Post by l***@invalid.comOn Sat, 9 May 2009 00:37:51 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
Post by J. P. Gilliver (John)Post by l***@invalid.comOn Thu, 7 May 2009 08:33:38 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
[]
Post by l***@invalid.comSending you to an XP newsgroup is like sending a person to HELL. I
want no part of that.
Now ask yourself and be honest with yourself. Do you really want to
use that evil XP? Do you really want to abandon all your friends on
the Win98 groups to join the enemy camp of XP users? You wont find
any of those people friendly, because they are all too stressed from
using that horrid XP. You may want to rethink this whole matter !!!
I get the feeling that XP is now taking the position '98 has had for a
while - lots of people very familiar with it, MS wanting it to die, that
sort of thing. Sadly, '98 is beginning to be hard to keep going rather
like '95 (and 3.x) was, if you want to use anything new.
09 still does everything I need. I run older hardware so it's suited.
Ah, so you're using soporific's "tenth anniversary edition" of '98 (-:
[actually, I set up a system from scratch with that, and it _is_ good,
IMO].
Post by l***@invalid.comIn fact my Canon laser printer never released drivers for Win2K and
up. At the same time, Win2K has better usb support, so I have both
installed on the same computer. If 98 is lacking in USB support and I
cant get the needed driver, I just load 2K. Since I cant print from
2K, I just load 98 and print the document I made in 2K. I find myself
using 2K more than I originally thought I would, but both do what I
need. XP is nothing but the bloated version of 2K. I dont need all
Well, it had a lot of eye candy added, but I soon turn that off and have
it looking back like my 98lite.
Post by l***@invalid.comthat junk they added. And I surely have no need for Vista. I think
MS reached the peak of the mountain with Win2K, and after that they
started coming down the other side. Few average computer users need
Hmm. I think you'd have said the same about '98 a while back - but now
you "find myself using 2K more than I originally thought I would".
Post by l***@invalid.comall the crap they added to XP and Vista. Vista in particular is only
needed by those who play these very high graphic intense games. I see
Oh, I think there probably _have_ been genuine improvements in some
other aspects, like (a) security and (b) making it more difficult for
the user to screw things up. Of course, for people like us, the (b)
aspect is just infuriating most of the time, but remember that the
computer savviness of the average user is much lower than when we
started. Vista does seem to have been the least popular new version
across all sorts of people, though - from what I'm reading 7, though in
reality just a tweak of Vista, is being seen as a great improvement (not
least because, according to some, it's _less_ resource-hungry [or can be
set to be so], which must be a first for a new Windows).
Post by l***@invalid.comno reason why anyone needs all that power for going online or doing
some office type work. I think both MS and many other software
Indeed, and the rise of the netbook has shown this (and provided a new
lease of life - to MS's irritation, one gets the impression sometimes -
to XP).
Post by l***@invalid.comdevelopers have run out of design improvements, and now they only
Certainly the pace of improvement (at least, of things _I_ see as "oh,
that's a good idea/feature") has dropped considerably. I'll probably be
putting Office 2003 on the netbook rather than the 98 (97 "Burgundy
release", which is a 1998 version) I have on this one, because that's
what I have at work and have grown used to some of the - admittedly
minor - enhancements it has - but I feel no inclination to go for Office
2007, let alone any later version (I'm sure there are some). [Yes I
could use Open Office, I know.]
Post by l***@invalid.comcreate bloated versions of the same program in order to increase
sales. In the end, it's only THEM who benefit. At the same time, MS
Certainly, a lot of new versions appear to be change (in the user
interface) for change's sake, with very little actual enhancement
underneath.
Post by l***@invalid.comdoes a great job of selling hardware (for the companies that make
hardware). They intentionally make bloated power sucking software to
obsolete the older hardware. I personally refuse to buy a new
To be fair, I don't think most software houses _deliberately_ make
bloatware for that reason: it's just that for a given amount of
investment in programming time, the choice between added features (or,
of you like, just more eye candy and similar), or making the code more
efficient, produces visible results for all users for the former, but
does not produce visible results for the latter except on people who are
using older hardware, who are less likely to buy the new software
anyway. Modern coding tools yield ease of coding at the expense of
efficiency, which has been the case since about DOS 4 (I remember
reading somewhere that DOS 3.3 was the last one mostly coded in
assembler, DOS 5 and later being coded mostly in C; of course, GUI stuff
is much harder to code, so tools like Visual Basic make it easier, at
the expense of efficiency).
Post by l***@invalid.comcomputer when my old one still works fine. All I do is go online, do
some office work, and edit some of my photos. Win98 does all of that.
Indeed. Though some of the going online is getting difficult now, with
the over-use of needless code in webpages, not to mention the fact that
most YouTube clips now use the flash that crashes. But I expect my XP
machine (using what is, in effect, about a ten-year-old OS) to give me
many years of use.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)***@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
** http://www.soft255.demon.co.uk/G6JPG-PC/JPGminPC.htm for ludicrously
outdated thoughts on PCs. **
"I have learned to use the word `impossible' with the greatest caution."
- Werner von Braun