Slashdot Mirror
Win95 Lifecycle Draws to a Close
Mr_Perl writes "As many Everquest players discovered recently directx 8.1 is not being made for Windows 95, sending stores everywhere into a frenzy to slap little stickers over the words "Windows 95" on game box system requirements sections. Microsoft has picked November 30th, 2001 as the date that Win95 moves into the unsupported phase of it's career, making it even more useless to those who still keep it around for playing the latest games. Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003."
once Win2k is unsupported, it's product activation time for everyone
And I have a still shrink-wrapped 6.22 upgrade...I wonder if it'll ever be collectable....
Does anyone else find it odd that all verions of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 are supported by Microsoft longer than Win95? They've still got another couple of weeks on 'em for some reason... Nothing major, just seems... odd. I'm probably missing something since I should have been asleep 4 hours ago. ;-)
sharkyfour.com
Are they going to make a scaled down, slightly less bloated version of their kernel that they sell for less and that we can use for all the latest stuff?
That's exactly what I use Windows 95 for.
I put a copy on my Dad's old P-133 laptop so that he could do word processing for his job (he's not quite Linux ready, and neither is the laptop). It runs. And so do the programs I installed on it.
I know what you might be thinking: "that's old stuff, and old stuff is as supported as it gets on 95." Well...
there are still a lot of products out there that use simple Pentium chips and small memories that keep coming out that could use a good Windows API every now and then.
So what is our recourse for "Lite" systems, if not older versions of the software if Windows is required?
I suppose if we wait a few more years, the Windows clone will be ready, and that could replace it...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Questions
It always takes so long to execute criminals in this country...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Well DirectX is a high-level interface to low-level drivers, so it's quite possible that the kernel interface for such things is different. Afterall, win98 has to be different somehow, right? Like, besides USB.
While perhaps this isn't the most apropos place to say this, Microsoft's software support track record isn't too bad. I mean if you dig deep enough you'll find Internet Explorer 5 for Windows 3.1 which runs three times as fast and with ten percent the crashes as Netscape 3 (forget about NS 4 on a 486). And as much of a power grubbing monopoly they are, they still support an operating system most people haven't seen in three years.
Face it, the opportunity cost of maintaining any product in the 9x/ME line will continue to rise in the upcoming years. The fact that 95 through ME were essentially the same product with performance tweaks, bug "fixes," and feature additions made it easy(er) to spread DirectX willy nilly. But now we face Windows 2000 which looks like MS already wants to kill and XP, two projects that (supposedly) share minimal common code with their older brethren.
I'm sure most properly designed software that runs on 98 through ME will still run on 95 for years to come. You just won't see the latest gaming patches for it. And who runs Quake IX on Win95, anyway?
MS OSes will be unsupported:
:-)
MS DOS x.xx (December 31, 2001)
Windows 3.xx (December 31, 2001)
Windows 95 (November 30, 2001)
Windows NT 3.5x (December 31, 2001)
Windows 98/98 SE (June 30, 2003)
Windows NT 4.xx (June 30, 2003)
Anyone else find it odd that MS will be supporting DOS, Win 3.x and NT 3.5 a month longer than 95? I mean, seriously. I can count the number of people I know that have win 3.x system on one hand.
I only wish I could do that for people who use 95.
It's news to those of us who still have a windows 95 box sitting around. It may seem cool to slam slashdot for making fun of windows, however in this case it's clearly not happening
I wonder if Microsoft is not trying to rush the "abandonware" concept. I mean if they can get rid of everything except for their next iterations of WinXP and .NET server, they can probably make up a ton of lost profit from people who don't license "every" copy of Windows they are using. That is the motive behind this in my opinion, I wouldn't be surprised if they accelarate their "unsupport" policy.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Just because Win95 has reached its end, DOS based games like Duke Nukem 3D work fine on Windows ME. After all, Win95 plus patches and bloat is what WinME is. This doesn't mean that Win 95 won't work any more, its just not going to be supported. There are still plenty of copies out there, its just not worth the money to support them any more.
if people wouldnt rush out and buy XP like mad
MS couldnt stop supporting older versions that
easily. the majority of people doesnt seem to
have a problem with activation, doesnt seem to
have a problem with higher costs, huge required
diskspace, enforced digital rights management,
sloppy support for MP3, discontinued support
for older games and applications and more.
its similar to politics: people get the politicians they vote for and they get the
OS they buy.
Point taken, however you're missing some critical pieces of info in your argument.
The biggest one is that the Win32 API has not changed since it came out with Win95. The system organization and a number of other things have, but that's stayed the same. That's why all the stuff that says "Reuqires Windows 98 or higher" on the box will all still run in Win95. There are a number of applications out there that require NT or 2000, but I believe that's more for organizational/security reasons rather than API incompatability and many of them you CAN get to work on Win95 with a bit of hacking. Linux, however, has had MANY feature changes, evern major revision of the kernel, and therefore supporting new apps on the old version would become increasingly difficult.
The other point is that Microsoft is a HUGE worldwide monolithic monopolistic corporation (not slamming, just using the words that best describe it) and also has great profit margins and INCREDIBLE sales. The amount it would cost them to support old OS'es compared to the profit they make on new sales is fairly insignificant, especially considering that to have a support contract with M$ is prohibitively expensive for any OS they make/have made. Linux is supported and developed by a worldwide loosely knit group of developers and hackers that has constantly shifting membership. Many OSS/Linux projects do make at least some attempt to support multiple kernel revisions/etc. but for many of them the effort would be just way too much, i.e. grokking 10,000 lines of code someone else wrote 3 years ago and didn't comment at all.
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Okay, so I admit Win95 and Win98 are truly atrocious DOS-based turds, and M$ is technically right to phase them out.
*but*
Consider this : have you ever tried RealNetwork's RealPlayer ? you'd download the free version, install it, then after a while, it tells you that it didn't want to work anymore and that you have to go download a newer version from RealNetwork's site. You're happy with the version you have, but the software maker refuses to let you decide whether or not you want to keep the old version and not go through the pain of re-installing again.
Well, similarly, there are a whole lot of people out there who have a Win9x OS installed, and a bunch of apps that work reasonably well with it, and they'd be quite happy to keep using it. But M$ has decided to discontinue support for Win9x, so in effect, they've decided for the user what they should use. RealPlayer is a royal pain in the @ss when it disables itself, but at least it's free. When M$ discontinues support for Win9x, they slowly and painlessly force you to go *buy* a newer version of their OS !
Of course, it's nothing new, every manufacturer in the world (software, hardware, automotive ...) ends up discontinuing products, but usually it's only after the product is really very deprecated. I can still find aftermarket parts for my 30 year old car for example, but who's going to make aftermarket "parts" for Win9x ? nobody, because M$ is the only one to know what is in their products. And do you think a 5 year old OS is deprecated ? Linus Torvalds probably begs to differ.
So at the end of the day, it just goes to show that people should really consider opensource OSes as a long-term alternative for Windows : in 15 years, if you don't find a driver for your Linux kernel v1.2, you can always end up making it yourself if it's important enough to you. Or you can recompile this old program that you really need badly. Just like I can adapt parts from other brands of cars to mine, or even remanufacture one from scratch if I have to, because the car isn't "closed source".
In short, fsck planned obsolescence and fsck Micro$oft ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Come on, it's not like you'll find a lot of support by current apps for say, Linux 1.0.x either.
You mean you CAN'T find libc4 binaries anywhere? Man, what Internet are you from?
Until I upgraded my computer, I still had Windows 95 on it. When I replaced the 300 MHz K6-2 processor with a 450 MHz one, I was surprised to see that Windows did no longer run.
The problem was well-known; K6-2 processors of above 350 MHz were incompatible with Windows (or surely, it's the other way around?). A patch was available, but guess what? It only applied to Windows 95 release 2 or later. We poor souls still running the very first Windows 95 release were left in the dark.
After throwing out Windows, the following years were a happy multiboot-story of Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD and DR-DOS. Windows is not missed, other than the occasional urge to play Need for Speed again;-)
Did you mean "nicer than win98 and simpler than win98" ?
There are actually tons of OSses which are nice and simple around: BeOS, RiscOS, AtheOS...
But no: definitely not win95.
This had indeed quite more features than win3.1 but I am not sure it was that better as all the new features it had were as many reasons to crash.
It therefore seems that stability approaches with 2000 and XP (though the latter crashed at boot time yesterday... nor eason but I had 3 differently moving mouse pointers on screen...).
So, no: What was "nice" with win95 was that it triggered the disparition of the former Presentation Manager Ergonomy features.
It didn't make these as simple, though as it was using many features which were coming from differently designed platforms (NeXTstep, MacOS, RiscOS, AmigaOS...) hence making its behaviour not relevant in some situations... (the situation has not evolved ever since and besides the keyboard text selection flexibility, there is not that much either revolutionary, nice or simple in win95 GUI).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Completely untrue -- This is a post regarding a bug in Linux 0.01. And here Linus assigns the maintainer of the 0.01 Kernel. That beats IBM's 7-year maintenance policy.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Your analogy is flawed. What MS is doing is more the equivilant of not making parts to upgrade a '95 Mustang to '02 specs.
Ford makes parts for '95 Mustangs because, (A) They make a profit by selling them, and (B) The market for the parts is there because the original parts have worn out.
None of your Windows 95 code has ceased to function because of wear through use.
Now, I don't happen to like what MS is doing here, and my turn will come when they drop support for Win98, which I have no desire to upgrade, but my Win98 OS will keep operating.
Now when the PC manufacturers stop making hardware it will run on, THEN I'm screwed. I only retired my 8088 Compaq transportable running DOS 5 a couple of years ago. Not because it didn't fulfill the functions that I required of it, but because I couldn't find a replacement for a floppy drive.
KFG
Microsoft is trying to establish the idea that they can kill their products even when people still are using them.
When this happens with Windows XP, you will no longer be able to change parts in an old computer, because doing so would require re-activation, which Microsoft won't make available after a date the company picks. This is a way of forcing users to pay more, not only for software, but for hardware, too. (Microsoft's big customers are hardware manufacturers.)
I really, really don't like Microsoft's abuse. I don't like things like the Registry, which is a database that frequently has errors that cannot be fixed with the tools Microsoft supplies. All settings for most programs are contained in the registry, and if there is bad error, it can be necessary to start over completely, and re-install all programs. For some people with a lot of programs, this can take 20 hours.
I don't like the artificial limitations which cause Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME to crash even though there is plenty of memory available.
I don't like the sloppiness and built-in weak security. This has caused billions of dollars of grief for people all over the world.
I don't like the fact that the operating system re-configures itself without any notice to the user. When there is a problem with a connection, as there often is after a computer is moved, there is no notice that something has changed.
Monopolies are not necessarily bad. Abusive monopolies are terrible.
I am very much looking forward to the time when Linux configuration and documentation are good enough that I can stop supporting Windows completely.
Why does a man who has 70 billion dollars feel that he has to squeeze money from people? Why doesn't Bill Gates relax and make a good product? Does it really make all that much difference to him to make another billion?
--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Yes, it does take a bit of searching:
http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/dists/
Where I work, the decision was taken, many years ago, to go 95 instead of NT. Most users still have 95. The reasoning was: a) we had a shedload of dodgy DOS apps which wouldn't run on NT, b) upgrading 1,200 machines would cost big bucks.As a result, we run about 1 support person for every 70 staff.
I remember going to a pre-release technical thing at the end of 94 and the reaction they got when they explained what 95 actually was (can't remember clearly 'cos I had a very heavy night the night before) was incredible. We had to sign an NDA so we weren't allowed to tell people that it was basically Win 3.11 with a few bits rewritten as 32bit and a mutex (yes, just one) around the bits that couldn't cope with the pre-emptive multi-tasking (most of it). How they managed to get away with selling it as a "32 bit multi-tasking operating system" is beyond me. It's not 32bit, it's not (properly) multi tasking and I'm not sure it's worthy of the name "operating system. They admitted at the time that half of it was still 16bit - hence the constant "out of system resources" when the 64K user/gdi heaps ran out. The number of times I've heard users ask "why is it out of memory when I have 256Mb RAM?". The only answer I could give is "because your operating system is a bastardised heap of 16bit crap". My work machine runs 2K and people can't believe it when I say I reboot about twice a month (and yes, I develop in C++ on it). 2K might not be very good, but it beats the crap out of 9x.
I shall not mourn its passing - not that 98 is much different. They should never have been developed.
If someone's got a link to an official looking article on the subject, please post so I can send to the management along with a comment "now can we get rid of this fucking shit".
Ding dong the shit is dead!
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Lets have a minute of silence for Windows 95. A quick win32 hack that has been a thorn in Microsofts side ever since. It will be sad to see it go, since after 6 years of bugfixes it was just starting to look really good.
And since it's not really a profit to deal with win95 anymore, they shut it down. What's the deal here? If you don't like windows, they you should be happy, right? I honestly don't see the duality there. If there is such a large group that doesn't want their games for win than for linux, then there should be a gold mine there. But will people buy a lot of games for linux? In short, make your own future and choose on your own what to include in it.
On XP, anyone who has experienced any real trouble on their own with the licenses? I haven't, but I don't use a home licence (I do run legal mind you all, msdn subscription). As far as I've understood it, you to have to get a new serial if you do something, you have a 30 day grace period and there is no trouble at all getting this number if you have internet access. We are just talking minutes online or minutes on a phone. Could be it be that people who don't want to pay for their windows screaming out in anger about this?
Win95 was the last version of Windows I could make work the way I wanted it to.
It's also the last version I will ever have bought.
I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
If Microsoft, as a corporation, were capable of asking themselves such questions, they wouldn't be Microsoft.
Newer! Slower! Bigger! Less Modular! More Microsoft!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
If MS continues to publish OS's with license restrictions like XP (which they will) I think it will force more alternatives like Linux to evolve and compete...Especially if the older MS alternatives become unusable...
I'm fairly certain there's a law that if an automobile manufacturer discontinues a model/goes out of business, they have to provide parts/support for that vehicle for ten years. Is this true or simply an urban legend?
I only ask this question since M$ seems to ignore things like my 5-year-old laptop which could never handle anything above Win98, but works fine with Win95
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Win95 was DOA...
Hey just because it was popular doesn't mean its the right thing to do... I mean would you jump off a bridge if all the popular kids did it? Of course I say all this while I wait for Win98 to download the 50 gig of updates it needs since it was released over a modem (ick).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
why would something work on one win32 distro and not on another?
You hit the nail on the head, actually. The base API is the basically the same across versions. So something like, say, a word processor should run on any win32. But it's the "bells, whistles, and included driver support" that prove to be the sticking points... a lot of the fun stuff (games and other multimedia) uses these bells and whistles, as does anything that accesses the hardware directly (drivers, cd burning, etc etc).
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I haven't seen a registry corruption in years (not since win95, actually). And the reason for that was me mucking around in regedit before I had an idea of what I was doing. Otherwise, smooth sailing all the way. In my mind, the registry is better than a pant load of .ini files. Everything's in one place, so you know that if you need to find something, you just have to fire up regedit (and the trees are generally setup pretty logically, though you can't fault Microsoft for idiot third-party developers).
Without those "artificial limitations", it's likely Win95 never would've seen the light of day. See, much of Windows 95's vaunted instability was due to Microsoft buckling under the pressure of their ISVs. Microsoft had actually removed most of the 16-bit code, and many nasty bugs. However, many ISVs told Microsoft that they weren't going to develop for Win95 immediately, since they felt that their Win3.x apps still had some life, and many OEMs and partners told Microsoft that they would not upgrade to Windows 95 unless some app (depends on the company what app that would be) was available. Thus, to be able to make Windows 95, it needed to have much better backwards-compatibility. Which meant re-introducing lots of nasty 16-bit code and a number of bugs that win3.x developers had come to rely upon. Was it wrong for them to do that? Yes, probably. But when you're a business, making money is important. Had they not, no money would be made. QED.
Erm, choose the OS family you're speaking of. Yes, win9x had very weak security, and for a good reason -- it's a home system, and at the time win95 was written the internet wasn't so popular. Now, if you want to make the "billions of dollars" argument, you'll have to refer to NT, which is not win9x, and has some pretty impressive security features. Yes, there were problems, too (note that IIS is not considered part of the OS), but a lot of that (I'm not saying a majority, but a lot) came from admins who had no clue what they were doing when it came to NT security. My point? Pick one or the other -- either you're talking about win9x and the weak security argument holds up, or you're talking about NT and the "billions of dollars" argument could make a fair case, but not both.
I'm assuming you're referring to the fact that Windows networking defaults to DHCP. Don't you think the same thing would happen on any other OS that uses DHCP to get an IP address?
Either you're very naive and have no clue how publicly-traded businesses work, or you're deliberately trolling. I'll assume the former, as it's up to the moderators to decide the latter. Okay, quick lesson in the economics of a publicly-traded coporation: That money Microsoft makes does not go directly into BillG's pocket. Microsoft is responsible to its shareholders to continue to be profitable. It does that by releasing product. In the cycle of product development, there comes a point where you have to call it "good enough" and release it so that you can sell it and a) recoup your R&D costs, and b) hopefully make a profit to keep your shareholders happy. This is what Microsoft does. Yes, Microsoft, just like any other group of developers in the world, would love to sit on a product until it's 100% perfect. Doing that, however, is economic suicide. I'm not even talking just the loss of a monopoly position. Microsoft can survive without that. I'm talking about disappearing off the face of the free market. You can't run a business designed around selling product without releasing product. It's just not possible.
An awful lot has changed in the Win32 world since Windows 95 premiered, not the least of which is the latest switch to the NT kernel for the consumer OS as well as the "pro" OS. This I think is the main reason Microsoft is abandoning Win95 support--it makes sense to stop supporting the crashy Win9x kernel as quickly as possible, now that the home version of the OS is built on NT. Let's face it: Win9x is a huge pain in the ass and support nightmare for average joes. They're always mucking something in that delicate little ecosystem up, and needing help. Compared to Win9x, WinXP is practically uncrashable and much harder for home users to screw up. The sooner Win9x is retired, the better for everyone, not just MS. And that process begins with retiring each release in turn.
Also, even within the Win9x world Windows 95 is a nightmare. The original release doesn't even support USB and can be a pain just to establish a net connection. It has drivers for, well, almost nothing beyond very bland generic basic hardware--and home users aren't very prone to updating drivers manually. Which reminds me, in the original release, no functional Windows Update to get the system updates for most people. Plus, there are three distinct flavors of Win95, and just try asking a home user "Well, is it Win95 A, Win95B, or Win95C? Well, right-click on 'My Computer' and select 'About this computer', then read off the very very long number..." And any recent USB devices can be very flaky even on the Win95 versions with USB support.
And even non-USB hardware may not work on Win95. Some hardware vendors have abandoned support for Windows 95, long before MS is abandoning it. Just try to get supported Win95 drivers for a brand new ATI video card if you isbelieve--their website explicitly disclaims all support for Win95; so, maybe Win98 drivers will work, maybe not.
The problem is made worse when considering WinME, and how the subtle changes made to ME to keep average joes from seeing any DOS underpinnings broke some drivers and code. Consequently, that leaves a hardware vendor or software maker with supporting Windows 95's lack of all features and libraries in later versions, Win98's much better "completeness" of libraries and features and compatibility, WinME's not-total-compatibility with Win98 thanks to its stupid "features", Windows NT which is even more archaic in terms of compatibility and libraries and worse to support than Windows 95, Win2k and its quirks, and finally WinXP which is the new standard in the MS world. Or, they can require Win98 or Win2k minimum, as many are already doing. A lot of hardware and software makers probably don't even test on Win95 anymore even if they do claim Windows 95 will work with their product, since most of the time it *probably* will, in one way or another.
So, I think it's great that MS is dumping Win95 support at last, and not releasing new packages like DX 8.1 for it. Now, I'm all for backwards compatability--in a recent post, I even lamented that nVidia doesn't seem interested in either including rudimentary Glide support in their drivers or releasing what code they can for the Glide API, for the sake of continuing to be able to use a few great Glide games that are out there. But that's a far cry from dumping support for a 6 year old OS when Win98SE runs everything Win95 can and a lot better. After all, would you expect a Linux distro compiled in 1995 to run most apps compiled today perfectly? No--libraries have changed, and a whole lot of code everywhere has been updated since then. Win9x has always strived for compatability, so the situation is much better with Win95, but surely it's time to drop any official support.
That said, I went to the MS support download site about a month ago to download all the Windows updates to keep handy, since I have copies of all flavors and like to set up archaic OSes in VMware, and I couldn't find most of the Win95 updates. There was a download for administrators of all of them, but the link is broken now.
So, offhand, can anyone think of a place to easily obtain all of the Win95 updates at once?
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
In addition, quite a few of the older systems out there are a little quirky-they're happy with the factory default 95, but they don't work well if you try to install 98. Those systems might not need DirectX8.1, but unsupported means unsupported. Eventually MS's forced upgrades will render such systems useless as new versions of critical apps, such as explorer, are designed specifically not to work on older versions of windows. Why should a terminal used only for checking email and browsing the web require the latest hardware?
That's not all, MS has also announced they plan to drop support for 98 in 2003. That's only a year and a half away. ME was released in fall 2000-less than 3 years before it becomes the only supported non-XP non-2k version of windows. That's right, in a year and a half MS will all but kill legacy windows boxes. With a new generation of hardware out and the move towards XP and 2k, expect the latest games to give up on nonXP/2k windows shortly after 98 dies.
This is so goddamn true, and has never even occurred to the mainstream press. Or it has and they are just ignoring it. Sometime in the future, probably after the 2003 "end of life" for WIn98, WindowsXP .NET will appear, and MS will say "We no longer reactivate unsupported products" - i.e., Windows XP.
This is the reason I am going for Windows 2000 because hopefully by the time games are no longer made to work on it, say by 2003 or 2004 (whenever the future .NET/XP codebase splits from the 2k one irrevocably), Linux will be mature enough to be a true alternative (playing catch-up with Win32 by KDE and GNOME is not my idea of an alternative, unless you are a MacOS freak who thinks that running Office 98 on MacOS really is "Thinking Different").
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
It makes sense for Microsoft to do this. Other companies do similar things. It isn't free for Microsoft to keep supporting old software.
Microsoft has big labs full of computers, and testers who work in these labs. If they support DirectX on Win95, that means they need to run tests on Win95, which means they need computers set up and running Win95, and they need to pay the testers who will run all the tests on Win95. When the testers find bugs, the DirectX developers need to fix the bugs, too. None of this is free.
It's not that Microsoft will be going out of their way to make sure things break on Win95; they just won't pay any attention to Win95 anymore. Stuff might even work, especially since MS will still be testing against Win98, which is similar to Win95.
One of the things I like about HP: they have an official policy that they support their products for five years after they stop selling them. Microsoft seems to have chosen a similar guideline of about five years after they stopped selling stuff. That's not bad.
It's true that when everything older than WinXP is dropped, that you won't be able to buy any non-activated MS software new. By then I expect to be running 100% Linux, including games, so I'm not worried about it, but even if I were there is a huge pool of Windows software out there at swap meets, on eBay, etc. It will still work as well as it ever did.
MS isn't doing anything evil or unexpected here. Support can't last forever.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Windoze 98 dies in 2003, huh? Well, then I guess that's when I can no longer buy new Windoze-based games for my machine, since there is absolutely no fscking way I am installing Windows XP on this system. I will absolutely not tolerate invasive spyware and pervasive copy protection measures on my machine under any circumstances. Nor will I move to Windows ME Harder, which was even more crash-prone than Win-98.
If game companies wish to continue to enjoy my custom, they can bloody well port to Linux. Hell, I'll even buy a Mac if I have to. But Windows XP will absolutely never cross the threshold of my home.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I'm not being sarcastic here (although I do shake my head), but they are a company that makes money. The way they used to make money was by releasing their OS in increments (... 3.*, 95, 98, 2K, ME) every few years. But it's getting ridiculas as people own one of their OSes for a year before the new one comes out. Their customers sit on their old versions for years before upgrading ...
...
... for now ..
So how do MS make sure that they have a sustainable income? They create an OS that is ever changing, "Rent your software!".
Ok, if they had come up with that idea in 1995, then they would have achieved their sustainable income (with minimal effort) and be on easy (easier) street. But they have to get rid of these older OSes that people won't upgrade. How do they make people go to XP? Start cutting out support of course!
So in a few years, XP will be it, MS can maintain their income with minimal effort and the hardware industry will we happy supplying new PCs for an ever growing OS that will make older PCs whine and cripple under its fluffiness
I guess the point is that it's business. That is the whole deal with capitalism. I'm not a communist, I'm just baffled at everyone's amazment at this issue. It's a dog eat dog world and MS the fattest dog
"Yeah Tommy, before Zee Germans get here
"Customers who purchase Windows XP Professional have full downgrade rights to, Windows Professional, Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 98."
Now if only I could figure out how to downgrade RedHat 7.2 to XP, so I can get microsoft support.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
Having developed under windows a bunch, the worst part is: There's no one Windows - All the different windowses have various subsets of the Windows API that they support. Win95 was always the least featured of this set. Under Win95 you can't assume that there even IS a web browser or directx (though NT4 has the latter problem too, but it did have OpenGL). Despite their claims of non-OS integration, MS used IE as an excuse to add a bunch of functionality in kind of surprising places, so a Win95 out of the box install (not OSR1 or 2) is missing some really handy stuff. For instance, what standard folders (eg, Desktop, Program Files, Documents & Settings, etc) you can query the location of depend on whether you've got IE installed or not. Anyways, developing with Win95 in mind has been a big pain in the ass for a while. I, as a developer, encourage MS to 'force' people to upgrade.
It's like trying to develop for 5 different unixes, but you can't use the preprocessor since it has to all be the same binary.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Windows95 was a huge step for the Windows world (note I didn't say computing world), and I bet most Windows people's memories for their OSes aren't even 3 years long. It's going to go out without much of a funeral, which is interesting, because it helped a lot of people "get into" computers, myself included.
Don't forget your roots.
I've reinstalled Win98SE twice because of registry rot, and now again there are weird things happening that are impossible to localise. You could assume I'm a moron, of course.
In my mind, the registry is better than a pant load of .ini files. Everything's in one place, so you know that if you need to find something, you just have to fire up regedit (and the trees are generally setup pretty logically, though
you can't fault Microsoft for idiot third-party developers).
So as long as you only install MS products you'll be fine. I CAN blame MS for creating a system that crashes if you dare to install products from other companies.
I'd MUCH rather have a pantsload of ini files. Then I can sort them by date and find the most recently changed ones and fix/delete/restore them. I use an installer tracker and find the average large app inserts hundreds of entries in the registry, many just cryptic strings. It's beyond human understanding.
I think Directx was made to kill OpenGl and and attract developers away from more portable, less proprietary systems. I mean c'mon, the only reason linux isn't on the desktop is a lack of good games. Most Godlike PCs are purchased for playing games among other things. Otherwise we'd still have 486 terminals doing everything in textmode.
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
I don't know if this is truly relevant or a correct answer, but... a buddy of mine works at a place that does embedded stuff, and until recently they were still
1)Buying MSDOS for purposes of embedding
2)calling MS support for dealing with code problems
From what I hear, there are still people out there with things that run embedded MSDOS, so they probably left it in circulation as long as possible. Now, they (MS) can push WinCE or embedded NT/XP, so they (MS) just EOL the old product.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
The irony is, of course, that while Microsoft has been learning on the job and shipping outdated software, customers have been financing their learning experience and suffered from frequent, incompatible upgrades to boot.
Lets face it. Supporting an OS that came out in 1995 has got to be a pain in the royal ass. Can you imagine supporting Slackware 3.2? Jesus Christ what nightmare. It's fun to lay the burden of win95 at MS's feet, what, with $35 billion in the bank, but it makes no sense to have it as policy. So they are quietly getting rid of support. If there's no uproar then that means success. At least from my perspective I dont give a fuck.
The interesting thing is considering what the current win95 users will change to. Any thoughts?
I believe it is WDM (Windows Driver model), the core of newer drivers. It is introduced since Win98 and is not present in Win95.
¦ ©® ±
...if the product enters non-supported phase? I believe this will happen.
Remember Windows CE 3.0 code was released albeit under shared source license.
Jawahar
http://www.diaries.com/css/
Slashdot = Sarcasm
If you live in brasil.
Our consumer laws says that a company must keep support for a product up to 5 years after it's dicontinued.
Since win95 were discontinued only in 1998, they must keep support for it (at least here) until 2003.
What ? Me, worry ?
My old Nintendo won't play Luigi's Manson, and my old Playstation won't play the Playstation 2 games, and don't get me started on not being able to play Gameboy Advance games on my original Game Boy.
You die too easily.
My friend works at BorisFX, a company which makes graphics tools, and they: :)
:)
1. Don't properly support their current versions. Most of the tech support answers are upgrade your computer, buy the latest version of our software and theres nothing we can do because it's XYZ's fault.
2.Stop supporting their old versions THE DAY their new versions are released (pretty much)
Not that i know the meaning of what M$ actually does for support... other than service paks!
Liberty.
Hehe... seems as Win31 will be supported longer :)
(although not significantly) than Win95
I ever knew, and it's in someones sig:
Win9x - A 32-bit extension for a 16-bit GUI
written for an 8 bit OS originally designed
for a 4-bit microprocessor purchased by a
2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
the differences between 95 and 98 are minimal. I am sure that someone could hack the installer and force directX8.1 to install on windows95.
anyone have an idea on how to override the microsoft forced install failure upod detection of 95?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wow. I had no idea.
.1 drive update would be incompatible with Win95 because it is so far removed from Win98.
I guess it makes sense that a
[/sarcasm]
anyone who believes that reliability means your computer program has to be insanely huge is pretty blind.
reliability adds minimally to code, and many times takes away from the size. The problems are adding features that are not needed or are a huge security hole (scripting in my wordprocessor and slideshow? what idiot though that was a good idea)
in fact all of the microsoft line could probably increase performance by 40-60% by simply optimizing the code. but that will never happen as programmers are very lazy (and management even lazier) and dont want to. it cramps their creativity.
Sorry, bloat != reliability,, Bloat == instability
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ho hum.
I don't have the Karma around to burn on this, but there are about a thousand different things wrong with that description of the situation
And before anyone tar's and feather's me for supporting Microsoft, note that I use Debian for Everything - I have 2K hidden on a partition that's getting dusty in case someone releases a cool game.
Now:
So the sad, truth of the matter is that yes, Microsoft sucks. And yes, I will never install XP. But to call it bloatware because it takes 1.5 Gigs to install (and then to refer to that as a "windowmanager") is somewhat misleading.
-- South African and not-an-expatriot [rare]
I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
Come on now, have a guess yourself why people are still using Win 95.
Could it be something to do with not paying $$$$$ to replace something they're quite happy with? There are believe it or not some people out there who are quite happy with win 95. They ask no more from a computer than to be good at simple word processing. Their idea of a good game is minesweeper. They don't spend their time on the internet; they spend it going out with friends.
It's nothing to do with Microsoft's shortcomings in their later products; hell, most of these people don't even know what an OS is - and there's no reason they should!
I don't know how well they'll get along without support though...
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Well, it's not going to features. Take wordpad for instance- the win95 and win98 versions allow you to save as a word document- the winXP version only lets you save as rtf or text. I guess the new hardware isn't good enough to support all the features a 386 with 4Megs of ram could.
Yay, innovation.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Now the standard run of the mill /.er takes a lot of stuff for granted. Yes, we can peek and tweak our systems so they run acceptably regardless of the OS. But I know for a fact that trying to do tech support for older machines running w95 can be a complete PITA. Especially with people giving their "hand me downs" to family members. Amazing on how these days when we do a broadband install, how many people have slower machines that really can't appreciate the bandwidth that they are getting. Not even to mention the fact that online shopping (which is a big seller in the rural area we cover) doesn't really work with the 3.0 browsers.
Now before this gets modded into oblivion, just think about how fast the web is changing everything. People (other than gamers) aren't just using their computers for word processing, it's all about email,browsing,home finance, online banking, shopping. As the websites get larger and more complex, they suck up more space and memory on the computers.
Luckily windows 3.1 dialup support died for us Dec 31 2000, so we didn't have to worry about Trumpet winsock et al. anymore.
Windows 95 can be a major problem when working with a newbie who still thinks that the mouse is a "foot pedal" like that on a sewing machine (yes it's true, I actually had a call like that). I mean the Internet Setup Wizard is a piece of cake, but the majority of the people who are hip enough to navigate the web have allready moved on to 98/ME/XP/2K whatever.
This can actually help out ISP's by not having to worry about support for computers that were "given" to people without the CD. (ever try changing DUN settings or reinstalling Client for MS without the CD on an "upgraded" system where the CABS weren't installed?)
I've experienced this first hand with "Why is the internet so slow?" check the settings, and the person has 8MB o RAM running w95 and someone gave them a CD with I.E. 5.x and somehow they got the thing to kinda run. By the time they have to go out and get SIMMS enough to run the browser du jour (Opera notwithstanding) they might as well go out and get a whole new system for $700 USD.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the way MS handles things is correct, but at some point the lower end of the bell curve of internet users has to catch up to really experience everything the web/net has to offer.
Look at dialup, without updated modem drivers/init strings, the cheap HSP modems
won't maintain a connection. If the computer starts losing memory, the winmodems die. It doesn't occur to these users who think that computers just magically "work" that it could be their own system, and not the network and support that the ISP offers.
But I still love all the phone calls I get because the default error message states "call your network administrator" everytime something happens... NOT!
So I guess in closing this is going to be a way to keep people happy in the long run.
I mean hey I still have netscape 2.0 running on a 1MB RAM Macintosh, but other than email, what good is it?
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Install a pirated non-spyware version of XP on my computer. (Yes, they exist)
Buy a licence- and leave it in the box.
Then I get to satisfy my conscience and my paranoia.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
However, posting the fact that it doesn't work constitutes an unauthorized review of the software, which means that all stores issuing the corrections are operating illegally, unless they have been given permission to do so.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
MS's decision to drop support for Win95 is not surprising, but that does not mean that everyone will immediately rush to the store (or to their IT support group) looking to upgrade. For example, according to a recent article by GartnerGroup, there are still a lot of large corporations using Win95 as their standard desktop OS. I've talked to some corporate IT folks about this, and I believe that there are a couple reasons why they hae not already upgraded:
1. Win95 works. Most office workers don't need anything more than Win95 and Office95. Since it meets their needs, why spend the thousands of dollars that it would cost to buy new software?
2. The effort to migrate thousands of desktops is expensive (advocates of the Linux desktop should remember this). Remember that this is a manual process. So again, don't do it unless it's really necessary.
3. These companies figured out a long time ago how to run Win95 in a stable, reliable way, so they don't need support from MS.
A lot of the desktop hardware that is still running Win95 won't support the newer OSes. As that hardware gets replaced, the final death of Win95 in the corporate environment will begin. But it will take a couple years.
I've reinstalled Win98SE twice because of registry rot, and now again there are weird things happening that are impossible to localise. You could assume I'm a moron, of course.
No wonder everyone here hates MS so much--the article talks about Win95, you're using Win98SE. Trust me, THOSE SUCK. Win95 sucks, 98 sucks, 98SE sucks, ME is probably the worst of all of them. Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems. Not that 2000 doesn't have any problems, but it is a much, much better OS and the problems are fewer and farther between.
Even if you actually decided to buy the OS, the $100 or so would be well worth getting rid of the frustration of 95/98/etc. A guy here at my work uses 98 and it is nothing but trouble.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
Differences? Stability? Increased usability for the common man? Yeah, I could use 95 as well as I can XP, but my neighbor down the street flipped over XP. It does have bloat. It's Windows. I'll never argue that, but it does include Media Player, for people who don't know about Winamp/GDivx. It's got built in CD burning for people who don't know about Nero. It's got IE for people who don't know about Mozilla. It's got integrated compressed file support for people who don't know about WinRar.
Everything XP does out of the box would take at least 50-100MB more space.
Besides all that, it doesn't crash as much.
For a Window manager, I can't see where 1,490 megs of space go to make the difference in programs.
I can't see where that much goes either. However you can account for about 33% right off the bat. Windows restore points are going to default to something, and Hibernation, enabled by default, takes up the RAM in space, at all times.
Besides that, try something: take a brand new 80GB HD. Install XP on it. 78.5 GB left. Wipe it and install the compact version of 95. You now have 1990MB free. That whole FAT32/NTFS inclusion thing really helps.
Yes, it's bloated, but it's not that bad. It's not just a "purty" version of 95.
The lifecycle on their products is relatively long and overlay a great deal. As such, even though Windows 95 is officially unsupported, they still must support Windows 98, which was compatible with Windows 95 nearly completely. They are still stuck with the win32 API. When 2003 rolls around and Win98 is axed, then WinME will carry the support, then when ME is axed, XP will be supported, etc.... .NET strategy, leveraging the Desktop dominance to get more major companies running .NET servers...
Though they can make minor changes, but for now backwards compatibility prevents them from axing any backwards compatiblity.
The problem for Wine remains the same, the API is huge and not well documented, and while not deprecating calls, they are still adding calls every release. As far as releases not being made with Win95 in mind by 3rd party companies, that has been and will remain their pergative. Some already say "no, we don't support that" Others will continue to test against it even if MS says it's unsupported.
Wine is catching up really fast, and the Win32 API is changing slowly (not a bad thing). I doubt MS sees Wine as that much of a threat right now. Wine is only useful for Desktop-level applications, and MS's only real threat is in the server arena, where all applications are run natively and thus wine becomes a moot point. The relatively small segment of Desktop linux users doesn't cut much into MS's bottom line. That's the whole deal with the
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Keep running Win95. Just because MS says it won't support it any more, doesn't mean that it will magically stop working.
Alternatively, upgrade your graphics card or look harder on the net for drivers. Then you can run, say, Win98, but you won't see much of a difference except IE and now newer DirectX availability, which I doubt matters on a 100 MHz machine which won't run most any DX8.1 applications anyway.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The hardware underneath has not changed much. A month ago they celebrated the last of the 16 bit code again. That chunk of code could have run on an 8088, just like MS DOS 3.2 can run on my AthlonXP. The hardware folks have gone to great lenghts to maintain compatibility. In the same way I can move Linux hard disks around the room from a 486 to an Athlon and have it boot.
Where's the software improvement? Can anyone out there name one thing that I can do in XP that I could not do under Win3.1 or DOS? Movies, check, audio, check, ethernet, check, IP suite, check, instant messenger, check, dancing icons and goofey sounds, check. All of it was possible, despite the artificial 16Meg RAM limitations, under their dinky single user non multitasking software. Today, their dinky single user non multitasking softare acts much the same, but it's a little faster thanks to hardware improvements. Win 3.1 flies on the same hardware that 9x chokes with more code than it takes to fly the space shuttle. If bloat is improvement, OK, there has been some real change.
M$ would have you believe that you are a "consumer" of software and that bytes somehow go stale in time. I've never eaten a byte in my life. It's hard for me to believe that their non compatibility issues are anything but planned.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Hmmm, 10 Megs for compact vs. 1.5G DEPENDING ON COMPONENTS (FULL). Bad comparison man. Besides, at least you can do SOMETHING with XP out-of-box. 95 you can't do a thing. (Not that I like either).
SIG: HUP
Sometimes it didn't even load Windows. Sometimes it froze on bootup because of registry errors. Around August/September I called a friend over to help me find the problem, and it turns out it was an improper setting I had selected in the BIOS which was causing 98 to corrupt not only the registry files but the autoexec.bat file as well.
But, during those months when I was having the registry issues, I learned a few things about how to backup and restore those troublesome files. Win98SE, by the way, is far better equipped to handle these things than any previous version of 9x. You're able to make backups of the registry into CAB files with the program scanregw.exe. Just open the Run prompt and type that. It'll do a quick scan, then offer you the chance to back up the current files. I usually did this always after installing something so if I had a serious reg error I wouldn't be forced to reinstall it. (I lost a Black & White game that way) It's a good idea to do this regularly.
Now, when it comes to restoring the registry, 98SE should be able to handle it itself if the error isn't too serious. If the files are totally corrupt 98 may not even load. In that case you can boot to DOS by pressing F8 right before Windows starts loading or with a boot disk, and type SCANREG /RESTORE to restore the files. Failing that, there's one more route you can take. Boot to DOS, and go to the Windows directory. There is a hidden directory called SYSBCKUP which contains the CAB files for the last five registry backups. Check the dates on them to see which one is the best to restore from, and just use EXTRACT to place them back into the Windows directory (or is it Windows\System... don't recall. Easy to find out).
So basically it's not that big of a deal. I'm not familiar enough with NT/2000/XP to know how it works yet, but it's fairly easy to do in 98. Just some ways I described above are more time-consuming than others.
Of course, the other option is to use a disk imaging program like Norton Ghost, but that depends on how large your Windows partition is, if you have sufficient storage space for the image, etc.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
Dunno, I used win2k for gaming and have never had a problem--but I don't use forcefeedback. Even games like the Sims that say only 95/98/Me work fine.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
Hell, you could probably hack winver.exe with a hex editor...
I've got an annoying registry corruption on my Win98SE box. Apparently somehwere in the registry is recorded that I have a certain Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime DLL that is either corrupted or gone. The error message won't tell me which one (there are several versions; newer versions of MSVC++ come with new sets of runtime libraries, which get distributed with applications written in MSVC++). This has broken a half dozen major applications on my box. Reinstalling one or more of the apps won't help; the system thinks the DLL is there, so it won't reload it when reinstalling an app that needs it. Anyone know where in the reigstry one would look to correct this? Sort of that, I'll need to reload the partition.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
People will bring servers to their knees to get the latest one-line change to the Linux kernel, and yet they'll run a mid-1990s version of the Windows lines and wonder why they have trouble.
The other day I was talking with a group of non-technical people and I brought up the existence of other OS's. I mentioned Linux was a free alternative to MS.
I was then asked, "Can it get on the internet?"
I replied it could, and could do so very easily, and well before MS was able to say as much.
"But doesn't Microsoft mean 'Internet'? I thought they were the same thing."
At this point, I realized that we have lost. There's not a chance in hell we'll be able to convince the masses to change over to Linux when many make statements like, "Why bother, it works for me."
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Being a lowly computer grunt, I see a lot of machines with a lot of problems, and I must say, for all versions of windows, registry rot isn't a huge problem. People installing crappy programs that mess up the OS is a huge stability problem, as are viruses.
The only problem that I have seen fairly regularly that seems to be the result of registry corruption is where windows sees a new NIC in the device manager and in the network properties, but not in winipcfg or ipconfig. This problem, other then not allowing the computer to use the NIC for connectivity, has no determental problems on the computer and is not the cause of any instability as far as I can tell.
OTOH, the registry can be easily backed up, on a regular basis, as long as you know about the task manager and know the basics of DOS batch files. The registry is 2 simple binary files, user.dat and system.dat, IIRC. So if you believe the registry is the cause of your problems, BACK IT UP!
Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems. Not that 2000 doesn't have any problems, but it is a much, much better OS and the problems are fewer and farther between.
That's what everbody used to say about NT 3.51, then 4.0... Supposedly it was going to "revolutionarize the way we do computing," or some such crap, very similar to the XP propaganda.
And you know what? Back in 1998, I tried to install NT on a machine that had Linux, SCO OpenServer, and Windows 95 on it. The Windows installation program wiped out my entire partition table, then said there was some kind of error and it couldn't continue (and it only gave an error code, it's not like it actually explained what the error was).
This product, my friend, is below any conceivable standards of software quality and engineering. I haven't used any MS junk since the above incident, and I've been happily running Linux with 12-15 months uptime on average, and unparalleled flexibility and robustness.
Bush Lies Watch
Which points out one of my real peeves about Microsoft: at a certain point they stop releasing service packs and patches, and start releasing changes to the OS using all sorts of sneaky non-documented methods. If you were an OEM and had access to OSR 2.5, great. But if you were a home user of W95, after Service Pack 1 (W95 SP2 being basically useless) you were out of luck. Same with NT 4 today: where is Service Pack 7?
sPh
Not that I disagree with you. I would have left the windows world years ago if I had to pay for their damn upgrades. However, the University I'm at has Pact, so I pay $5 for upgrades to windows and can download upgrades to office, so the impetous to move to something else isn't as high for me.
But you must remember, this is the same company that got a huge backlash from the technical community (including its own ass-kissers) about Product Activation and it basically just said "fuck em"
Microsoft is successful because it knows how to appeal to and stay in the good graces of the masses. What the technically elite think matters little to them.
I'm still waiting for Windows 95 to make everything I do faster, and more fun. It still doesn't do that.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
There do exist programs that work in Win95, but which do not work under Win98. That was one of the original reasons for not upgrading my Win95 machine. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of the program was acquired by another company, and the product (Encore! from Passport Designs) was never upgraded. It was a good program for writing simple music scores, not too complex, but good enough to do most of what a children's music teacher would need. Including color coding certain notes, so that they would stand out.
I am not aware of a comparably good music scoring program for any platform. It was not as complete as Finale!, but was much easier to use, and use quickly, which is an important part of its utility. I own several different music scoring programs, but this is the only one that ends up being used. (YMMV, of course. It all depends on ones purposes.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Then again, sometimes Windows (I deal with NT4 & 2000) just won't listen to you no matter how many commands you give it. You might also search the net for a program called OLEView (comes in Visual Studio and the NT Reskit). OLEView will show you what file the system actually uses when it needs a particular object (from a dll). Then you can be sure about which file you need to unregister and replace.
Regards,
Stephen
Today the big three automakers have decided to stop manufacturing parts for their vehicles after 6 years.
When asked about this new policy, one anonymous CEO responded, "No one keeps cars longer than 6 years anyway." "I mean, c'mon, the longest auto loan you can get is 5 years anyway."
He also added, "this will make us cost competitive and increase shareholder value going forward."
Owners of cars older than 6 years old will just have to bite the bullet and buy a new car.
"This new policy will insure future auto growth in what has become a stagnant market" said another CEO.
When asked about this new policy most managers at the big three simply replied a cryptic, "all your money are belong to us".
-ted
Everything's in one place...
You mean all your eggs are in one basket. I prefer 1000 ini files to the registry any day. If you really want to keep them together, make an INI directory in the windows directory and quit complaining.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Right. And when Windows 3.0 was released, Windows 2.0 was the beta. And when W2k was released, all their earlier versions were just betas, and it was ok even for MS employees to admit they sucked.
Why would it be true this time?
It's still crap, it will always be crap, it's just that it's sortof usable and kinda stable (like every previous 'but this time it's good' incarnation of MS products) until you install the third application on it, or second driver update, at which point it all blows up in your face and you're still back counting bluescreens per day.
Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems.
No, you'll just have problems with Win2k not flushing the write cache on IDE drives before powering off. The "bugfix" from Microsoft didn't fix it.
What did it cause us? Registry problems, incidentally. Win2k refuses to boot because the registry is corrupt. Not even safe mode. And having an ERD or using the backup registry doesn't help; every time you log in the registry changes and trying to roll it back to a recent (2 days ago) backup confuses the shit out of AutoDesk Inventor since they're paranoid about pirated software. Using an old registry also confuses Office 2000. So I ask again, what use is this proprietary, very undocumented, unreadable and practically unfixable single point of failure? Hell due to its very nature backups don't even work!
Give me separate ini files or give me a human-readable, fully documented registry. Ideally, give me all of that and a bugfix that actually works!
Win2k is a lot better than anything that came before. It is not, however, infallable. These problems are experienced on high-end (dual proc, 1G RAM) CAD workstations with mid-end (AutoDesk, Inc.) software. Who do you blame now? Microsoft, for creating a horrendous single point of failure, Microsoft, for not actually testing their bugfix, or AutoDesk for following Microsoft's reccomended programming practises and using the registry for everything and anything?
sPh
Monopolies are not necessarily bad. Abusive monopolies are terrible.
I must disagree. Monopolies are inherrently untrustworthy. That's why it's common for large companies to refuse to deal with a sole-source (others don't have that luxury).
Monopolies are inherently evil. The purposes of whoever is in control of the monopoly will not align with anyone else, and the leverage that the monopoly provides will be used. With sane leadership this is used with a light enough hand to avoid much protest. This is still evil, though mainly becuase of setting up a condition in which furture evils will flourish. Particularly, a monopoly will act to defend it's monopoly as if it were defending itself. This is, in its way, rational. But it reveals the power center in a way that calls attention to itself. Also the culture of a monopolistic organization develops to approve of centrallized control (it's much easier to think well of yourself if you believe that you are doing good).
The problem is, that a monopoly may act reasonably for some period of time, but eventually there will be a new board of directory, or CEO or Director or President. And the more centralized power is present in a position, the greater attraction it has to a certain class of sick minds: The control freak. They have many different ways to justify their actions, but it is essentially a form of paranoia. (Possibly more than one form.) These people can pass themselves off as normal, and usually believe that they are. But they are psychos. Some of them can be satisfied by minor acting out, and this is relatively harmless..the president of a PTA group, etc., but once they get their hands on coercive force they are reliably untrustworthy. They cannot be satisfied by any reasonable degree of control, because their essential drive for greater control arrises internally, and is not due to rational consideration of the circumstances.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So unless you've got some fanatical love for dos games, theres really no reason not to upgrade.
-
unless you are a MacOS freak who thinks that running Office 98 on MacOS really is "Thinking Different"
Is this a troll or do you really mean it? Office 98 has since been supplanted by Office 2001, and now just a few weeks ago by Office X for OS X. It would seem you need to either get your head screwed on straight or check your facts prior to posting.
how many peopel would car if the car advanced as much as the computer has in the last 6 years?
One reason why I hae computer to car analogies. Your talking about a mature industry(cars) against a new industry(software).
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's because AFAIK Win9x WordPad saved in Word for Windows 6.0 format, and Microsoft said that Word won't be able to read formats used by versions more than three (or so) ago. The current version (XP) is actually version 10, if I remember correctly, and so I guess they don't support WfW 6.0 file format any more -- so having WordPad write it doesn't make sense for them.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
hawk, who doesn't use any mswindows himself
> Windows isn't just an OS. It's an OS plus a set of standard libraries
> and applications
then aren't we supposed to call it "GNU/Windows" ?
:)
hawk
If they no longer sell it, and no longer support it, technically it's abandonware, right?
No. Copyright law does not work like trademark law.
Have there been any court decisions on abandonware
Software created as a work for hire (including most commercial software) becomes abandonware 95 years after first publication. Relevant case: Eldred v. Ashcroft.
Has MS been enforcing MS-DOS licenses?
Unlike trademark law, copyright law allows monopoly owners to make implied licenses by refusing to enforce a copyright, and the owner can pull those licenses at any time.
Will I retire or break 10K?
jeez, people. just take the freely available directx api and code and compile a port for windows 95.
oh wait... you mean this is proprietary code? why are you using it in the first place?
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
I think many people consider software to be abandoned when it is no longer available for purchase, and there is no competing product.
Define "competing product." Castlevania for Game Boy Advance competes with eBay'd copies of Castlevania for NES. Heck, Pinobee for Game Boy Advance competes with not only the Sonic series but also every side-scrolling platform game ever released on any platform.
Will I retire or break 10K?
i would have a tough time believing that. such 'compatability layers' are what made win98 and the like unstable, still relying on dos tech.
-
Remember, Microsoft, must maintain it's growth rate in order to maintain its stock valuation. It's stock valuation is the basis of much of it's employee compenstation, etc.
Bill Gates, today, might be saying that you'll be able to use the software forever, but 5 years down the road when they are clawing for ways to keep the company growing, they may reconsider that policy.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
>> There you have it from the man himself. "Once you buy it, you have the right to use it forever."
This is an strikingly disingenuous quote from a man who has gone to great lengths to emphasize that when you purchase Windows you are buying, not software, but the license to use it.
They've made quite clear that Micros~1 is shifting its focus from selling applications to selling *service*. In other words, you are not buying anything, you are renting -- and have the right to use it as long as you continue to pay up.
It's like saying, "Once you buy a satellite dish, you have the right to use it forever". Sure, you do. But unless you pay for the service, all the dish does is hang off the side of your house.
The notion that software companies lose money on piracy is a bunch of crap I suspect. I grant you, if there was rampant Chinese grade piracy they would certainly be burdened. When they price their software, they base it on how many copies they can sell, what will price people out of the market, etc. In that calculation they are accomodating for the fact that some copies will be made illegally.
When fighting priacy they suggest that they are doing good for consumers. That if all those evil pirates would cough up the money they owe Microsoft, the price could be lower on the software. If that theory was accurate, then logically wouldn't we expect the average price for their operating system to drop in its newest release? I mean if it prevents piracy, they sell more copies, therefore the price should be correspondingly lower, non? But it isn't.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Nice revisionist history you're writing there, partner. As someone who was bitten on the ass by that multiple times, I can tell you the solution to my problem: flashing my VIA's BIOS to a more recent rev. You can either do that or you can disable ACPI. Microsoft never released a fix for it because they never had a bug of their own to begin with; it was VIA's fault through and through.
FWIW, after one of these corruptions (hasn't happened since the BIOS flash) I rolled back my registry and Office 2K didn't complain one bit about it. Go figure.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
What happens if there is no outbound link, will Win or Office XP keep retrying until the link can be established?
See my journal, I write things there
Ah, y'see, I have an odd perspective around here. Being a professional software developer, I appreciate that if you don't pay people for their stuff and rip them off, their bills don't get paid and their kids go hungry. I therefore believe in actually paying the asking price for something if you want it.
I have absolutely nothing against free (as in beer) software, if that is the choice of the person or people who wrote it. I think shareware was, and still is, a fabulous idea. But I think if you want, say, Win98, and you rip it off instead of paying for it, you're a thief, pure and simple.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Speak for yourself. My parents computer running Windows Me boots up into a message that says something like "The registry is corrupted. Click OKAY to fix registry and reboot the computer." When it finishes rebooting it shows the same message. There is no cancel or close box on the dialog.
I was overjoyed to find that my parents had figured out what to do. When the computer starts up, the first thing you do is hit C-M-Del, and force quit the Registry Fixer. Cool!
Good point. I'd never expect M$ software just to keep working or anything. I've got a nice new W2k box on my desk, but the year 2000 is almost two years ago. I don't have anything that old on any of my linux boxes. I'd better update my system fast, there's no telling what kind of exploitable holes the script kiddies have by now. Have to run command.com to get a prompt, but here we go:
Microsoft(R) Windows DOS
(C)Copyright Microsoft Corp 1990-1999.
me thinks, "yikes it's older than I thought!"
H:\>apt-get update
'APT-GET' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
H:\>man apt
'MAN' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Dude this sucks, I suppose I'll have to do what Billy G wants and buy a boxed set, but I'm kind of scared. Someone told me that upgrades are seledom lossless, and that most of my old software would be broken in subtle ways. Can anyone help my employer? This is terrible.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Good point. I'd never expect M$ software just to keep working or anything.
See, you're working under the assumption that they worked well in the first place, which we all know is not exactly true. My point is that 2K is better than 95.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
That is so clueless, but to be expected from a cable troll. It's not about sucking down adverts and consuming, it's about expression and sharing. It's too bad cable companies block incoming port 80 and mail, as a set top box could easily be set up to run web, ftp, mail and instant messenger clients. That way, people could share the information they want with their friends. Wedding photos, hobbies, literature, all sorts of nice stuff without Pepsi adverts stuck on them, wow. My 486 does as much.
I've experienced this first hand with "Why is the internet so slow?" check the settings, and the person has 8MB o RAM running w95 and someone gave them a CD with I.E. 5.x and somehow they got the thing to kinda run. By the time they have to go out and get SIMMS enough to run the browser du jour (Opera notwithstanding) they might as well go out and get a whole new system for $700 USD.
Really, you should be a little nicer. Why would anyone throw out their $1,000 system that came loaded with software that prommised them the moon? They have every right to expect what they were told is true. Your company has told a few tall ones too! Who knows, the spy ware you installed might be the problem, as it enabled some script kiddie to bust right into it. The problem is not the machine, it's the software. What are you doing to help them out? Telling them to buy another pack of lies, that's what. No amount of tweeking will make an M$ crippled box secure, fast, dependable or lasting. Get off your leet horse, act honest and quit serving people who want to screw everyone.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
...there are still a lot of devices that have no Windows 2000 drivers. I'll have to buy a new video card.I'll have to buy a new DVD player and decoder card. My USB webcam will no longer work.
I've seen plenty of drivers left in beta for well over a year. And they're in beta because they're highly unstable.
Windows 2000 is not worth the money I'd spend in new hardware. I'll stick with 98SE..the PC rarely gets used anyway.
I almost like win2k, but the video/sound performance is inferior to the win9x code base. Of course 2k does not crash every 2 hours either. :(
My UT framerates drop 10 -15 on the same hardware under 2000
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Win 2000 - NT 5
Win XP - NT 5.5
So you are quite correct in what you are saying.
Win XP is basically a big change of the UI, many compatability improvements, and some nice extras.
Most of the framework exists on Win2K already, which you can see if you will study some of the stranger UI API that appeared on Win2K.
Win9x had a single purpose, in which it succeed admirably well, move people from writing DOS-style apps to writing NT-style apps.
9x simply allowed you to write them both, and enoucrage (mainly through DX, IMHO) writing NT style apps than DOS applications.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Hey, Microsoft told me in the Windows 95 install script that "Everything you want to do, and more, is now possible". Why would I *ever* upgrade?
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
Depends on how you look at this. 99% of windows 98 SE were just stability and other OS enhancements. We shouldn't have to pay to have software bugs fixed. We shouldn't have had to pay for win98 SE. As for most of the other versions of windows, your statement pretty much applies. Especially with regards to windows 2000. Which is still the best version of windows.
I tried XP and hated how all these microsoft only services kept nagging me to do their shit. Since all I use my Windows computer to do is use office, SSH (GO PuYYy!) into various Unix boxes, listen to mp3s, and play UT one in awhile Windows 2000 does exactly what is is supposed to.
Yeah, the registry can be backed up. Fine.
But does anybody else think it's strange that *applications* are capable of taking down an *OS*? Shouldn't a good OS be immune to damage caused by a 'bad' IM client or screensaver?
Could you remotely log into your DOS/Windows 3.* machine while someone else uses the console? No? Cause you can do that in Windows XP. Out of the box. Can you run your system on a very fast, robust, journaling filesystem? Cause NTFS is pretty damn good. Does DOS/16-bit Windows have an SMP kernel? Does it support proper memory protection? Threads? No? Thought not.
/like/ Windows, less so Microsoft and their business practices, but to claim it's the same as DOS is straight up trollish pig-ignorance. It's like claiming that all the advances in Unix since AT&T are meaningless fluff.
I don't particularly
Peace,
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Yes, people used to run BBS.
Cause you can do that in Windows XP. Out of the box.
Wow, I'm impressed. I'm told they included a bare naked telnet server, whooo hoooo! This is almost as cool as running one of those stupid remote access programs that burns up so much bandwith and processor that it's worthless. I suppose someone might set up ssh and secure shell via citrix, but they could have done the same under win3.1. Can you run your system on a very fast, robust, journaling filesystem? Cause NTFS is pretty damn good.
Yeah, IBM did think regular FAT was limited, but I'm talking about the OS not the file system under it. With enough work a DOS box can write to whatever media you want.
Does DOS/16-bit Windows have an SMP kernel? Does it support proper memory protection? Threads? No? Thought not.
These things are meaningless to the avererage M$ user. You must be some kind of Linux zelot talking all that tech/marketroid trash. Sometimes, I wish NT supported proper memory protection, UIDs and PIDs. When I really feel like that, I install a real OS.
It's a programable machine dude. People have been making them do all sorts of tricks for a long time. M$ has not, and still does not. Such a shame, it's so lame, you suck turd and nanny-nanny boo-boo, you just told me all about how M$ has sucked in the past.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
So the fact that Chevrolet was founded in America, employs Americans, and builds primarily for American consumers means nothing compared to the fact that the founders were immigrants, like 95% of the entire United States?
Also, as long as we're discussing "American," you knew that the founder of Ford, Henry Ford, was a big fan of Adolf Hitler, didn't you?
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Once you copy the win98 directory to the hard disk, change a registry entry so you don't have to type in the path to the files whenever the config changes. For example, if you put the contents in C:\win98, do this change:
u rr entVersion\Setup\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
SourcePath="C:\win98\"
For NT4, it's in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\
SourcePath="C:\" (where sources are in C:\i386\)
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003.
The emperor Penguin does not share your optimistic apraisal.
I have a 3.11 machine (a 386 with a 20MB HD). I use it on occasion to do word processing. It boots WP 5.1 faster than most of my other computers boot, period :)
It works okay.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Incorrect.
Windows 3.0 I believe was the last Windows to default to real mode; on Win 3.1x you had to start it with win -s (I think that was the toggle; I don't have any 286s around anymore :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
In the real world, I agree that what you have said holds true. I don't think it is absolutely certain, but I don't know any counter-examples.
What you didn't mention is that the abusiveness is self-destructive. When IBM first sold PCs, they had 100% of the market. When there began to be alternatives, IBM's share of the market dropped to 8%, and eventually to nothing. I was amazed back then. People who knew little about computers knew they didn't like IBM! All the articles in newspapers and magazines managed to convey the nature of IBM management back then even to people with no technical knowledge.
--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
""Norton Systemworks with cleansweep and other such registry-wreckers and watch your registry operate on its own just fine."
Thanks for the tip about Norton. I didn't know that. Considering my experiences with Symantec, it is very easy to believe.
I also didn't know about the outsourcing of Win 95 support. Microsoft didn't mention that. I did suppose there would be many web sites that would continue support.
Bush's education improvements were
What is new is that, even if you have the key, you must have Microsoft's support if you want to change hardware.
Bush's education improvements were
Henry Ford built the famous "999" to go after the land speed record with the express intent of attracting backers for a motor car company.
He succeded, and the result was the Detroit Automobile company. He was the primary founder, without him the company would never have existed, and its raison d'etre was to build cars of Ford's design. Every product, ( of which there were two, the first being an indiferent truck, produced because the backers thought it was a better commercial risk, the second, the car that was to become the first Cadillac), was the sole work of the mind of Henry Ford.
He designed everything. Excepting some fasteners and the tires. His official title was chief engineer, but he was, in reality, the ONLY engineer.
Leland was a perfect fit as a partner in the company because he already owned a business manufacturing parts for the nascent auto industry in the Detroit area.
Ford, however, although an owner, did not have a controling interest in the company. Ford, a highly driven man was never at this best in a situation where extreme political acumen was required to maintain peacful relations. What's more, some of the backers only invested because automobiles were the "dot.com" of the time, and they expected to become extremly rich overnight.
The relationship between Ford and some of his backers was acrimonious from start to finish. Nonetheless, he had his staunch supporters among them.
Although, with his supporters, Ford wielded a certain amount of political power, he couldn't force the get rich quickers to put more money into the company, which is why the firm fell on financial hard times, it was done diliberately to force Ford out, largely orchestrated by Leland, who was a man of Ford's own cut. The two NEVER could have existed for long sharing power in a single company.
It's was Ford's political power that formed the final conflict resulting in his departure in a "You're fired," "Oh yeah? Then I quit" scenario. He WON a major battle.
Did you ever wonder WHY the name was changed to Cadillac after Ford left? Detroit Automobile Company was a perfectly good name, descriptive of what the company was. Cadillac wasn't.
The answer is that Ford got the name of the company changed to Henry Ford Motor Company.
When Ford left Detroit Automobile/Henry Ford, the backers in the company who supported him went with him. They formed the "Ford Motor Company" and began producing a virtually indentical car.
There were now TWO companies producing Ford's car, each named Ford. Rather than resorting to a long legal battle Henry Ford Motor Company simply reformed as Cadillac, with Leland as its head. They resented the Ford connection at that point anyway.
Here's another irony for you. Durant made a deal to buy out Ford and bring it under the GM banner as well, but his financing didn't go through. Subsequently he was sacked by the GM board of directors, rather reminiscent of situation with Ford at Detroit Automobile. Durant was so pissed off that he "did a Ford" and founded his own company, in conjunction with his, now former, employee at Buick, the engineer/mechanic/racing driver. . . Louis Chevrolet.
Quickly losing Louis, Durant went on to make Chevy such a success that he was able to stage an overnight hostile takeover of GM, walk into corporate headquarters the morning after, and sack everyone who had voted to sack him.
The answer to the trick trivia question;"When did GM aquire Chevrolet?" is that they didn't. Chevrolet aquired GM.
As to the "problem" of Louis being an immigrant, it certainly isn't to me. I was trolling, pure and simple. I thought it was a fairly obvious chain yanking of someone who appeared to be a Chevy man.
I'm not, personally, a particular fan of EITHER, so I have no real axe to grind on the issue.
He was a rather indifferent immigrant though, never setting out to be one. He came to Canada to make his fortune, and return home with it. Once over here he felt the grass was greener in America, particularly in the racing scene. But then, as now, the racing biz is a big hole to throw money into, and even though he achieved some success he soon found himself not only not rich, but unable to afford his way back Europe. He went in with Durant on the Chevrolet company to again try to make that fortune to return to Europe with.
He never got it, and he spent his last years in Florida. He is buried in Indianapolis though. After he left Chevrolet he again founded a car company. A racing car company, and in 1920 he won the Indy 500 in a car of his own design and manufacture.
KFG
This is different. With Windows XP, you cannot change the HARDWARE without support from Microsoft.
Bush's education improvements were
The registry performs the function of copy-protection. A good operating system, one that was made in the customer's interests, would not mix information from one program with another, because then one bad program can cause others to fail.
The registry is poorly implemented. That is another reason for problems. For example, it often has errors that cannot be repaired with the tools Microsoft provides.
--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
ah, but if you owned windows 98...you didn't have that...
I think that we've reached the point now where Linux is getting easier to install new hardware than Windows. The XP move in the direction of re-registration for new configurations are even doubly so, because it is an artificial requirement.
Then there's Linux. I recently replaced an ATI card with a used Voodo 3. The guy that sold it to me watched as I popped the card out, and booted into Linux...
Kudzu pops up (paraphrased, here):
You've removed your ATI card? (yep)
You've inserted a new S3 card? [identifies it] (yep)
Linux then proceeded to recognize it as a voodo card, and then asked for preferred video modes for X.
The whole process took a minute or two.
The guy who sold me the card -- and only uses Windows was impressed. "That's it?" he asked with awe
Yep.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
(I know I'm late to the table on this discussion, but hey, I've got a life to live.)
Anyway, XP is for toddlers? Says who? XP is far and away the best PC OS I have used for gaming. Why? Because the damn games aren't crashing my machine. The only real caveat is that many DOS games won't run under XP. Other than that, I've had no problems. Also, your toddler observation might be based on the new GUI features. Just turn them off if you don't like them. None of them are required fare.
None.
Zilch.
And it performs well.
Try it; you might like it *gasp*.
Oh.. and MS's strategy *is* risky. In recent history though, they have a tendency to "bet the farm" on their next step. Each step is calculated to be somewhat risky to allow real progress, but not so risky that it would be "game over" for them. Really, it's quite well thought out and effective I think.
Now, if they would just dump the stupid product activation in XP, Office, and everything else going forward. I really hate it because it doesn't do what they say it will do (limit piracy), but it does/could do some things they won't ever own up to (like invade my privacy, create a pain in the butt situation for my customers, etc.).
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!