Posted on 01/04/2006 9:59:39 AM PST by ShadowAce
Good point. And they've shown they realize it the way they forced SP-2 on everyone, more or less whether they liked it or not.
Duly noted, and I would like to point out that one of the two operating systems is given away for free.
Wait for the new Intel Macs. Coming this year.
Some friends of mine are already running the new Windows "Longhorn" version. (What will eventually be called "Vista")
Looks alot like XP but I have not had a chance to play with it much. I may install it on ald old spare laptop I have, so I can poke around a bit and check it out. Not sure how much like the beta the final version will be. /shrug
The problem is that Vista has been delayed so much that there will be very little overlap between the end of support for XP Home and the arrival of Vista. Under the current schedule, a person could buy a Dell in September and find four months later that his OS support is gone (Vista may ship OEM in October, if there are no more delays). That's just bad by anyone's standards.
I believe Microsoft will do the right thing and extend XP Home support some reasonable time into the availability of Vista.
Of course, this whole thing supports what I've always said -- stay away from XP Home.
I've already looked at it (month ago)-- its horrible. SLOW, SLOW, SLOW -- very large footprint -- very clunky -- nothing worked -- from network copy to renaming simple files to find -- it really irritated me. Its how many years late?
Think of XP Home as NT 5.1 Lite. It's the same OS, just various capabilities have been removed.
I haven't had trouble with it, but if I did, and the Vista product wasn't available... I'd upgrade to XP Pro.
But I think they'll end up doing the right thing too. Contrary to popular insult, they aren't the dominant force in software for being unresponsive to customer demand.
Try 2003 Server. It's at least the difference between 4.0 and 2000, even more especially when it comes to security.
There's still a lot of stuff that won't run on anything but the original. I had RIP (Raster Image Processor) software that would only run on Windows 95, absolutely nothing else. Too many programmers like to play fast and loose with APIs, and their stuff breaks at the next OS revision. I know diabetes software that checked available disk space directly, so freaked when faced with a FAT 32 disk. There was also my old Atari 800XL, where some older apps designed to the quirks of the original 400/800 OS failed because of the revisions in the newer OS, and I had to load the old OS from disk (the original is in ROM) to use them.
And then be stuck with one of the main causes of Windows crashes, bad third-party drivers and hardware? I hope not.
If you are running XP, fire up a command prompt and see what version number it reports.
You are right, but sometimes it will work, some it won't.
It really depends. You can kill all the XP eye candy* and shut off new services to get some speed. And then there's the fact that 2000 can't take advantage of Intel's SMT ("Hyperthreading").
* And not through the desktop properties. Actually disable the Themes service.
I don't consider shutting down 95% of the apps I use a "service" at all.
Regrettably, virtual sex seems to be as much a virus vector as the real thing. ;-)
In any case, the day where your Intel-based PC will only run Windows is rapidly coming to a close. And when that happens, people aren't going to just upgrade because Bill Gates orders them to do so.
ack! keep reading; i made a mistake thinking of the os versions; i mentioned it later. anyone who knows me and knows what I do for a living know that I am aware of MS's versions, etc.
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