I know this thread was originally about Win8 but since it has moved on to the comparitive merits of different operating systems...
I am using XP SP2 on a machine that has a sticker on it saying it was designed for Vista. I previously upgraded to SP3 and have all the frequent MS security patches but they seemed to make my machine slower and more unstable.
In then end it had a fatal crash and Win XP had to be completely installed. I turned automatic updates off as I decided I had more to fear from MS updates than I did from hackers.
I can't say I have noticed a single thing in WinXP SP3 or Win 7 (on our other laptop) that is in any way better or more convenient than Win XP SP2. The Win 7 machine is much more powerful than the XP one but the only time I have noticed it perform better is in converting DVDs to AVI.
My main PC has windows 7 now. I upgraded from XP begrudgingly to get away from 32 bit ram limitations. NT6 is clearly an improvement upon NT5 but the shell just keeps getting more dumbed down with each release.
A few weeks and third party apps later and it just about has the same level of functionality that it had before (with a couple of irritating exceptions).
The other PCs which don't need more than a couple of gigs of ram will remain on XP until it becomes too impractical like running Windows 2000 eventually did thanks to microsoft disabling support in their compiler. (moving motherboards around during this PC upgrade meant that my dad's PC has now been upgraded from 2000 to XP).
Hopefully by the time using XP becomes too impractical I'll have managed to wean him off and onto linux though I don't hold too much hope there as he relies on some windows apps that rely on decent audio support :(
The APIs for obtaining a user's "Documents and Settings" folder were always present in Windows XP, along with documentation for how to use them. It's just that most developers ignored them and assumed their apps could always be run as root.
And NT5.0 and NT4... Their one mistake was putting the first user in the administrators group (and indeed forcing you to have an additional administrative user on XP rather than using the builtin local administrator account).
Microsoft had to implement a whole layer of filesystem virtualisation to work around those broken apps.
No they didn't, companies could have just fixed their **** and when users complained to microsoft told them that it was working as designed and the fault was with the application vendor ignoring 15 year old documentation
I've emailed a couple of companies whose software has broken paths or uses the wrong registry hive so won't run properly on my XP machines. They've all fixed it in the next release once it was pointed out that their software just crashes with an unhelpful message.
Doesn't matter - well chosen defaults are important. On older Windows versions, do a clean install, don't enter a password, and whenever a user turns on the machine, he/she is running with admin rights, and can install stuff just like that. That IS bad design. Default should be: turn on machine, be non-priviliged user. Want to install stuff: be asked for an admin password. Which (if implemented properly) reads as: no password given -> no chance of f**king up system files. Bonus points if regular user(s) have their own passwords too, but for convenience that should be optional.
Sure that's developer's fault. But that's also a fault resulting from those badly chosen defaults, and a system allowing such crappy designed apps to continue as normal.
What you must remember is that NT is a business OS. Only sysadmins should be installing it and would create the appropriate types of accounts for employees, setting up the permissions required. Then the neptune project came along to build an operating system for home users on the NT kernel but in the end XP came out as a sort of b*st*rd hybrid that doesn't know if it wants to be for home computers or corporate systems. It can do either of course but you still have to know what you're doing to set it up.
Windows 8 looks to be *far* better thought out as a consumer operating system for shiny devices. The only problem being that it seems to be hobbling itself as a traditional business OS in the process.
Really if microsoft want to chase tablets and things they need to make a split between that and corporate windows again. Call it Windows NT, or Windows 201x, or whatever.
[*]One-click restoration of the default configuration. No more "reinstall the whole machine" just to get someone's PC back into a usable state
??????
The M$ OS is reaching a level of surrealism incredible. When the OS is a disaster, add a button for "fast restore configuration" and call it "feature".
Sure that's developer's fault. But that's also a fault resulting from those badly chosen defaults, and a system allowing such crappy designed apps to continue as normal.
Well, yes, the situation arose because nobody steered or encouraged anyone away from using an Admin account by default (partly because doing that gave people the same functionality that they had always had with Win3 and Win95).
However, it's far too easy to retroactively apply modern-day OS standards to an ancient OS like WinXP. The first version of Slackware Linux that I installed in 1994(? - that sort of time anyway) installed a root user account with no password set and everything from then (adding "normal" users, etc.) was done logged on as root. And by default you could telnet into it and have full control of the machine remotely. You can't do any of that on a default linux install any more because it's rightfully regarded as insecure and stupid.
Times change, OSes are more refined and better designed now than they were in the distant past. XP is 12 years old - hardly surprising it's beginning to look a teensy bit cack by modern-day standards.
No they didn't, companies could have just fixed their **** and when users complained to microsoft told them that it was working as designed and the fault was with the application vendor ignoring 15 year old documentation
As you point out MS get the immediate blame: "My software worked on OldWin, NewWin sucks!" It's all very well to refer them to the third party vendor, but what if that third party is no longer in business, or no longer willing to support that product? The business customer will stick with OldWin. That's not want MS want, hence the app compatability shims they provide.
Personally I prefer Win7 to Win8. I tend not to be a luddite about things. I never had much of a problem with Vista for example. I find the Metro/Explorer dualism very jarring. It's very odd when you start off in a traditional control panel to be dumped into Metro for one aspect of configuration. WinKey+F search is another example of multiple interface personality disorder. The charms are also a pain to activate if you're running a virtualised instance of Windows in a non-fullscreen window.
Support for 64-bit hardware (XPx64 was a complete abortion and barely compatible with anything) Very True.
Memory management that can work efficiently with > 1GB RAM (XP was designed for ~128MB and as a result zeroes pages far too aggressively, impacting performance quite heavily) I had 2GB in the XP SP2 days and even with SP1 I had 256mb, I'm not saying it does not happen but I never noticed a problem.
Support for newer hardware, USB3, SSD etc - Eh these are drivers!
One-click restoration of the default configuration. No more "reinstall the whole machine" just to get someone's PC back into a usable state. I thoght that was an XP SP2 invention, or at least you could do that on XP SP2 by some other simple means.
Better support for high DPI displays How high? I could get Win XP to support 3 27" wide screen monitors at 1920?1200.
Faster boot, suspend and resume Only because the Win 7 installation is newer, two installations the same age, probably negligible differences. If you took the time to boot, display the desktop, launch a web browser and go to WOS, on a dual core machine at 3ghz no difference.
Much improved power management But much hungrier hardware, but ok
Doubtless there is more, including the potentially more contentious areas such as UI improvements. YMMV but having had to go back to using Windows XP at work (since getting a new job) it's amazing how clunky the old interface feels at times compared with 7/8. Agree with that, sorta, but it really only when the XP installation is on a low resolution display or setting.
So that's it then we got better security, proper 64 bit OS interoperability with 32 bit programs and drivers and it turns things of when they are not being used. So all the confusing jiggling about with configuration options and other user facing parts was futile then. It seems despite all the changes to the UI and ways of doing things these changes brought us nothing new other than confusion, all the credible changes were in the back end.
That's not want MS want, hence the app compatability shims they provide.
There's application compatibility, and then there's bug for bug backwards compatibility.
A properly written application that runs on NT4 should need no shims and hacks to run on windows 7.
Obviously things do get broken as ancient bits of the API get deprecated, especially thing using obscure directx functions etc. but your bog standard win32 app hasn't changed significantly in 15 years.
Windows 1.0 didn't do overlapping Windows either. And Metro supports two open applications (one snapped, one the main application). Or you can just use old fashioned desktop applications windowed as always.
But Windows 1.0 could at least do multiple tiled windows. Metro can't even do that. And it's presented as the default desktop, the first thing you see when the OS comes up.
Seems I started a heated debate with this thread :)
It would seem most people don't want Windows 8, others are not happy with having that ghastly metro interface either. It reminds me when Canonical wanted to make Ubuntu into a tablet like interface with the unity interface. They moved over to Linux Mint. The same can probably be said for those whom are not happy what M$ are doing with Windows 8 - they refusing to buy it, although you gonna be forced into buying it with the inclusion of buying a new machine.
Back in days of old you could reject the M$ EULA licence take the machine back to the shop and get a refund on the OEM. Nowadays it's like the BBC licence fee; you must pay the Windows tax even if you don't want to use it. Some would say the Windows tax doesn't equate to much as the manufacter buys licences in bulk, but why should we be forced to pay it in the first place?
Back in days of old you could reject the M$ EULA licence take the machine back to the shop and get a refund on the OEM. Nowadays it's like the BBC licence fee; you must pay the Windows tax even if you don't want to use it. Some would say the Windows tax doesn't equate to much as the manufacter buys licences in bulk, but why should we be forced to pay it in the first place?
Maybe fans of linux should be happy to pay the Windows tax for the time being, as Microsoft seems to be using it to fund its own downfall :lol:
So, far they haven't released two massively unpopular Windows versions (ME, Vista, 8 ) in succession, but sometimes it feels like it's only a matter of time before they do...
Whilst Metro might be the first thing you're presented with you can alter that - admittedly using a 3rd party application. It would be a wise decision on MS's part if they gave people some option to start in the desktop in a future update. I believe they're doing a sort of re-launch in Feb so maybe we'll see some changes then.
Anyway... sweet Jesus... how did we ever cope when "(C) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd" was all we saw on start up? "You have to press J followed Symbol whatnow? WTF?!?!" :p
How high? I could get Win XP to support 3 27" wide screen monitors at 1920?1200.
You're confusing high resolution with high DPI.
Example. A 1920x1200 monitor that measures 67 inches diagonally is a high resolution but low dpi monitor. It has very few dots per inch, it's only about 30-odd DPI.
An 800x600 display that measures 2 inches diagonally is a very high DPI (about 400dpi) monitor but at low resolution.
Your setup wasn't high DPI, it was probably a bog standard 72dpi display, and adding more monitors doesn't change this. By high DPI we're talking things like >300dpi. Don't confuse resolution and DPI, they aren't the same!
XP basically doesn't support high DPI well at all. If you, say, ran a default Windows XP on a Retina Macbook, the fonts and icons would be minuscule and unreadable without a magnifying glass. An install of an operating system that is aware that different displays have different DPI would automatically make sure the fonts and icons were the right size for the physical size of screen, despite the DPI or resolution. Basically, when XP came out pretty much every display was roughly 72dpi. Now we have displays like the common 21 inch 1920x1080 monitors that are around 72dpi up to retina-type notebook LCDs which may be 200dpi or more.
Example. A 1920x1200 monitor that measures 67 inches diagonally is a high resolution but low dpi monitor. It has very few dots per inch, it's only about 30-odd DPI.
An 800x600 display that measures 2 inches diagonally is a very high DPI (about 400dpi) monitor but at low resolution.
Your setup wasn't high DPI, it was probably a bog standard 72dpi display, and adding more monitors doesn't change this. By high DPI we're talking things like >300dpi. Don't confuse resolution and DPI, they aren't the same!
XP basically doesn't support high DPI well at all. If you, say, ran a default Windows XP on a Retina Macbook, the fonts and icons would be minuscule and unreadable without a magnifying glass. An install of an operating system that is aware that different displays have different DPI would automatically make sure the fonts and icons were the right size for the physical size of screen, despite the DPI or resolution. Basically, when XP came out pretty much every display was roughly 72dpi. Now we have displays like the common 21 inch 1920x1080 monitors that are around 72dpi up to retina-type notebook LCDs which may be 200dpi or more.
Back in days of old you could reject the M$ EULA licence take the machine back to the shop and get a refund on the OEM. Nowadays it's like the BBC licence fee; you must pay the Windows tax even if you don't want to use it. Some would say the Windows tax doesn't equate to much as the manufacter buys licences in bulk, but why should we be forced to pay it in the first place?
Or just not buy a machine with windows pre-installed.
Of course preinstalled machines are often cheaper because of all the windows crapware and antivirus demos...
Or just not buy a machine with windows pre-installed.
Of course preinstalled machines are often cheaper because of all the windows crapware and antivirus demos...
Yep, and to a first approximation, the crapware subsidy and Windows license fee cancel each other out. So, much like the average user will uninstall the unwanted programs from Symantec, Adobe, Corel, etc. it's just taking it one step further to take Windows off entirely.
Well speaking from a personal standpoint - i think windows 8 is rubbish for business work.
It's now getting to the point at work where LINUX, in whatever flavour, is becoming an attractive proposition to my boss, because we'd have to retrain users to use either OS. And tbh there is not much re-training to use Linux.
What with the changes MS made to office in 2010 (hiding everything usefull and just moving the rest around to different menus and making simple task's harder to achieve) 'the must use MS software' statement is becoming a thing of the past imho.
When I get around to it I may prepare a multi-boot PC with XP, Ubuntu, 7 and 8 and maybe even OS X and real DOS. Now that I've learned how to use 8 while bypassing Metro and apps completely and booting to the classic desktop I feel a little bit better. :)
I have a full 8 Pro original disk and license here and it's just gathering dust...
Comments
Windows 98 Demonstration Crash:
Windows 8 Surface Demonstration by Microsoft. I lol'ed hard at this one. It's great for gaming apparently....
Caption:
Steve Bullmer says "Buy this sh*t or we all f*cked (which means I can't afford blotting paper for my underarms anymore)".
:lol:
I am using XP SP2 on a machine that has a sticker on it saying it was designed for Vista. I previously upgraded to SP3 and have all the frequent MS security patches but they seemed to make my machine slower and more unstable.
In then end it had a fatal crash and Win XP had to be completely installed. I turned automatic updates off as I decided I had more to fear from MS updates than I did from hackers.
I can't say I have noticed a single thing in WinXP SP3 or Win 7 (on our other laptop) that is in any way better or more convenient than Win XP SP2. The Win 7 machine is much more powerful than the XP one but the only time I have noticed it perform better is in converting DVDs to AVI.
A few weeks and third party apps later and it just about has the same level of functionality that it had before (with a couple of irritating exceptions).
The other PCs which don't need more than a couple of gigs of ram will remain on XP until it becomes too impractical like running Windows 2000 eventually did thanks to microsoft disabling support in their compiler. (moving motherboards around during this PC upgrade meant that my dad's PC has now been upgraded from 2000 to XP).
Hopefully by the time using XP becomes too impractical I'll have managed to wean him off and onto linux though I don't hold too much hope there as he relies on some windows apps that rely on decent audio support :(
And NT5.0 and NT4... Their one mistake was putting the first user in the administrators group (and indeed forcing you to have an additional administrative user on XP rather than using the builtin local administrator account).
No they didn't, companies could have just fixed their **** and when users complained to microsoft told them that it was working as designed and the fault was with the application vendor ignoring 15 year old documentation
I've emailed a couple of companies whose software has broken paths or uses the wrong registry hive so won't run properly on my XP machines. They've all fixed it in the next release once it was pointed out that their software just crashes with an unhelpful message.
What you must remember is that NT is a business OS. Only sysadmins should be installing it and would create the appropriate types of accounts for employees, setting up the permissions required. Then the neptune project came along to build an operating system for home users on the NT kernel but in the end XP came out as a sort of b*st*rd hybrid that doesn't know if it wants to be for home computers or corporate systems. It can do either of course but you still have to know what you're doing to set it up.
Windows 8 looks to be *far* better thought out as a consumer operating system for shiny devices. The only problem being that it seems to be hobbling itself as a traditional business OS in the process.
Really if microsoft want to chase tablets and things they need to make a split between that and corporate windows again. Call it Windows NT, or Windows 201x, or whatever.
Windows 7
??????
The M$ OS is reaching a level of surrealism incredible. When the OS is a disaster, add a button for "fast restore configuration" and call it "feature".
My head is spinning now....
However, it's far too easy to retroactively apply modern-day OS standards to an ancient OS like WinXP. The first version of Slackware Linux that I installed in 1994(? - that sort of time anyway) installed a root user account with no password set and everything from then (adding "normal" users, etc.) was done logged on as root. And by default you could telnet into it and have full control of the machine remotely. You can't do any of that on a default linux install any more because it's rightfully regarded as insecure and stupid.
Times change, OSes are more refined and better designed now than they were in the distant past. XP is 12 years old - hardly surprising it's beginning to look a teensy bit cack by modern-day standards.
As you point out MS get the immediate blame: "My software worked on OldWin, NewWin sucks!" It's all very well to refer them to the third party vendor, but what if that third party is no longer in business, or no longer willing to support that product? The business customer will stick with OldWin. That's not want MS want, hence the app compatability shims they provide.
Personally I prefer Win7 to Win8. I tend not to be a luddite about things. I never had much of a problem with Vista for example. I find the Metro/Explorer dualism very jarring. It's very odd when you start off in a traditional control panel to be dumped into Metro for one aspect of configuration. WinKey+F search is another example of multiple interface personality disorder. The charms are also a pain to activate if you're running a virtualised instance of Windows in a non-fullscreen window.
So that's it then we got better security, proper 64 bit OS interoperability with 32 bit programs and drivers and it turns things of when they are not being used. So all the confusing jiggling about with configuration options and other user facing parts was futile then. It seems despite all the changes to the UI and ways of doing things these changes brought us nothing new other than confusion, all the credible changes were in the back end.
There's application compatibility, and then there's bug for bug backwards compatibility.
A properly written application that runs on NT4 should need no shims and hacks to run on windows 7.
Obviously things do get broken as ancient bits of the API get deprecated, especially thing using obscure directx functions etc. but your bog standard win32 app hasn't changed significantly in 15 years.
But Windows 1.0 could at least do multiple tiled windows. Metro can't even do that. And it's presented as the default desktop, the first thing you see when the OS comes up.
I think windows will take the hint with v 9..
you can turn off metro, but still
Someone somewhere actually used windows media player in the first place? WTF? ;)
Yeah my mum and dad would.
It would seem most people don't want Windows 8, others are not happy with having that ghastly metro interface either. It reminds me when Canonical wanted to make Ubuntu into a tablet like interface with the unity interface. They moved over to Linux Mint. The same can probably be said for those whom are not happy what M$ are doing with Windows 8 - they refusing to buy it, although you gonna be forced into buying it with the inclusion of buying a new machine.
Back in days of old you could reject the M$ EULA licence take the machine back to the shop and get a refund on the OEM. Nowadays it's like the BBC licence fee; you must pay the Windows tax even if you don't want to use it. Some would say the Windows tax doesn't equate to much as the manufacter buys licences in bulk, but why should we be forced to pay it in the first place?
So, far they haven't released two massively unpopular Windows versions (ME, Vista, 8 ) in succession, but sometimes it feels like it's only a matter of time before they do...
Anyway... sweet Jesus... how did we ever cope when "(C) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd" was all we saw on start up? "You have to press J followed Symbol whatnow? WTF?!?!" :p
You're confusing high resolution with high DPI.
Example. A 1920x1200 monitor that measures 67 inches diagonally is a high resolution but low dpi monitor. It has very few dots per inch, it's only about 30-odd DPI.
An 800x600 display that measures 2 inches diagonally is a very high DPI (about 400dpi) monitor but at low resolution.
Your setup wasn't high DPI, it was probably a bog standard 72dpi display, and adding more monitors doesn't change this. By high DPI we're talking things like >300dpi. Don't confuse resolution and DPI, they aren't the same!
XP basically doesn't support high DPI well at all. If you, say, ran a default Windows XP on a Retina Macbook, the fonts and icons would be minuscule and unreadable without a magnifying glass. An install of an operating system that is aware that different displays have different DPI would automatically make sure the fonts and icons were the right size for the physical size of screen, despite the DPI or resolution. Basically, when XP came out pretty much every display was roughly 72dpi. Now we have displays like the common 21 inch 1920x1080 monitors that are around 72dpi up to retina-type notebook LCDs which may be 200dpi or more.
Fair point well made.
Or just not buy a machine with windows pre-installed.
Of course preinstalled machines are often cheaper because of all the windows crapware and antivirus demos...
Yes but they're not telling.
Yep, and to a first approximation, the crapware subsidy and Windows license fee cancel each other out. So, much like the average user will uninstall the unwanted programs from Symantec, Adobe, Corel, etc. it's just taking it one step further to take Windows off entirely.
It's now getting to the point at work where LINUX, in whatever flavour, is becoming an attractive proposition to my boss, because we'd have to retrain users to use either OS. And tbh there is not much re-training to use Linux.
What with the changes MS made to office in 2010 (hiding everything usefull and just moving the rest around to different menus and making simple task's harder to achieve) 'the must use MS software' statement is becoming a thing of the past imho.
well on my wifes laptop not mine of course, would hate to loose all my speccy stuff if something went wrong!!
I have a full 8 Pro original disk and license here and it's just gathering dust...