Why do you still use Windows XP?

[BillW50]

In

You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I wish I could say that. Get rid of the System Resource limitation and
universal USB support (the latter sounds possible I hear) and now we are
talking.

Win2000 is decent, but the one thing you did not say about w2000 and
up, is that while 2000 and up may have some better features, it lost
DOS. I still use lots of Dos stuff, and can not be without it.

I would be curious what these DOS programs are that you can't live
without? As I still use DOS programs from time to time and they still
work fine under XP (except the Windows clipboard feature under WordStar
which broke with Windows 2000).

The 2 problems I have with 98 are lack of decent USB support.

That bothers me too.

Normally I just dual boot over to Win2k when I need to use a USB
device, which in my case is just a flash stick, or USB backup hard
drive. I wont buy USB mice, keyboards, printers, etc. Who needs
them? The serial/parallel ports work just fine....

Oh? I am totally sold on USB devices and I love them. I do have two
serial devices, but they work with a serial to USB adapter too. And
while this laptop doesn't have a serial and a parallel port, the docking
station does. So I can use either USB or the docking station. The only
thing parallel that I have is a very old external hard drive that needs
a DOS driver to even work. So you can't boot from it since DOS has to
load first with the driver. Plus it is only 10MB or is it a 20MB 2.5
inch IDE drive anyway. And I don't think I fired that up in the last 15
years. And what good is a 10MB or 20MB drive today at any rate?

Yea, 98 can get goofy when the system resources get low, but it takes
a lot to get it there. I nearly crashed the other day from resource
overload, but this is what I had loaded.
1. Large .DOC file in Wordpad
2. Huge 21Meg PDF file in Adobe 6
3. Firefox 3 running several large downloads, with 4 open windows.
4. Several Notepad text files opened
5. Roughly 30 open windows on websites in K-Meleon
6. Two copies of Agent 2.0 newsreader opened
7. Connection to the internet via dialup
8. Winamp (on standby)
9. Media Player Classic playing a large MP4 video

All my icons turned black. I opened system resources and was down to
5%.

I immediately closed Adobe 6, and Winamp, saved my .Doc file and
closed Wordpad. Then I closed half those windows in K-Meleon, and
several of the notepad files. At that point, my resources went
around 35%. I then closed the video and agent, and went up to around
50%. I let my downloads finish, bookmarked the web pages I wanted to
save, and rebooted. The ocmputer had been on for nearly a week and
was due for a reboot. When I restarted it, I cleared out all temp
files, old cache, and defragged.

I just had too much shit opened at once. It's my fault!

I could get Windows XP to act the same way (I believe this is true of
Windows 2000 too) if I use no swapfile and don't have enough RAM to run
everything I have opened. And XP then does the very same thing. I know
this well because I run XP on netbooks with SSDs and I use no swapfiles.
But I remember the same thing with Windows 98 and under. This is easy to
fix under XP, but not with Windows 98.

Note: I have NO files open at bootup, except Windows files themselves.
There is no virus scanner, and no other crap loaded. That's the key
to using Win98.

Oh really? I loaded lots of crap at boot with Windows 98. And what is
the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total protection all you
need is a stealth firewall (a router works too) and a real time AV
scanner. Nothing else is really important besides maybe a sandbox if you
are really freaked out.

As far as drivers, thsi computer was made in 2000, came with Win2000
installed. I made it dual boot with 98 and 2K. I've upgreaded lots
of stuff. It's a P3 1000mhz processor and does quite well for it's
age.

I just have to remember to close unneeded windows, which I tend to
forget at times.

I dunno. I used both Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 on two Toshiba
2595XDVD laptops ('99 era) both with 192MB of RAM and a Celeron 400MHz.
And Windows 2000 is super slow and can only handle 100kbps video streams
while Windows 98SE can handle 700kbps streams. And 98 is far better at
playing DVD movies and booted far faster on these machines. Even though
Windows 2000 was slower under these conditions, Windows 2000 could have
far more open applications than W98 ever could. So I generally used
Windows 2000 more often just because of this back then.

Today I know why Windows 2000 was so slow under these conditions. As it
wasn't the 400MHz Celeron, but the 192MB of RAM. Give Windows 2000 at
least 450MB and it really flies. And XP needs about 850MB and it too
really flies. They say that Windows 7 needs more RAM than XP, but I
haven't seen this. As Windows 7 runs well with the same RAM amount as XP
does (talking about 32 bit only). But Windows 7 does eat lots more CPU
power than XP ever did. So to run Windows 7, you need far more CPU power
and multiple core helps Windows 7 out a lot. As I can't stand Windows 7
under a single core CPU. As it is just so slow. This isn't so with XP or
earlier.

 

[Char Jackson]

Actually it does. They can claim not to support it, but they cannot claim
that it 'is not supported' as if that is universal.

Now you're playing word games. I don't know what they claimed.
Everything I know about it came from this thread, and I saw no
evidence of the mobo maker lying in this thread. They get to choose
what they support or not.

If I'm reading you correctly, when you see "not supported" you assume
it means "not supported by anyone, not supported at all", where I
assume it means "not supported by us". If support was found elsewhere,
that's great, but it doesn't mean anyone lied.

 

[Char Jackson]

You did a great job of comparing the versions of Windows.
3.1 sucked, 95 needed help, but 98 was and still is the best.

I guess we all have opinions, and it's no surprise that they differ. I
would say 98 was the best for a very short time, only until 98SE
became available. After that, 98SE was only best until 2000 became
available. Then XP became the best, and now 7 is the best. IMHO, WinME
and Vista never carried the crown, but it seems completely whack to
claim that an OS that was long ago obsolete was and is best. I guess
there's no single definition for 'best'.

 

[Char Jackson]

It is at least seriously disingenous.

I don't see how.

 

[choro]

Why is "7" the best? What does it offer over XP (besides extra bloat) for
a seasoned veteran?

Let's admit that Windows 7 does have a few improvements over Windows XP
but the fact is that certain changes have been made just for the sake of
change and not always for the better. It would have made more sense to
have had a Windows XP v2.0 but then would MS have sold as many copies?
Or would laptop manufacturers have sold as many NEW laptops?

But ne'er worry. Soon we'll have Windows 8 that will right some things
and mess up other things. And so it goes on... All in the name of
progress... though sometimes we have to take a backward step just to
make life complicated. Windows Media Center springs to mind here... Nice
GUI but crap as a practical interface!


-- choro

 

[98 Guy]

I see. And that would bother me. As early 2006 machines just
doesn't cut it for me today. Although later 2006 to 2008 are
my favorite machines. I am not impressed with newer machines
than that.

What makes 2006 a dividing line in PC technology, may I ask?

You are running W98 with SATA drives? How do you get that too
work?

The SATA-1 interface became common-place in many chipsets starting in
about 2003. It was present in the Intel ICHR-5 chipset (the 865 and 875
chips) and was also present in VIA chipsets (and others).

Win-9x/ME drivers exist for all SATA-I controller chips (the SiL 34xx
and 35xx being the most popular). Today, if you stop by any computer
store and have a look at the typical $15 PCI 2-port SATA card, it will
have the SiL chips and it will come with a small CD with drivers -
including 9x/me drivers.

For my own win-98 PC's, when hard drives began to transition across the
200 to 250 gb size (back in what - 2006 or 2007?) I found that using
SATA drives on win-98 became a logical alternative or solution to the
137 gb problem that is experienced with conventional IDE (PATA) drives.

Win-9x/me is limited to 137 gb hard-drive size because of the
ESDI_506.PDR driver. This limitation never did exist with 3'rd party
SATA drive controllers and their supplied drivers - so that's why I can
attach hard drives up to 2 tb to my win-98 systems.

You should note that Win-XP (SP0) was also limited to 137 gb hard-drive
size. This was fixed in 2002 with XP-SP1 - but naturally Micro$haft did
not issue a patched ESDI_506.PDR for win-98 for strategic reasons.

Others have created their own patch for ESDI_506.pdr (they are widely
available) that allow IDE drives larger than 137 gb to be used by
win-98, but I'm not interested in them because all my drives larger than
80 gb are SATA drives.

And what good is 512MB or even 1GB of RAM for a W98 machine?

You're joking - right?

And you're the one complaining about win-98 having system-resource
problems? Now I know why...

Sure I have added more RAM than 64MB to a W98 machine before.
But I never saw any advantages to using more.

Same reasons that you wouldn't want to run XP with less than 512 mb ram.

You see, something just doesn't sound right to me. As my
experience with such stuff in the past was they are never
quite as great as the claims.

That's understandable if you baled on win-98 in 2000 or 2001 and never
looked back.

I've never left win-98. What I have done is to leave old hardware
behind build new PC's every few years and put win-98 right back on
them. That's why I know how well it can work if you give it decent
hardware - same goes for NT-based OS's as well.

The last year or two, using FF2 I thought it stunk.

I find it does a good job of rendering web pages.

And I give it a huge handicap - I have a large hosts file (to block a
lot of tracking done by google, facebook, twitter, doubleclick, etc).
When you block a lot of junk servers using your hosts file, the browser
can end up screwing up what a web-page is supposed to look like. but
that's ok, because I usually only want to read the text that's on the
page - I don't care if the formatting has been a little screwed up
because none of the advertizing has been rendered.

People say using IE6 is bad at rendering nowadays.

It is. IE6 has been a horror show for the past 4 or 5 years.

Heck that is nothing compared to how bad pages look
under FF2.

You need to do more homework. IE6 is universally recognized as a highly
non-compliant browser. Macro$haft designed it that way on purpose - to
twist web-conventions to suit their own needs and plans at the time.

Yeah I could open 50 Notepads with Windows 3.1 too.

No - more like 10 or 20 instances of firefox, outlook 2000, the program
I'm using to read news right now (netscape 4.7).

 

[98 Guy]

There's also a patch to allow CPUs over 2.2 GHz:

Windows 98 (first edition) had an issue with one file (ndis.vxd I think)
that had a problem when the CPU speed exceeded 2.2 ghz:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312108

=====================================
When you are installing Windows 95 or Windows 98 on a computer that has
a CPU that runs at 2.2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, you may receive the
following error message:

While initializing device NDIS: Windows protection error

The timing calibration code in the Network Driver Interface
Specification (NDIS) driver causes a divide by zero if the CPU runs at
2.2 GHz or faster. This problem does not occur with CPUs that run at 2.1
GHz or slower.
=====================================

Even though Microsoft says it will not / did not issue a fix for that,
that was infact a lie. They did issue a free hot-fix when that KB was
listed as Q312108.

But that really doesn't matter, because it became well known that simply
replacing that file with the one from Windows 98SE or Windows ME would
solve that problem.

Windows 98 (second edition) has no known issue with any cpu clock speed
or anything relating to the speed of the chipset, memory,
front-side-bus, etc.

 

[98 Guy]

BillW50 used improper usenet message composition style by unnecessarily
full-quoting:

And what is the deal with no AV? As I totally believe for total
protection all you need is a stealth firewall (a router works too)
and a real time AV scanner

If you have NAT functionality in your modem or router, then you don't
need to be running a software firewall.

And I would go further and say that even if you never had NAT, win-98
never did need the protection of a firewall. It was never vunerable to
network worms. Win-2k/XP, on the other hand, were legendary at being
hacked by worms.

I don't run AV on my win-98 systems, at least not for the past 3 years.
The simple truth is that there are no exploits in current use (web
exploits) that try to leverage win-98 vulnerabilities (at least the very
few that have been documented to exist, as compared to the hundreds that
have been patched for 2k/XP).

I do know that NAV 2002 can be updated via the symantec intelligent
updater if you want real-time and on-demand scanning.

(nav 2002 is not bloatware - nav 2003 and later IS bloatware)

 

[Char Jackson]

I agree about the firewall, but no AV here. Instead, I use the firewall to
catch anything trying to get online. The only other thing a virus might
profit from is nuking its host, so I watch the boot sector and keep backups
of it (and entire OS partition images).

"Nuking its host" is so last decade. Malware rarely does that anymore.
If I'm a piece of malware and I kill my host, I die, too. OTOH, if I
work hard to keep my host alive and keep myself out of the way, I can
do a lot of things, none of them good.

AV sounds useful, but there are many false positives,

I can't remember the last time I saw a false positive. I'm guessing
it's been a few years.

 

[Char Jackson]

I just posted about that.. Basically, unless Via gave them leave to claim
less for the Via driver and chipset, they're limited to making claims ONLY
about their own end product.

It sounds like neither of us knows the details of the business
relationship between the mobo maker and the chipset maker. Thus, this
entire conversation is a wild goose chase. Sorry, the claim of lying
is rejected.

 

[Char Jackson]

Context is everything. If we want a strong 32 bit Windows API, but also want
easy boots to real mode and DOS, then W98 SE is pretty much the only game in
town. Add NUSB and a few other things like 48 bit LBA addressing, and it
starts to give later OS'a a fast run for their money. I'd never argue that it
was absolute best in any way, but I'd also never give it up. I might use
other stuff, as I do at times, but W98 SE in minimal and improved form is
amazing.

That little word "if" is the key. The vast majority of computer users
don't want or care about any APIs. APIs are used by developers, not by
end users. Likewise, the vast majority of today's end users don't want
or care about real mode or the old DOS. A person would have to put
themselves into the tiniest niche imaginable in order for any of those
things to be a consideration.

 

[Char Jackson]

Why is "7" the best? What does it offer over XP (besides extra bloat) for
a seasoned veteran?

I find it interesting that you would put bloat into the "what does it
offer" category, as if that was an advantage. It's hard to say
definitively whether it's more bloated or not, though. Additional
functionality is rarely accompanied by LESS code, you know.

To answer your question, Microsoft has some decent comparisons online
somewhere. I don't have links handy, but they shouldn't be hard to
find if you're interested.

 

[Char Jackson]

But ne'er worry. Soon we'll have Windows 8 that will right some things
and mess up other things. And so it goes on... All in the name of
progress... though sometimes we have to take a backward step just to
make life complicated. Windows Media Center springs to mind here... Nice
GUI but crap as a practical interface!

My family, friends, coworkers, and customers are nearly universal in
praising the easy functionality and simplicity of Windows 7's Media
center. I've used it myself, too, and it works very well. What problem
are you having with it?

I haven't used the old XP MCE so I don't have a basis for comparison
with that version. I only know that 7's MCE works very well and is
extremely easy to use.

 

[Char Jackson]

Of course. Not contesting that. What they do NOT have a right to do is use
another firm's drivers, as if they were their own, and attempt to claim that
the limited support is universal when the original supplier does offer that
support.

No offense, but I don't think you (or I) have any clue what they have
or don't have a right to do. All of that will be spelled out in the
business relationship they have with each other, and I haven't seen
that. I don't think you've seen it, either, nor has the other person
active in this thread. It's just a bunch of hot air so far.

The ONE exception is if there is some specific written clause in
their contract with the driver supplier than lets them do it.

We haven't seen the agreement, so we don't know how many exceptions
there are, or what they say. I appreciate the effort, though.

Note that 'lying' wasn't my charge. I just agreed with Mayayana to some
extent, sayign that is at least disingenous. It is, given that they likely
knew what he also discovered to be true.

Except that it's not a given, which blows the entire argument and is
why I disagreed with the two of you.

The vagueness of this interpretation is exactly what is being used to lead
people to beleive that the OEM's limitation is over-riding, when it isn't.

You're probably being serious, but I find that to be silly. If you're
looking for a driver and you don't find it in the first place you
look, you can either give up or continue searching. If you give up,
that's your choice. It wasn't forced on you by the lack of a solution
in the first place you looked.

I'm not a judge so I won't try to say which one will win in law, but I bet
either interpretation could, depending who spent the mosty money on lawyers's
time to keep pushing their angle. There may ne a test case, but I don't know
if there is or not.

I have no idea what you're trying to test. Contract law is fairly
settled, so it's probably something else. *shrug*

 

[Char Jackson]

You did get that this claim was not mine, didn't you? Why must I tell you yet
again? I said 'disingenuous'. Look it up. If I meant lying, I'd have maybe
said 'mendacious'. So take the 'lying' issue up with the OTHER guy, not me.

To be honest, I don't really care. He said they lied and you said you
partly agreed, calling it at least disingenuous. That makes both of
you wrong. ;-)

All I'm concerned with is that when people say that something 'is not
supported' they should say 'we do not support it' or 'it is not supported by
us'.

Or, you could just read it that way yourself. That's already what "not
supported" means to me.

 

[Char Jackson]

All this boils down to one thing: we should speak for ourselves, and not
claim to speak for some majority. Plenty of people are vague about that, and
in the case of commercial enterprises, often deliberately. To assume
otherwise is naive. The really careful and honest ones are STRICT about the
extent of their claims.

I agree, but then why call something disingenuous when you know next
to nothing about it? While I'm happy to see you've come to my side of
the discussion, I'm puzzled by why it took so long.

 

[Char Jackson]

Another thing about NAT, is it's fiddly, often awkward to set up, and limited
in detail, so peopel often find a block they can't negotiate, then switch it
to DMZ to drop all of the security it's meant to offer.

You haven't kept up with what's available in the last 5-8 years or so.
NAT is a breeze to set up now, not like it was 15 years ago. Any kid
can do it. Heck, most of my customers are adults, many of them senior,
and they can do it.

 

[98 Guy]

Are you one of those people who make strict distinctions between
firewalls and antitrojans?

I know and understand the difference between an in-bound and out-bound
firewall, and that a NAT-router can't be an out-bound firewall - but a
NAT-router makes for an in-bound fire-wall that's indistinguishable from
the equivalent software service running on a PC, except that's a lot
more efficient.

As for anti-trojans, I've long since given up waiting for my win-98
systems to become infected by them. I've studied the operational
details of many such infectors, vulnerabilities and exploits over the
years and have come to the realization that hardly any of them were
designed for or could ever infect win-98 systems - at least not through
"drive-by" web browsing (ie - a javascript or heap-overflow browser
exploit).

NAT is useless against stuff trying to get OUT

I've asked many people running win-98 what their firewall has ever
detected, and have never heard any of them say it detected a real trojan
or some other malware trying to make an out-bound connection from their
PC.

In probing further, it seems to almost always be the case that people
run software firewalls to be able to exert more control over their
system and it's programs. In the case of XP, it's always amusing to
find that quite a lot of malware knows how to de-active the internal
firewall and get on with the business of installing trojans, keyloggers,
backdoors, etc.

Another thing about NAT, is it's fiddly, often awkward to set up,

Most people have no need to change the NAT settings on their modem or
router. So that's not really a valid argument.

Broadband consumer modems and routers have come with NAT functionality
enabled by default for at least the past 6 or 7 years. Nothing to setup
or change - unless you play on-line games or do torrenting. And if you
do either of those, then you're probably going to have the smarts to get
your ports forwarded correctly.

 

[MotoFox]

And it came to pass that 98 Guy delivered the following message unto the
people, saying~

You should note that Win-XP (SP0) was also limited to 137 gb hard-drive
size.

As is 2000 Pro (and I think Server) with SP4.

 

[Char Jackson]

Got a Linksys thinger (wireless access point, but it can do other stuff too),
and NAT in the BT hub. Both recent devices. I still like LnS better.

If by LnS you mean this place, <http://www.looknstop.com>, then I'll
pass. The vague marketing claims disguised as "features", the lack of
technical details, the broken English, and just the fact that it runs
on the host you're trying to protect all lead me to the same
conclusion: no thanks. If you mean something else, let me know and
I'll be glad to take a look.