Microsoft Offers Peek Into Newest Windows

Yahoo! News Technology ^ | 5/18/03 | Reed Stevenson - Reuters

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

My machine is primarily used as a DAW but I do some gaming and movie watching as well as basic surfing.

Hmmm. Do you ever have any "incompatibilities" with 2000 and games? While most of the newer games list Win98/ME/2000/XP on the box, I seem to recall a while back that 2000 had some problems with games and drivers. That's the only reason that I haven't upgraded from ME to Win2k...

[Shanty Shaker]

I am really amazed that nobody here is in the longhorn beta programs. I installed one of the earlier betas several months ago. Not all of the features were filled in but it looks to have potential to have some great improvments.

Running: Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 (5.1 - 2600)
CPU: 1-Intel Pentium 4, 3067MHz, 512KB (0% Load)
RAM Usage: 307/480MB (63.96%)
Uptime: 2hrs 17mins
BestUp: 2wks 3days 21hrs 13mins On: 11/17/2002
Total HD Space: 229.1G Total Free HD Space: 78.18G


Got that from dell for 599.00 So a 3k$ would be one massive machine.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Sorry, no more upgrade money from me.

What's funny is that I am running windows ME and never had a problem one. No more upgrades for me either..

[jammer]

They DID pay the US government. With backdoors into the OS for gov snooping.

[babaloo999]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind when I'm buying my next Seagate drive.

[delapaz]

The issue is within the business community. Most larger corporations lease their computers w/ 3 year leases, and rarely, if ever, buy out the lease. So every 3 years, they get new computers. When MS phases out Win2K, like they did with Win9x, there simply won't be a choice. They'll be forced into either XP or the later versions, just like now, they're offering Win2K on business machines as a special order.

When I was in charge of corporate desktops, first thing I would do when getting a new piece of hardware was get a good installation of Win2k Pro, burn an image of it, and use that image for loading the rest of the hardware just like it. I'm betting that most corporate IT departments do the same thing and wipe the preloaded OS, no matter what it is.

[Petronski]

Oh yes, I understand WinXP to be extremely stable. It's just that for my tastes, it's larded down with too many needless 'features.' I tried it about a day or two and found it slower on 1ghz than win98 on a 200mhz. Now, 98SE on my 1.7ghz, that's been delightful AND stable.

[oceanview]

we do exactly the same thing. but the question is, when will MSFT "outlaw" that practice?

[Petronski]

What's funny is that I am running windows ME and never had a problem one. No more upgrades for me either..

Hey, I just completely misread your post. You're running ME okay? That might be a first!

[snooker]

Wonder when this joke ends.

Upgrade this upgrade that. Bloat makes for the need for you guessed it, upgrade that computer so it will run the latest upgraded windows which still crashes like the previous upgrade.

I just got my Win2003 server. And I have to sat it sure looks like it is worth all of the $4000 for the base version. $4k. Red Hat9 $69 and no additional charges for more users, no license spys. Just works.

sigh

[dennisw]

All I can say is with 1.7ghz/512mb XP seems to run slower than Win2000. It was so irritating I stripped away unneeded MS services and other services and fluff that were bogging it down. Used these tweak guides:

WinXP Tweaking: From Reformat to Relax
WinXP Tweaking: From Relax to Righteous

[Cicero]

I deal with Pop-ups, and Banner ads too, with AdMuncher.

[George W. Bush]

But PC games are the dominant market in the gaming industry.

You're wrong. Over 80% of the games market is the console market. It's sheer numbers. Mom & Pop buy 'em for the family room and keep the kids off their computer and they don't have to constantly upgrade. The finest game performance is on the PC's but you have to spend a lot of money to get the equipment to run Quake at 100fps at 1600x1200. That's a very limited market. Take a look at most of these games on, say, Xbox and high-end PC. What's striking is that with about 5x as much computational and graphics power, the PC only looks and plays somewhat better. And quite often, the PC versions aren't adequately tested and tuned for real playing satisfaction. Very few PC games ever reach maturity in the way that the console games do where the titles are tested to exhaustion. Why? Because the console market makes or breaks a big production game.

It's a console world. Whether you like it or not. Simple economics. To play high-end games, you have to spend at least $1000 p/year on hardware plus buy games. Make that $1500 a year for anything close to state of the art. Most game sites that recommend deluxe gaming systems are still pricing top of the line gaming systems at $2500-$3000. Assume you can keep your monitor for two years and you can knock the price below $2000. That's pretty steep money for gaming. And a very limited market.

[xrp]

You hit the nail on the head. The console is replacing the PC for the casual gamer. $300 every couple of years vs $1500. It is a no brainer. Casual gamers will just keep their Pentium 2 or 3 PC for email and web browsing. You don't need a Pentium 4/3.06Ghz to do email and look at web pages. The Xbox with XBox Live is truly something. Excellent console with a superb gaming network to support it. Those that want to play Quake/Doom/Half Life/CounterStrike/ETC at 1600x1200 and get half a million frames per second can continue to spend thousands a year to have the latest processor and video card. I'll just go with whatever my 53" HDTV spits out ;) and my $179 Xbox.

[rdb3]

Here is a larger one.

Doing bad things to bad people...

[dennisw]

Desktop

right click to

display properties

appearance tab

drop down menu that says item--> desktop

drop it down and

you will see other items you can modify such as active title bar and menus

you can vary font size of menu text, color of menu and menu size

[Paleo Conservative]

Yes. And if you want to use a different theme, you have to apply all those changes manually to that theme also.

[Jhoffa_]

I have still got Windows ME.

It's just what I wanted, a decent, stable Windows 95.

I am happy with that and I can't afford to keep up on all these latest releases. I follow on the heels of technology and buy what was hot yesterday..

[dennisw]

Right. New theme or scheme and you have to start over. IIRC XP allows you change size and text size on "3-D objects" while 2000 doesn't.

[TechJunkYard]

.. lets see...did Microsoft force businesses and consumers into buying something you didn't want to buy? The answer is NO!!!. So to me there was always a choice...just because MS didn't behave like you think they should've doesn't make them anti competitive.

Uhhh... screwing the consumers is only part of the problem. Microsoft has a nasty habit of stealing technology, and when they get sued for it, either settling with an NDA (if the competitor is big enough) or appealing the ruling (if the competitor is small enough) until the competitor is out of business.

Microsoft just can't seem to follow the law, and that's why they're an anti-competitive menace.