Thank Goodness for Windows XP

[BTravlin]

Heck, I don't see any reason to upgrade unless I need features in the new OS or software. My CP/M laptop (ca 1984) had the longest battery life (7 1/2 hours) of any laptop I've ever used. Of course that's because it had no floppy or hard drive. It is still good for word processing under Wordstar.

In another 5 years I will undoubtedly consider a new computer, but probably not before that regardless of the upcoming technology.

Wordstar!?!? You must be one of the last users on earth.

 

[Warthaug]

Wow, really? I detest it so far. Thankfully I only have the trial version and haven't paid for the "upgrade" to 07...not sure I will as I am finding even trying to do very simple things like "save as" to be a royal pain in the butt to find the first time.

That's my feelings, and the feelings of many people at my work. When was it a good idea to ignore all of your old users, and eliminate all of those features we've learned to use over the years - keyboard shortcuts for example? Now, many of the features I used to access with the pressing of to keys now require several menu and submenu clicks.

I guess its lowest-denominator computing; make it so that newbies can use it at first try, even if that means more experienced uses will fly into bouts of rage as they try to be productive.

The moment openoffice has a reference manager added (apparently planned for the next version), or when one of the current reference managers begins supporting openoffice, I'll be dumping the new office.

Bryan

 

[cfelliot]

I got a new PC in April. It came with Vista. I lasted less than a week before I reverted to XP. I didn’t mind the new interface, but lots of things just didn’t work. I run a lot of software development tools and they were the biggest problem.

Getting my new system to work with XP was no small problem. It is a Dell XPS420 and Dell didn’t have any XP drivers for the network, sound, disk array etc, but since they use a standard Intel chipset, I was able to find them all with a lot of hunting. I now have XP running great on it. I retained the original Vista hard drive installing XP on a new disk because Dell will not support the system with XP.

The biggest issue with Vista is that it is a resource hog! All that flash comes at a performance price. Things run much faster on XP than Vista.

Windows used to come in two varieties and progressed down two different product lines:

Windows 1 - Windows 2 - Windows 3 - Windows 3.1 -Windows ME
Windows NT 3 - Windows NT 3.5 – Windows NT 4

With Windows 2000 these 2 lines merged into 1

The last version of the DOS based Windows, Windows ME had very similar problems as Vista.

As stated in previous posts to this thread, Microsoft is well aware of the problems in Vista and they have accelerated the development of the next release. Meanwhile Apple is having a field day ripping Vista!

I wish Microsoft would spend more time making things work, not making them different!

Chuck

 

[drbill]

Bill, Do you use a Dive Computer and download data using an older cable?
If so, moving from Win98 to XP may cause that cable to not work anymore.
You may find similar problems with other devices that use a parallel or serial port.
Frank

Fortunately my old dive computer, which I downloaded to Win 98, died a while back. I now download my new one via an IR link on XP.

 

[drbill]

Wordstar!?!? You must be one of the last users on earth.

Wordstar did what I needed it to and was very compact (fitting on the ancient ROM chip in the CP/M version and a single 5 1/4" floppy for my DOS systems).

I still use Foxpro for DOS as my database software. I wrote two many database applications using it and I have no desire to re-write them.

 

[cave_diver]

The last time I did look, Dell Computers did offer either Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1 installed. You could even opt for Windows XP installed and get a copy of Windows Vista (Business, I believe, but I’m not 100 percent sure) for $50 included. This gives you options if you decide to switch to Vista later.

However, this info is approximately 3 weeks old and was available through Learn about Dell's laptops, desktops, monitors, printers plus PC electronics & accessories.. I don’t know if either Best Bay or Wal-Mart, which sell Dell Computers as well, has a different policy.

 

[deco_martini]

Personal Preferences aside, there are technical reasons to stay with XP or move to Vista. Some people may stick with XP since it thrashes disk much less than Vista (a no-no for serious video editing).

In my case, launching 3 large 3D apps at once nearly killed Vista on my 4GB ram workstation. XP handled it without a hitch. Went back to XP.

Menus, icons, eye candy, etc. You can disable all of that in Vista. However, you can't disable stupid.

 

[cfelliot]

The last time I did look, Dell Computers did offer either Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1 installed..........

June 30th was the deadline that Microsoft imposed. I don't think it was extended!

 

[deco_martini]

If you want XP scalability and performance without the clutter, some people are using customized windows server 2008 installations instead of vista. You get to use Vista drivers but without all the disk-thrashing and hours spent disabling things you have to do with Vista.

 

[Hoomi]

I bought my Vaio laptop last October, just in time to use it for NaNoWriMo 2007. I'd been using Word 2003 for several years at work and home, and was fairly familiar with it (at least for the applications I used). The Vaio came with the trial version of Word 2007, so I used it for WriMo, happily typing out my novel in 22 days. When it came time to print out a copy for some screening readers, I found some formatting tools that were not available in Word 2003, and which I very much enjoy using.

Different strokes for different folks.

Oh, and Windows 95? Thanks, but no thanks. I don't have any desire to return to the days of the Blue Screen of Death. XP? Fine. Vista? Fine. 95 or 98? Not a chance.