XP are "eye candy" or "bells and whistles".

Personally I rate *any* NT based system far more "stable" than any comparable DOS based one, but the argument that most people raise when this kind of discussion starts is "but NT has the far better NTFS filesystem that you cannot have in 9x/Me and thus you are limited to files 4 Gb in size" (no I don't want to start the usual flamewar about FAT32 vs. NTFS), with the not-so-hidden understatement that a Dos based OS cannot have NTFS because of technical reasons (while it has been a simple, plain, commercial one).

The great idea was evidently something like let's consolidate our two largely different Operating System branches, one dedicated to the "Professional" use and one to "Home" and let's make a one-size-fits-all OS.

It is rather obvious how in order to do that you need to impose on "home" customers that have not any need for them a number of "features" only useful in a "professional" environment, on the other hand, in order to let the "home" users be actually able to run, install, and "like" it etc. you need to add some "bells and whistles" that the "profesionals" have no or very little use for.

If you think about it, the following iteration of the "higher level" Server edition offers - strangely enough - a "Core" edition, from the mouth of the wolf:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd184075.aspx

Full vs. Server Core

Since the early days of the Microsoft Windows platform, Windows servers were essentially "everything" servers that included all kinds of features, some of which you might never actually use in your networking environment. For instance, when you installed Windows Server 2003 on a system, the binaries for Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) were installed on your server even if you had no need for this service (although you still had to configure and enable RRAS before it would work). Windows Server 2008 improves earlier versions by installing the binaries needed by a server role only if you choose to install that particular role on your server. However, the Full installation option of Windows Server 2008 still installs many services and other components that are often not needed for a particular usage scenario.

That's the reason Microsoft created a second installation option—Server Core—for Windows Server 2008: to eliminate any services and other features that are not essential for the support of certain commonly used server roles. For example, a Domain Name System (DNS) server really doesn't need Windows Internet Explorer installed on it because you wouldn't want to browse the Web from a DNS server for security reasons. And a DNS server doesn't even need a graphical user interface (GUI), because you can manage virtually all aspects of DNS either from the command line using the powerful Dnscmd.exe command, or remotely using the DNS Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

To avoid this, Microsoft decided to strip everything from Windows Server 2008 that was not absolutely essential for running core network services like Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), DNS, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), File and Print, and a few other server roles. The result is the new Server Core installation option, which can be used to create a server that supports only a limited number of roles and features.

I will however re-state how pre-made machines (OEM) on sale during the very first period of XP, and expecially laptop/notebooks were largely underpowered, as well as later this happened AGAIN when Vista :ph34r: was launched.

My personal rule of thumb has alway been that of taking the MS minimal requirements and at very least double them, whenever possible use a factor of 4x, example, XP minimal requirements:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865/en-us

  • Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) <- please read this as 1 Ghz processor
  • At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended) <- please read this as "512 Mbytes" if you want to actually run software on this OS

jaclaz

I think a large part of the challenge when creating a core OS was a lack of command line tools to effectively administrate the system. CMD.EXE is great, but not everything exists as a tool. PowerShell fixed that up while adding a little more flexibility to the system, but it took resources to build. Server Core drops desktop support too, by the way - hardly a good experience for the front-line worker who needs to run Office.

XP ran pretty nicely on early machines with earlier software on 256MB RAM, and I also recall projects to coax it into running on 32MB.

OEMS have had a long tradition of trying to sell out older hardware, and with Vista I think it's fair to say it blew up in everyone's face. Vista itself was fine, but immature driver support and the assumption that Program Files was fair game for data files harmed it. By Windows 7 everyone had their work in order and Windows 8 is designed to have the same system requirements as 7.

Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.

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XP ran pretty nicely on early machines with earlier software on 256MB RAM, and I also recall projects to coax it into running on 32MB.

Sure :), even on 20 Mb on a 8 MHz processor, JFYI:

http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini.htm.en

and of course nliting or however tweaking the install doesn't count, do a "normal" install, from the original "gold" MS CD, install an anti-virus, open a couple mid sized worksheets and go browsing the web with 256 Mb and the pagefile will be hit in no time (and I don't call a system that continuously pages on hard disk as "running pretty nicely").

jaclaz

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It was the dawn of the Pentium 4, and XP ran really well on P2's, P3's and the 1GHz Athlon's of that era (I'll leave out comments about first generation P4's...). The requirements were pretty similar to Windows 2000. If anyone put it on underpowered hardware, it was probably people who wanted to latest and greatest on their Pentium MMX's and K6's. That aside, many companies were putting out software that supported both platforms. Internet Explorer 6 and Office XP in particular both worked in Windows 98 and up. Nobody was forced, but people wanted on board because they thought it was pretty cool. My uncle wanted it on his Celeron 300a (I was smarter than to do it, but it would have "worked")

I was with you up until that, admittedly subjective, statement.

The fall 2001 line of desktops were all underpowered for the WinXP RTM. The choice chips from Intel and AMD were still a few years off. The early Athlon's had tiny L2 caches and the early P4's ( Willamette ) just plain sucked. Only the extreme power user spent the big bucks on PIII GHz level processors ( and we should just forget the PII's entirely ). Anyway, almost all the 2001 computers shipped with 128 or 256 MB RAM and most that I saw was the older, expensive and slow 100 MHz SDRAM on 164 pin DIMMs which were never cheap ( and there were outliers were at 133 MHz, a trivial difference anyway ). The only alternative was Rambus and their even more expensive but slightly faster RDRAM. The hardware picture really wasn't pretty in 2001, no way to put lipstick on this pig. Once Intel finally grew a brain and began to exploit the Socket 478 with Northwood and Prescott with big steps in frequency and L2 cache the enduser using WinXP got immediate and large benefits ( as did the Win9x stalwarts ). Likewise, when AMD released the killer Athlon XP's with 512 L2 it was great. Once all these ( Intel and AMD ) CPUs were finally mated to DDR ( at 3x or 4x SDRAM speed ) things began to hum. In my opinion, you needed at least 512 MB total RAM for Windows XP to eliminate the incessant disk thrashing. Again, highly subjective, but around 2004 all the pieces fell into place ( including USB2 and SATA ) to make the total package, CPU + RAM + mobo features + WinXP a solid and enjoyable experience. I think it's fair to say that Microsoft released Windows XP approximately 3 years ahead of the generally available and affordable end-user equipment. This probably reflects the disparity between the internal workstations the developers use and what the general public can afford to purchase.

But back to Windows ME. The reason I think it was either a last-ditch effort to save the Win9x branch or a testbed for WinXP fluff is that they didn't really address any of the well-known core problems with the Win9x family. They dressed it up a bit and added further problems ( what I listed above IMHO ) but left the architectural time-bombs in place. The resource heaps needed to be enlarged and memory management needed tweaking and these problems can only be addressed at the design level, recompiled and corrected. I doubt they can be patched in later ( but if anyone can do it, the geniuses here like Rudy Loew would certainly be the ones :thumbup ). Another example is the very common hour-long blue screen scandisk because of an improper shutdown, triggered by FAT freespace count out of sync from the dirty data flag which is only reset during a "proper" shutdown. This problem hit EVERY single user, and it only needs to happen a couple of times for the user to permanently sour on Microsoft and their Windows.

Seriosuly, there is practically an entire generation of computer users now afraid to press the power button to initiate a shutdown because of this ingrained experience using Win9x. This needed to be handled at the kernel level with more frequent FAT updating, but in WinME they just kicked the problem to Windows Scandskw instead and let us go on our merry way. The cynical bone in me believes they had already decided to write-off FAT ( in favor of NTFS ) and just didn't tell anybody. To bring it back to the actual topic of this thread, this kind of thing does not bode well for Windows 8, because if history is a guide, there is a high probability that the decision has been made to disappear the desktop ( and I believe x86 entirely ) soon and evolve themselves into Apple, whether we like it or not. I hope they prove me wrong but I am not willing to bet a red cent on it.

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To bring it back to the actual topic of this thread, this kind of thing does not bode well for Windows 8, because if history is a guide, there is a high probability that the decision has been made to disappear the desktop ( and I believe x86 entirely ) soon and evolve themselves into Apple, whether we like it or not. I hope they prove me wrong but I am not willing to bet a red cent on it.

I brought the XP in this thread mainly because I wanted to highlight the "opposite direction" taken with Windows 8.

With XP MS "killed young" the Me (and all DOS based OS) in favour of NT based ones and established that the XP OS was "good for all".

Now it is saying that:

  1. you will have Windows 8 on your "Office PC"
  2. you wil have Window 8 on your "Home PC"
  3. you will have Windows 8 on your laptop/notebook
  4. you will have Windows 8 on the Surface Pro (and possibly on a number of similar tablets)
  5. you will have a largely incompatible OS, Windows RT, on the "standard" surface (and possibly on a number of similar tablets)

Item #5 won't be fully "integrable" in an "enterprise environment" and it is a completely different product on which most "production tools" won't run (or more exactly, noone, not even them, have provided ports for them, exception made for Office 2013 and it's silly license, that seemingly keeps out of the "deal" anyone in business that has not a volume license or that doesn't want to subscribe to the stupid Office 365).

As such, the "current" Surface with Windows RT seems a lot like a "separate branch", not very different from the old DOS vs. NT ones.

I have not clear in my mind (actually I am completely not interested to it) whether Windows Phone belong to the "real" Windows 8 branch or to the Windows RT one or it is yet another "branch" with some points in common, not unlike the old CE.

jaclaz

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As such, the "current" Surface with Windows RT seems a lot like a "separate branch", not very different from the old DOS vs. NT ones.

I have not clear in my mind (actually I am completely not interested to it) whether Windows Phone belong to the "real" Windows 8 branch or to the Windows RT one or it is yet another "branch" with some points in common, not unlike the old CE.

I'm pretty much the same as you, uninterested.

I suppose that since WP8 is used on non-x86 architecture ( because the dominant phones are using those Snapdragon ARM chips and similar, at least currently ), well, Windows RT would probably be the best analogue.

Some people might call it chicken little, or "sky is falling" hysteria, but none of the available evidence contradicts the theory that Microsoft will soon jettison their entire successful x86 history and completely morph into Apple. That means that Windows RT ( the non-x86 ReTard Edition ) will be their future, and even Windows 8 is expendable. Recent news stories like Windows RT, not Windows 8, is Microsoft's tablet future are signalling this.

What kills me the most is how clueless the fanboys are about this whole thing. They themselves are iSheep ( whom they supposedly despise ) clamoring for Microsoft to become Apple. It is absolutely stunning cognitive dissonance. "Please take away our choices! We want a locked down app store! Kill that darn desktop and Start Menu! Prevent multitasking and multiple Windows! We beg you!". And in the same breath they attack old-time Windows veterans as Apple or Google trolls. Projection and Cognitive Dissonance in the same empty skulls.

How about this one? Microsoft publicly ( and foolishly ) attacking Android in Twitter: Microsoft slams Android on Twitter; response is mixed. Doesn't that remind you of the petty and childish attacks on Windows by Apple over the past few decades! How many ways can Microsoft directly copy Apple? I seriously think the Redmond upper echelon has gone insane. Stark raving mad.

EDIT: I should mention that the Microsoft Twitter attack on Google and Android is about Virus and Malware ! I am not joking. Microsoft accusing others of malware problems! :lol::lol::lol:

Edited by CharlotteTheHarlot
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What kills me the most is how clueless the fanboys are about this whole thing. They themselves are iSheep ( whom they supposedly despise ) clamoring for Microsoft to become Apple. It is absolutely stunning cognitive dissonance. "Please take away our choices! We want a locked down app store! Kill that darn desktop and Start Menu! Prevent multitasking and multiple Windows! We beg you!". And in the same breath they attack old-time Windows veterans as Apple or Google trolls. Projection and Cognitive Dissonance in the same empty skulls.

Pretty amazing, isn't it? It's almost a tribal thing -- attacking Apple not because Apple has a different approach or philosophy (let alone because that approach might be less good), but simply because they're the other guys. Not "because of X or Y reasons," just "because." We might expect this sort of thing from company employees and PR contractors, but from users?!?

--JorgeA

Edited by JorgeA
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