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Retired Microsoft Operating Systems Still Popular
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Despite Microsoft's recent retirement of Windows 98, News.com reports that many users continue to cling to the company's older operating systems. The study cited in the article suggests that 80 percent of companies still have machines operating on Windows 95 or 98. While Windows 2000 was the most common OS in the study, just 6.6 percent of the desktop machines included in the survey were running Windows XP." The results aren't too surprising. I get a lot of user mail from Netscape 4 users, and it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere.
No one got to see the pictures, and it's ./ed already.
I still use it for my kids games and educational software....the newer ones DON'T WORK...hmmmmm
Complain all you want about antiquated equipment - both hardware and software - but I volunteer in a high school that would make you weep. Their physics classroom has ten computers. Ten...Apple IIc's. I don't know if they're going for "retro" or "we're poor, so pass the referendum," but it's absolutely appalling. I don't even know what a physics class would be doing with Apple IIc's.
It's not like upgrading Windows is free. If you were a small company who's focus wasn't IT would you upgrade? Hell no. Why would you? Your existing solution of Windows Crap is working just fine.
Just wait a few more years, 2098 is just around the corner - you can make it!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It's scary how many NT 4 boxes I come across in the work world. they just don't want to update, and the diff between using that and the newer offerings is huge, although so is the price.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Being the last Windows that let you do this easily, I have a feeling that in a few years W2K will be going for a mint on eBay.
I recently was in a physician's office using Windows 3.11 to run a terminal emulator into their office practice server. All five PCs running Win 3.1 and serial connections! The office manager explained that it has been working for over ten years, and outside replacing hardware, they'll probably be doing so for several years to come. If it works, pay replace it?
;-) (I still have my box!)
On a lighter note, I've never seen an EOL anywhere for Microsoft OS/2 1.0. Does that mean it's still a viable MS product?
QillerPenguin
(forgetting password)
Until just recently (read: months), our standard desktop was still Win95! They just finished switching everyone to Win2k. However the KUKA robots we use to build cars still run Win95 for the GUI, and probably always will, as the hardware won't support much higher...
The alternative is to throw everything out, buy all new hardware (do you really want me to try to run XP on a Pentium 200 with 64Mb of RAM?), get stuck with a lease on the software, and then to get locked into whatever upgrade cycle Bill thinks is best for Micro$oft.
Microsoft has chosen the greedy path, and eliminated themselves from the list of viable true upgrade paths. I'll upgrade those machines when RedHat (or someone else) gets their act together, supports the still functional Office 97 standard, and does it for less than $60/machine/year. All we need are bug and security patches!
--Mike--
Back in the 80s and early 90s, desktop machines were still by and large a new thing for many companies. Not only did many not really have a USE for them, they upgraded because they believed the marketing that said "Thou shalt need this upgrade"
Now, most people (managers especially) have a decade or more of computer use experience under their belt, perhaps even two, and can get a good idea for themselves of what a computer can actually do for them. Ten years experience seeing that a two-yearly upgrade cycle just leaves you with More Of The Same instead of something really new means people are seeing computers as just the tools they are, rather than something awe-inspiring that can solve their every problem
It's like Graphic User Interfaces - they're a hell of a lot more complex now than the original Mac, but that's OK. The original mac was introduced to people who'd never seen a computer before, let alone a GUI. Nowadays, by the time someone buys their first computer with their own money, they're buying a machine with an interface they already have YEARS of getting used to using, and the extra complexity has been learned into them from age 5.
>I mean there are fewer 2004 cars on the road than 2004.
And 1+1=1 for small values of one.
>Also aren't we anti-Windows here?
It is anti-Windows pregression. More importantly it is anti Microsoft. It means that customers feel that their is not enough benefit to pay to upgrade. Which in turn means that they are not paying as much to microsoft. It also probably means that a number of these are pirated copies.
I'd bet the reasons users retain the older operating systems have more to do with familiarity and the difficulty of upgrading than with the pricing (which was my first reaction) -- although Windows 2000 and XP offer a stunning level of compatibility with older hardware and a greatly enhanced user experience, the ability to migrate applications from an old system to a new system leaves something to be desired when compared to the DOS days where one could simply copy an application over.
Microsoft may do well to adopt practices that increase the ability for users to upgrade painlessly, such as by doing away with their authentication system and promoting a means of moving a software package (with its associated configuration and data files) to a new Windows installation or to a different computer.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
> I mean there are fewer 2004 cars on the road than 2004...
I nearly spat my coffee at the screen reading that. I've just spent the better half of 2 days trying to get a firmware update working under Win XP, when all the updater wants to tell me is:
"Please enter a device between 1024"
Your words were sent to haunt me weren't they? gaaaaah!
Sincerely,
now-unstable-slashdot-poster.
...My organization is still using 3.5!
I read somewhere that lately the market price of original Win95 and Win98 CDs have been going up for the first time... um... EVER! (They're going like hotcakes on Ebay too.)
The market's a funny thing. Give your customers crappy features like DRM, and they'll find a way to tel you they're not interested... like back-grading to your previous versions.
You watch... i predict that soon Microsoft will find some way to prohibit the sale of these original CDs. A law will get passed, probably under the guise of national security.
prof. h.
A lot of Mac users are on Mac OS 8.x or 9.x as well, or using the Classic environment to run applications for OS 9.x under Mac OS X.
It seems that when people buy a computer, they expect the software to last as long as the hardware.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
What about Windows ME? I know some people who still run that OS (or POS, rather). Does anyone else still run it, and if so, why?
You don't have to be using Windows 95/98/NT to use Netscape 4 you know.
Just use Freenet. Bill's Big Giveaway at SSK@0XfsEtY77bacbBwMIYQNvxbI8y8PAgM/Bills_Giveaway /3/ will have you all set up with Win98 or WinXP. Even MS Office if you want it.
Not a Freenet user? What are you waiting for? Go to freenetproject.org, download the latest stable, run it awhile and find utopia.
The only way to get Windows running on middle-class hardware is to install W98 or such...
I've seen in many stores computers with config like: 2GHZ CPU, some Radeon gfx card, DVD, 5+1 audio card and to all that 128MB RAM (DDR). And of course Windows XP Home Edition. How fast will all that run when it has to use swap memory all the time?!
Solution 1: Install more ram. And void warranty by doing so, because there's a warranty sticker on the case and no internals can be changed.
Solution 2: Install some OS for which 128M RAM is more than enough. Like W98SE or such.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Her machine had 32 megs of RAM and a P166 MMX processor.
As it turned out, Windows 95 plus Internet Explorer ran blazing rings around Debian Linux plus Mozilla, which was almost unusable, even after I switched her over to icewm and rxvt rather than the much heavier KDE environment. Eventually I found Skipstone, which made her machine usable again, but only barely. To be quite honest, there is no Linux/browser combination that compares with the performance Windows 95/Internet Explorer can offer on that class of hardware, and there's no good reason to throw away a perfectly nice older laptop.
Eventually, though, she upgraded to a Dell Latitude XPi which runs Linux much more comfortably -- although I still switched her to icewm and streamlined her startup drastically to get a reasonable boot time.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
I've tried WinXP, and found it very frustrating. Rather than learning how to configure things, such as installing software to be accessible to all users, disabling that damn "You've got too many icons on your desktop" message and dozens of other annoyances, I decided a WinXP computer was not for me and instead kept my older machine.
Of course, I do understand that some people need certain features that are available only in better operating systems, but let's face it: productivity software has very little new to offer, and sticking to an older version is not only cheaper, but also more efficient, as the user is already used to that particlular interface and features.
Windows 98 is 70% of why I have a job.
If companies realized just how much money they dump into fixing all of the problems Windows 98 is privy to, they'd all be on Windows XP.
When I upgrade users to Windows 2000/XP I immediately stop getting Operating System related calls. Suddenly my only work is occassional malware, "my network is down", etc..
Windows 98 is a horrible product, and it's a liability to most small businesses. Most of my clients would have saved hundreds of dollars to make the jump.
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
Old and cheap usually beats new and expensive.
For the average user, what do they really gain to moving to XP? A lot of fluff.
What does the techy user gain from staying with 98? A closet full of games that still work.
I know of a few insurance companies that still rely primarily on a DOS based application that they continue to run under Win98 or Win95.
One still uses DOS 6.22 on 486 based PC's for a few of their users.
I have run the app in DOSEMU on Linux, but have problems with network support.
I wish they would agree to migrate to a newer app.
~8^]
Come on, playing The Slashdot Game, trying to earn -1 troll for anti-microsoft post?
Typing that from W98SE. Didn't crash (by itself, without help of 3rd party programs) for 3 or more days. But recently crashes after maybe 6 hours of activity because of some 3rd party drivers.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Yes, I know MS sucks, but they did a great job with Win2k.
i keep a 1 gig disk partition with a stripped down Win98se installed that been modified with "Revenge of Mozilla" (similar to 98lite but free) but my computer is usually booted to Linux 99% of the time...
http://www.ifrance.com/snoopy81/ROM2.htm
XP??? i would not put that POS on my computer if Billy borg Gates came to my house in person and gave me a copy free...
here you can have a look at google's statistics - statisctics of "who is using google?"
I think that major difference 6.6 % of XP users versus 38 % of XP users is caused by a very simple thing: win95/98 users are not connected to internet thus, they are not using google.
based on this, news's survey is very likely to be true
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I work for an ISP. I see alot (well hear) of companies still running on Win95 and 98. When I ask why the answers I usually get are "Why? This is working for us just fine!" and "We would love too but shelling out thousands for new hardware, the OS, upgrading the current programs, and training just isn't worth it."
/. seem to forget that a good 90% of users only know how to run certain programs in windows and thats it. Once they deviate from that, forget it, they are totally lost. The cost in training someone to use a newer OS and the programs associated it can sometimes run into the hundreds of thousands depending on the size of a company.
I think alot of people on
One other thing to keep in mind is that most mid to smaller level companies do not have onsite IT people. They will either higher outside integrators who charge by the hour or just wing it and hope that the existing set up continues to work for as long as possible. In both situations the company is very very hesident to upgrade as it will cost a ton of money to effectivly get the same results as now.
Nothing other than satisfy the immature need to have a newer toy.
--Mike--
i sell oem systems. the general public love windows 98. true most of them don't know much about the real differences at all, but I have a couple of people each day *insisting* they have their new athlon 64 installed with 98. there are a lot of really bad myths floating around with the proto-newbies about windows xp, a good 10% have been misinformed that it's a lame duck in my experience.
Most people I know absolutley hate xp, but are incresingly interested in the Stable Windows 2000 and Linux (on the desktop too). I have noticed many organizations I work with have bought a whole lot of new Dell Optiplexen, which has the "Designed for XP" sticker on it, and immediately Zap XP with Windows 2000, not letting have the chance to boot.
On the home side of things, many people are enquiring about Linux to install on their home machines Running Windows 98/ME/XP Home. The reaction of Seeing KDE 3.1 and seeing what a refreshing change fromg Windows have converted many. Many people have heard so much FUD about linux that they are shocked that it Works, unlike Windows XP who BSOD'd on me when I inserted my new USB digital camera, Linux on the other hand created a Disk icon on my desktop and I was able to view them with Konqueror. My old Pentium III with 64 MB much prefered it to Windows 98.
If Microsoft dares to EOL Windows 2000 to force people to use Vapourhorn, they are going to get creamed.
If Microsoft Released an Updated Version of Windows NT (not SP7 call It NT+) with bug fixes and USB/Firewire support it would make a lot of money and make lives a lot easier for companies running perfectly good hardware but not fast enough to run Windows 2000.
Johnson and Johnson, the huge medical/health conglomerate, had all of its employees running Windows 95 on their desktops until last year. It was a painful thing for us, living with that OS' instability (which led to rules like 'you must reboot your business computer every day'), but their policy is to keep all desktops standardized among the many J&J companies. (All our business PCs are IBM, which also says something about our conservative IT policies.)
They rolled out Windows 2000, during 2002 and 2003, with a lot of thought, using its administration features for IT to gain much more control over individuals' machines--Administrator access to one's own PC is now a rare privilege. At least our desktop computers are less wonky now.
There's no way the company will "upgrade" to XP; probably we will migrate to Windows 2005 in 2008 or so, if there is some compelling reason to do so.
Why pay all the extra money for an OS that won't run on your less-than-uptodate hardware and which has draconian phone-home anti-piracy measures? Sure Windows 98 wasn't the most stable Operating System in the world, but it's Windows and Windows just wouldn't be Windows without instability.
I personally run an old copy of Win98 under Win4Lin for Linux. I use it for a program or two which I need to use for work but which does not have a compatable Linux counterpart.
it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere.
;)
Well observed, CowboyNeal.
I worked at an ISP in Sweden a little while back. The biggest majority of users are still using Windows 98. I guess ms only chance to make people upgrade is the usual underhanded tactics, not supporting new features etc.
Me myself, I still use netscape messenger for email and have no plans on changing client. (Its super easy to backup your email in that program)
Linux on the other hand created a Disk icon on my desktop and I was able to view them with Konqueror.
so, how do I actually -prevent- it from creating the icons? I moved all my drive partition links (30 or so) to a separate folder but they get re-created on startup, spamming half of my desktop.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
98SE = solid OS. I only recently (4 months ago?) upgraded to XP, and to be honest, I don't see much improvement. The only place I've noticed a real upgrade is pirating stuff on emule, because XP handles multiple connections so much better.
98SE properly configured is a stable and fast OS. I think in my entire time using 98SE (several years) I received maybe 2 blue screens, and only a few hard-locks. 98SE has a native DOS mode which makes playing legacy DOS games much easier. Also, the 98 disk defrag program is better than XP's utterly worthless defrag.
And I think the most important thing: 98SE doesn't have any trojans out of the box. I have to check for Windows security updates every week. 98SE? Say what you want, but I didn't even need a firewall when I ran that OS as a lone-wolf PC.
I'm sure one of you Professor Frinks will immediately respond with "98SE is not a good OS, you can't recompile your kernel!!!" Here's a hint: 99% of computer users don't want to recompile their operating system to play jDoom on their lunch break.
Ok, so now Win98 is retired, i.e. not available from its maker, Microsoft. Soon, the second-hand market for Windows licenses will die out.
Once there are no licenses available anymore, and since Microsoft doesn't care anymore either (they've abandoned the OS), why shouldn't it be possible to copy and download it freely?
I mean, I realize Win98 is still under copyright from M$ and isn't public domain, but given that they don't make money out of it and they don't support it, it's as good as abandonware, no?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Apple IIci's? Man I decided to save money on my health insurance so the doctor I chose... I made sure he had enough punch cards on his machines. I may have a foot sticking out my head but man those punch cards
MoFscker
Well, actually, I used to run Windows 98se... Memory management was so bad, that I had to reset at least twice a day. For the older Windows 95, you can't go very long without needing a reinstall or having really strange shit start happening. I was at my friend's work with her, and she was on her computer. She clicked something in the program she was working in for work, and the thing did a hard lockup. She had to reset manually. That won't happen with Win2k. I've had crashes with an error box that I couldn't get rid of on Windows 98se.
There are many reasons to switch. Then again, there are many reasons not to. If you don't have the users switch, and then demo Linux, they'll be drooling at the chops. Compare something like win98 to something like a nicely configured Gentoo or Debian install and you'll have any non-techie instantly interested.
That's scary.
Here a tidbit for you...
Corperate still has a outright BAN on windows XP. It is not allowed, we are not migrating to it, they deemed it a waste of time and money as it offer's zero value.
they may upgrade to it when MS EOL's Windows 2000. but they are also looking at alternatives, there are 2 groups testing Linux in the corperate environment with using wine and wineX to run the vertical apps that are windows only we rely on.
Most companies are pissed off at Microsoft, and users are pissed at microsoft because it seems that at every turn it's microsoft's fault for a problem they have.
90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame.
Windows XP has nothing that Windows 2000 has for the corperate environment that is worth a damn... and that was stupid of microsoft to do. They had an opportunity to make a corperate OS that could have solved many of the problems out there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As the economy picks up, win XP (which is a far cry from the miserable ME experience) will start to be adopted more and more. MS has to overcome the bitter taste left in the mouth of consumers when they tried to foist ME on us. Oh yeah, and businesses REALLY didn't like ME (I know of at least 2 companies that would purchase dell laptops, and would wipe and reload 98 on them when they arrived).
A couple of axioms for the MS marketing people to remember
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Seems easy to me...
They need to price to sell to the home consumer. Like Apple the should have a 5 user $200 license so that we can stay current without violating copyright. I know employees can now legaly use MS software at home if corporate licenses it, but that is not everyone. It doesn't help that they give corporate customer the ultimatum of upgrading now or being unable to upgrade affordable later. I Linux gets it act together on the desktop, this lack of upgrading could lead to a significant decline in MS market share. Which is probably why MS is going after Lindows.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Business can stay with what they want, but I wish more residental users would upgrade to XP. I do alot of tech support, for a few ISP's in my job, and residental users need to get away from the 9x kernel. While XP definetly has some problems with Worms, those are much easier to troubleshoot then some the random stuff that happens on 98. As for business, they will use whatever works. I know a few companies who have stopped Windows 2000 deployments in favor of XP. I'll be interested to see XP's adoption rate, because it really is a good O/S, as long as your patched. I'm a Macintosh fan personally, and I just find XP the closest thing to a MAC on pc hardware, though I am interested in Sun's java desktop stuff.
The business desktop is Windows 2000 Professional. There should be a new version of Windows 2003(5?) for desktops soon.
google zeitgeist
lots of old windows98 indeed (29%), but winxp is leading over win2000
Offcourse, this is counting only the internet-ready machines.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I have a simple explanation for why end users aren't jumping on XP.... Perhaps they think "Windows 2000" must be better than "Windows XP" because 2000 is a really big number! Har har. Seriously, I bet that does have a bit of an impact on the end user. I mean, look how much MHz/GHz numbers impact sales. I think a lot of people simply see a big number and think it must be better.
As for those still stuck on win9x... well, they have my pity, but I can understand them. Who really wants to pay $100+ for a new OS, especially in a sluggish economy?
I'm pretty happy with XP. I think the fact that it was only $20 through my school helped me like it more. ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Why should I give up the use of 20 good workstations, Office 97, Windows 98, and everything working properly? I know that "up"grades never are. Things still work, we know how to use them, we've paid our money, we own everything.
You don't own anything.. well, own the hardware, but you essentially "load" the software (check the amoral licensens) - how long will it be before Microsoft specifies in the license that you must update after x number of years?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm running a copy of win98 I got with my old computer whenever I need some windows application, it has drivers for all the hardware I need and runs all modern programs just fine. Theres absoltely no reason to /acquire/ any new version.
Just sit down, look at it. Look at it next to windows 2000.
/me has 2000 on his windows partition
Which looks like an OS for doing business?
Is it the rainbow-colored one with 1" borders around all the windows?
Yes, that can be turned off, but as far as first impressions go, you've just lost the whole of the business community.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
I've always been slow to upgrade. Usually I'm forced to upgrade when some new hardware requires the latest popular operating system. I still use Win98SE on a machine not connected to the net, when I have to use a program that will only run in Windows. It is only loaded with those programs, so there is less chance of conflicts. I"m also reluctant to upgrade because of Microsofts increased intrusion into the systems running their software. I have to admit that I just installed SuSE 9.0 by ftp. But again that was only to get my new soundcard working.
Not if it's a reinstall it isn't. Not if it's a change of motherboard it isn't.
Also, what if you scrap one machine, and re-use its licence on another? That's made a lot harder by things like making the OEMs stick the licence number to the original machine case, and enforced limits on product activation.
There's a reason people call it the microsoft tax, it's because microsoft acts like it is owed a fee every time a machine is bought, regardless of whether it has an existing licence installed on it, or even whether it's destined to have another OS it from day 1.
As you say, WPA is truly broken, and always will be until we have
1) a police state 2) hardware under the control of the software vendor, not the hardware owner
Oh, and don't forget the fun that WPA causes for system builders. Do you pre-activate the software (which you're not supposed to do, because the user doesn't then read the EULA), or do you give the customer a machine they can't use until they have a net connection, or have to make a long phone call?
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
My company has some 40 employees who still run Windows 95/Office 97. For us, the reason is simple: The hardware is inexpensive, we already own all the licenses, and all of our user's are used to the software.
As with most office environments that I have worked in (distribution and insurance companies mostly), the end user really only uses their PC as a wordprocessor, email station, and remote terminal.
In our office, the wordprocessing is usually done by management, so an email station and remote terminal to our database system is all that is needed.
-- You don't shoot to kill, you shoot to stay alive.
Einstein had a sliderule and lived in the days of ENIAC and look what he did. Compton, Feynman, De Broglie. Funny thing, they didnt even need a computer to do what they did. Funny. Isnt it?
On my computers for my sister and server PC I run Windows 98SE...Its buggy as hell on newer PC's, but its a charm on those early Pentium-compatible ATX computers. Mostly both are used for internet and IM'ing, but it works to say the least. Personally, I think that 2000 is the best Windows OS out there, even though I am not currently running it due to procrastination....oh well.. cheers
nothing.can.stop.me.now
In my company's website logs (the company targets the university student market, so this isn't universally applicable), you still find a lot of old windows products.
windows XP is 43%
windows 98 is 22%
windows 2k is 18%
windows ME is 6%
windows NT is 2%
windows 95 is 1%
Macintosh is 3%
And if you want to talk old, when I was in school one lab had an expensive scientific instrument ($100,000) that was controlled by a windows 3.1 computer. The software would not run on anything else. Upgrading would mean buying a new instrument. They left it as is.
I worked with a major corporation over the summer, with probably 40 huge offices statewide. An $80 million company. The main job for the people there is to input information from customers into a database. They all use a database program written for win 95. Yes- and all the computers use windows 95. Pentium 175(?)s I think, with 64 mb of ram. There is absolutely no need for this company to even think about upgrading, since they just do data entry.
(Or perhaps switching to a linux distro would be quite nice! It's companies like this where I think Suse or others could win over big with linux in the corporate world.)
Scott
Let me see, do I give the use a loaded 6-shot revolver (Win 98) or a loaded 9mm-Uzi (Win2k/XP)? Let's face it, Win2k and XP is basically a server even if you run it as a desktop. There is a lot that can happen when used by inexperienced/bored users. Heck, just leaving the Win2k and XP on when you aren't around can easily lead to bad things happening. When I say bad things, I am referring to Blaster, Nachi, Code Red, zombies that send email and lauch DoS attacks etc ...
I keep most of the fleet I support at Win98 because less bad things can happen. When the next round of worms and virii comes across the Internet, through the firewall, and attack all the Win2k and XP boxes, it is so nice to know that there are only a handfull of them running which can be exploited.
I wish MS, would release a desktop version called MS Windows-Basic which didn't install all the extra fluff. Just give me a basic webbrowser (No Active Anything), a basic spreadsheet, word processor, and email client with I'm good to go. I don't need sliding menus that hog CPU's and require high end video cards. I don't need so much bloat that the machine won't function without 256MB of RAM. I don't need all sorts of other services which are just accidents waiting to happen. Oh, an throw in a a good solitare and minesweeper game. Users like that.
Note to Bill and Steve, that's all we need to get the job done. Desktop PC's don't need to be servers! It increases support costs and downtime for the enterprise when the next round of network worms come through.
No freggin duh. The 1990's were filled with a bunch of "faster, bigger, better, smarter, k3wler. Brownnose browwnose brownnose" then oop, outta buisness. We hit a mini-depression, companies got a bit tighter, started questioning weither or not spending all that money was neccisary and many who were frugal before decided that their systems are just find and work allright now. When and if they've got the money later on, they'll upgrade and they'll do it right. The critics and wall street fanatical idiots are in their high chairs rattling their books getting all exited over a boom that'll never happen because if corperate america learned anything in the 1990's, it's that a good technician is hard to find, and that spending copious amounts of money on IT equipment that you don't need will put you out of buisness.
Eventually, computers will break down and die or get too slow for their owners needs, or finally drive them insane, and that's where I'm seeing the majority of the market coming from in the coming years; upgrades and repairs. We've got the infastructure, now we've got to maintain it. Few if anyone is going to go for bleeding edge stuff, they want perfected, mature hardware and software. We're also going to see a lot of old people working, since the baby boomers who make up a large percentage of our economy are going to go into retirement and the companies they're going to be getting pension checks from are probably going to go under.
I'v also noticed a trend in the computer industry; MS's software has been getting more expensive. In 1998, a copy of win95 went for about $99, upgrade ed of win98 $99 and full ver of win98 $149. Now, in 2003, winxp home ed costs a whopping $199, and the corp edition costs $299 which for some computers is half the price of the machine. Is longhorn going to cost $499? I MS wants to know why sales of their latest OS is dismal in the corperate and goverment enviroment, mabye it's because it's too expensive to justify.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I'm just waiting for BOCHS to get good enough to run Win98SE flawlessly, and WINE to get good enough that it will handle any Windows app thrown at it.
Then I would like some cool hardware with enough speed to emulate two machines at one.
No more dual booting.
Computing has a future, and Microsoft's not really in it.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
It took about two years and $5M dollars in hardware costs and MS License fees, plus the costs of 3rd party software replacements, to switch our organization from Win3.11FWG. Currently we replace a couple of PCs a week, and they come with W2K pre-installed, so our Win95 counts are dropping as our Win2K counts rise.
Our XP count remains minicule. We cannot use XP on most workstations because of its EULAs which demand that MS and certain 3rd party vendors be given remote access to our hardware to 'add or remove any software' they wish -- for 'security' reasons, of course. A very big Federal agency refuses to allow us to allow that, not suprisingly, so that their data remains safe while in our keeping.
That means that when the EOL for W2K has passed, and the channel is emptied of W2K shrink-wraps, our new PCs will come naked or with Linux pre-installed. Our bulk licenses allow us to move Win OSs around, but the new PCs will have hardware for which no Win95 or Win2K drivers exist. When that day arrives Microsoft will have truely locked themselves out of our shop. That scenerio would change over night if Gates modified his EULAs and didn't require remote access, but I doubt his greed or paranoia would allow such a policy change.
Also, what if you scrap one machine, and re-use its licence on another? That's made a lot harder by things like making the OEMs stick the licence number to the original machine case, and enforced limits on product activation.
Doing any of the above with an OEM liscense is exactly the same as pirating it from a legal standpoint. OEM Windows liscenses are non-transferable and have limits as to what constitutes the origional machine. MS just added a means to enforce the liscense with XP. Technically anything that would cause a reactivation of XP is probably a breach of the liscense. Trust me this is why sucessfully passing an MS audit is virtually impossible.
oh yes and WPA is NOT a long call, last few times I've done it it's taken less than 5 minutes, usually significantly less but I know the tree =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
When XP hits critical mass, imagine the havoc that would be caused if a virus/worm deactived all the MS XP and Office XP applications. That would be a NIGHTMARE and shut down most large corporations until the problem could be resolved.
MS is building on a house of cards and putting WPA at the foundation of the stack. Worse yet, image if WPA did contain a bug and accidentally shut everyone down.
WPA reminds me of what a local car dealer tried to do recently. He wanted to put a black box in all the cars that would kill the ignition in the event you didn't make your monthly payment. The courts ruled that he couldn't do that and stopped the practice. WPA is essentially the same type of device, but no one has challenged it yet. I wonder when XP hits end of life if MS will decided to deactive everyone and justify it by saying, "You clicked the I AGREE" box?
My install chart
:-) :-)
95 Reformat -> 98
98 Reformat -> 98
Me Reformat -> 98
2000 Reformat ->98
Xp format - 98
Basically if it will handle it 98 is best
*N.B not for mission critical stuff where linux should be used
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Windows XP has nothing that Windows 2000 has for the corperate environment that is worth a damn... and that was stupid of microsoft to do.
My company is standardized on windows 2000. When we evaluated XP, the only real benefit was the built-in terminal server which allows the helpdesk to connect to the clueless user's computer to see what is really going on.
Aside from that, no upside. The downside is large (software cost, activation hassle, necessary hardware upgrades) so we're sticking with win2k.
I noticed that the pie chart shows 5% other, and I can't help wonder what that is. Unix? BeOS? PalmOS? WinCE? Would be interesting to see a breakdown.
I did notice that they don't have WinME listed, but I'm wondering if they rolled that into 98 - which would explain it being high. I know it's not terribly popular among the slashdot crowd, but most consumer computers shipped with it for about a year.
As far as Win95/98 users not being connected to the net, could be, but it could also be that many of them started using the 'net when they got their machines and are still using whatever search engine they used 6 years ago before Google existed, such as Yahoo.
I have blog like everyone else
"they may upgrade to it when MS EOL's Windows 2000. but they are also looking at alternatives"
Our office was a bit less formal than that. The boss asked "so what do people think of WindowsXP then?" and everyone responed with a resounding "no, don't do it!"
We still have a few infected machines, that the idiots at Dell refused to sell us without XP on, but they run applications at half the speed of an identical-spec PC with Win2K. And that's with the animation turned off. (i.e. add another half day when setting up each bunch of PCs, to turn the animations off, only to find that the next person to create an account gets default settings...)
My company is standardized on windows 2000. When we evaluated XP, the only real benefit was the built-in terminal server which allows the helpdesk to connect to the clueless user's computer to see what is really going on.
and tight VNC is cheaper(100% free) and at least 90 times better than what XP has.
W2K + VNC = better than XP can be.
I don't think folks should be coerced/required to upgrade just because there is something newer out... if it works and you can do what you need to do with it, leave it alone and save your $200.
The fact that the software is a "danger" to the digital community with regard to virii/backdoors is not the owner's fault - its the creator's, and that creator should be held accountable for their mess.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
"corporate"
I work for an extremely large software company (not MS) that most of you have heard of.
The reason they haven't switched from 2000 to XP is exactly as you put it. The ROI will be far too low, since 2000 does everything we need it to.
90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame.
You are right about that too. The corporate WAN runs on Windows networking, and it's all wonderful.
Mind you we don't use Exchange, that product is horrible for WAN.
I get a lot of user mail from Netscape 4 users, and it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere.
Maybe it's just me, but I didn't think that Netscape 4 was an operating system.
I wouldn't advocate 70% of my business away if I were you. We all have lifestyles to maintain here, you know...
Had the organization stayed with Win2K, this never would have come up.
Realistically, Windows 98 is probably the last version of Windows that can be reasonably kept from calling home, and has a higher probability of not having some kind of government back door. You think MS got a slap on the wrist in the antitrust action for free?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Oh, wait, I forgot - people reinstall it every week.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
ultr@vnc is even better..the list of features is very impressive (I like built-in file transfer.. pcanywhere is now officialy obsolete)
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Makes me wonder how well you know the product you're supporting.
:-)
We just did a massive rollout of WinXP across the company (700 desktops and counting). The project took eight months of the Wintel group's time to plan and test, and will take about five months to deploy.
However, this was the first and only upgrade since their initial WinNT 4.0 desktops were installed. Roughly one rollout per decade isn't too bad, all things considered. The thing is, much of the testing and planning involved building simple, lightweight, minimal machines. with few things to go wrong, with easy and straightforward central admin. The minimum spec for these machines is about half of what MS claims for XP, and the per-desk ongoing admin cost is cheaper than anything else they've had from MS.
Win95/98 were judged as BAD options, because they were poor OSes. The biggest 'danger' of using Win2k/XP (and even NT4) is that not all admins have the greater skill set to properly set up and maintain such an environment.
None of which affects me anyways--I administer the Solaris boxes.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I do support for Verizon Central Offices and we still get laptops sent in for repair with Win 3.1, Win for Workgroups and Win95
the history of the world
Win 9x at least you could get into DOS if you needed to restore files or fix the registry. You really don't have the same amount of control of XP. (And System Restore for XP, is a POS. I see more systems come in with problems AFTER someone ran System Restore.)
I tried to upgrade to XP from 98SE. I'm not a computer science major, but I know my way around computers. I've upgraded friends computers before, but a large number of my drivers stopped working and things were just frustrating. I spent a good day and a half trying to get it to work and finally gave up and went back to 98. Personally, I think it's part of Windows deal with the computer mfg. co's to make upgrading the OS such a pain that it's easier and or cheaper for the average consumer to simply buy a new computer. MS still sells a new OS and computer mfg. co's sell a new computer everybody wins. (except the consumer).
You can legislate morally you can't legislate morality
Where I work, we have 6 120mhz Pentium PCs running Windows 98se with Office 97. We also have a single server running NT Server 4. A Netopia router provides internet access via NAT.
This has all been in place since 1999 and all works pretty well, although the machines are obviously slow. However, for what we need them for, upgrading would be a waste of money.
When you have 50 billion dollars of cash on hand, there isn't much you can't do.
Why aren't they doing anything spectacular with that money? Well, because they are idiots. Oops, sorry. I meant to say unimaginative, lazy, and greedy idiots.
I have just spent a week working in BBC Radio 4. Their scripts are written -- according to the file format -- in Word 95. At least two of the editing rooms were running Windows 98.
OOo word count at http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/bugs/oo_macros.
I've seen this before, the Microcrap forced upgrade-o-rama. In the past they grumbled but did it anyway. This time is different for some reason. Instead of just biting the bullet and making the upgrade they started asking if there were any other web servers that didn't have to be upgraded and patched so often that would work on their old hardware. As a matter of fact...
At home I've got one 98ME laptop and one Win2K box left, everything else is Linux. Haven't loaded XPee at home and never plan to.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I wanted a < but I forgot that slashdot is retarded and can't figure out that a lone < is probably not an HTML tag...
Loser website... you all [sob] suck! stop laughing [sob sob]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I use it on my PARENTS computer, a top of the line k6-350 with about 180Mo RAM.
...)
It took me years to get my father from Multiplan under DOS to Excel with Win98. And some more to get my father trained to 98.
For the sake of my Sanity (already quite low), I don't want to retrain my father to use XP or 2000.
+It just works !!! I don't upgrade what's not broken...(yet...8) I mean I don't fiddle with the computer, and neither do they
Of course, if my parent where to get a P4 (or, more likely, an AMD XP) I might get to install XP or 2000 for them. and get a new Debian server to replace my poor P200 for free...>
Don't tempt me, you insensitive clod 8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Miles Kimball is a fairly large catalogue company based here. I work as an intern in the IT department and was rather surprised when I first discovered that pretty much every machine in the company was running W2k or older. A very large bulk is running Win98 and this is mainly because a lot of the old old applications used for shipping, receiving, label printing, etc would only run on the older machines. Although, this is all changing as we are rolling out all new (Dell) systems with XP. And it's been quite a hassle tracking down the proper patches and updates to get certain old software running.
:\
Kind of off-topic, but another interesting point about the rollouts is that half of them seem to come with Sun Java and another half Microsoft VM. This has turned into a HUGE hassle as the Miles' main accounting and employee tracking software only works with MSVM. Fun stuff I tell ya
It's just that it's readily available, and as long as you have one of those there license numbers on a genuine certificate (either on a manual or on its own), then you're good to go.
People are starting to realize that M$ is moving towards using thier license agreement to pull some pretty shady moves, so they want the OS with a little more flexibility. Honestly, there aren't that many people that actually figure that out. Most people who stick with it either totally fear change, or are so used to it they just simply don't want or need XP...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Nit-picking perhaps, but wouldn't you be more comfortable with vermin of your own choosing?
From the parent post:
"90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame."
I think there are huge problems with Windows XP that are the fault of Microsoft. For example, the Windows XP file system is crippled. Unlike Windows 98, which can make a bootable full hard disk copy with the XCOPY.EXE program, Windows XP cannot copy all of its own files: Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?
Can you accept an operating system which does not allow you to make a full hard disk backup? Yes, I know about third-party tools and Sysprep. They ALL have verified problems. The version of Sysprep that comes with Windows XP sometimes causes failure of the Windows XP Recovery Console: 'The Password Is Not Valid' Error Message Appears When You Log On to Recovery Console in Windows XP.
Even when using the "Recovery Console", you cannot access some files on a hard drive. Windows XP is very crippled.
Not only that, but do you want to run the risk of using an operating system that puts most of the configuration settings in one file of more than 20 megabytes (the "Registry")? If something goes wrong, it is necessary to re-install ALL of your programs and patches and updates, not just the operating system.
Everything mentioned here has been verified several times by Microsoft tech support employees.
I have a number of versions of windows (all legal). Since I'm a developer I tended to collect some of them. Also a few years ago I was a dealer and sold some machines and had to take back at my expense certain OS copies because the customers simply could not use them.
My son uses win2k and I have a machine with NT 4.0 on it. I presently have a machine that runs 95 too - but it is an old P90 and it is turned on only once in a blue moon.
What I've found is that my son has had a great deal if difficulties with win2K. He has re-installed more than 5 times. The OS loses its network printers regularly. He whines about it of course and threatens to get a copy of XP.
I don't think his machine will run XP very well so if he does that he may as well throw out the present machine. Talk about crap eh?
Meanhile I've pretty much abandoned my NT machine and am now using the Debian Linux machine virtually 99% of the time. I may even install VMware and if I do this - I may be able to go back to only one machine. It will save me a bit of electricity.
So an effect that I presonally predicted several years ago is happening - that effect is that old copies of microsoft software are competing directly with newer versions. Given this - I am surprised to see that Microsoft revenues are holding up... or are they?
If the revenues don't materialize, Microsoft shares could erode in value at an unprecedented rate. This would be due to the fact that the number of shares Microsoft has issued is mind boggling.
I personally do not see Microsoft as a growth company at all. While I will not short them, there is no way I'd invest in them either.
Try going to an auction. A physical one, not Ebay. I picked up literally a whole table of used computers and parts for only $5! Often groups such as Kiwanis hold such auctions about once a year. The worst part is figuring out how to carry all the stuff home.
Am I really one of the few who didn't think ME was a bastardized POS?
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
and 128MB would have been a 'dream'.
::tinfoil hat on:: ::tinfoil hat off::
Windows XP grabs approx 95MB of memory at startup, and soon as you load iexporer > 128MB is being used.
128MB is very tight and swapping begins by just using a fucking browser!
Even though ram is dirty cheap, I think the reason the industry is giving 128MB is so that the computer is perceived to be slower, and users would then try to upgrade later on with stiff markups(especially since older stuff is more expensive).
Your ship has arived. P200s with 64MB of ram are not bad xterminals. An easy upgrade path is to Debian and Open Office, with a few new machine purchases. Open Office does Microsoft's formats well, and gives you pdf print out. Debian has free security updates, but would be happy to have your $60/year. You can run Open Office from a few fast central servers accessed by your employees from their current desktops running all running Debian.
Don't take my word for it, try it out today with Knoppix. Knoppix comes with Open Office and will probably work on your hardware without tweaking, and without any risk to your current work. To try out the xterminal stuff, just boot up your best box as the server and add a few users. Boot up your desktop machines with Window Maker, or your choice of lighter duty window manager. You can then log into the server from other knoppix machines with "ssh -X username@server", start a "kdesktop", "kicker" and then whatever you want. Resposne time will, of course, not be as good as a system that is not running off CDs, but it should be snappy enough. Web browsing should be as fast or better than your current M$ set up.
If you like what you see, Installing Debian is not that hard. You can essentially copy the Knoppix configuration if you don't get it right yourself. Then, presto, you have the best software available. There should be dozens of people near you who can do the work if you and your usual techs can't. Check out rentageek or even the phone book. It's a job any Linux dude would love to do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh, just little things like being 10 times more stable, having a much better way to run services, and in genereal being a real OS. Not too many sexy new capabilities, but it's a SO much nicer user experience then any previous version of windows(and in my experience, then XP too..)
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
This came out in the "anti-trust" trial, remember?
Windows is supposed to run slower with each new version, so you will have to buy current hardware to run it, at new-technology prices, so that the cost of the Windows OS, as a proportion of the total price of the delivered computer, will stay below a level they figured is likely to trigger a consumer revolt.
There's nothing accidental about it.
I have MOSAIC running on XP. And Lynx. And Netscape 2.0 Gold. And AOLPress, actually.
... because it doesn't have product activation. As long as Microsoft uses product activation in their software, I will never upgrade to another Microsoft OS.
:)
(Besides, with Linux running OpenOffice and Neverwinter Nights, why else would I boot to Windows?
I mean, you can study the psychology of a Grue on the //c's with no problem. If you buy a PC or a Mac you have to pay for an expensive retro-port of the game.
IANAL, but not really.
:)
The clickwrap 'contract', other than the flaw of it being a contract of adhesion ('take it or leave it') it also offers nothing to a user.
For a contract to be valid, it must offer consideration --- both parties must obtain something that I would not otherwise have. The clickwrap 'contract' doesn't. It *was* claimed that it offers me the ability to copy the software from disk media into memory, but that was explicitly ruled not copyright infringement. Therefore, the 'contract' offers me nothing I don't already posess under copyright law.
Now, the contract between microsoft and the OEM or company might have such consideration 'cheaper prices in return for accepting this restrictive contract'. However, I or any other purchaser of such a box am under no such restriction.
Also, many could argue that such OEM contracts constitute tying. Finally, there are cases where one must agree to a contract unseen, which to does not form a binding contract.
Remember, its always easy to claim anything. I now demand that all readers and especially you empty your browser cache, you pirates!
My company found remote desktop to be a very good reason to move users to XP. Remote desktop uses the very lightweight RDP protocol, so reasonable remote access is available with not a lot of bandwidth. Users who have to, need to, or want to, work from home can get access to all the software, and network resources just like they were at there office pc. Provides a quick, and easy to setup remote access solution, user can use there home PC, or a older company issued laptop. No worries, about having to setup and maintain extra computers for users who want to work at home, and no worries about synchronizing data between 2 pcs.
How much difference does it make having a 3Ghz processor to run MS Office as a 1Ghz? Most people are better off getting a SCSI or SATA hard drive installed as an upgrade, or spending time learning keyboard shortcuts.
I remember upgrading from a P75 to a P233 to a P350 (in the period of about 3 years). It then took me over 5 until my next upgrade, and another 5 after that.
And the Sun Blade 1000 workstation (with Solaris 8) that I do my real work on hasn't been rebooted for close to a year now. And that was only because a processor died.
-h-
90% of the time that precieved fault of microsoft is really something that is misconfigured, or a under engineered network causing the trouble... but MS get's the bulk of the blame.
This is very true and I think it will come back and bite Linux in the ass eventually. Most people switching to Linux from MS right now are knowledgable. They are the people that know how to set up a proper network and keep it running. As the common people switch to Linux, they will encounter many of the same problems they encountered on Windows, except they won't have any idea how to deal with them. They will end up switching back to their Windows boxes because they at least have an idea how to deal with things on that.
I think we'll see a lot of people switch to Linux, but then we'll see a decent portion of them switch back as they realize their problems weren't caused by MS, but by their own lack of knowledge.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I have an old Pentium that I used to run NT4 and Win2000 on -- It was rock solid and perfectly usable for web/mail/office. (The box was also great as a FreeBSD server, but I ran out of disk space.)
Long story, but I needed to install Access 97 to transfer some data for a client, and you can't downgrade Access 2K to 97. So, I put Windows 98SE on the box. First time I'd used it since it came out in 1998.
The thing crashed like 3 times in the brief time I used it. The shell was so slow to be barely usable. Anything that interacted with the network would basically lock the box for 30 seconds at a time. (And before you go after my tech skills, this is stock install + patch of a 1998 OS on 1996 hardware. It should Just Work, like W2K and FreeBSD do.)
As far as I'm concerned, running Windows 98 is like wearing a diper and shitting your own pants. It's a free country, you can do it, but it's completely unacceptable and hardly "mature". Good riddance Win98!
Another reason for the enduring popularity of Win98/95 is that there are no significant barriers to copying/pirating it. I can't tell you how many times one of my win98 machines died and I couldn't find the CD. The first thing I do now when I have to rebuild a win98 machine is make a small partition and copy all the setup files to it. Once we are setup, I copy the registry to a floppy (the oem number is there in plain text).
All that said, its a sucky operating system. I'd never use it if I didn't have to.
I think that major difference 6.6 % of XP users versus 38 % of XP users is caused by a very simple thing: win95/98 users are not connected to internet thus, they are not using google.
While I agree an older OS is more likely to not be online, I don't think that's the source of the difference between the study's percentage and Google's. The study surveyed only companies, not home computers. Since it was released, XP has almost been the only OS the average consumer could buy so there's a lot of it out there.
You have to wonder where WinME falls, is it lumped in with 98, 2K, or XP? As an architecture, it's closest to 98, it's a contemporary of 2K and it has some of the chrome of XP.
Windows XP + Windows 2000 = 58% of all Google users.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Windows 2000 is a quantum leap beyond either the 9X/ME or NT lines. I couldn't imagine going back, although I don't see enough benefit to XP to move up just yet.
First off, Windows 2000 *is* from the NT line. And so, it's so utterly and completely much more stable and better than 98/ME, I won't comment on that. What set it apart from WinNT was usability though. NT couldn't run many of the 98/ME apps (mostly because they used DirectX), while Win2k runs pretty much everything under the sun. (Less the latest Adobe Premiere, which ONLY runs under WinXP SP1, don't ask me why)
I'd say that was the peak. XP Home and Pro both feel like Windows 2000-ME to me. More fluff, less substance. I've been running Linux on the desktop via an X server here on win2k for a while, and it's actually quite nice (Of course, I don't exactly run FPS games over it). For the basic tasks, it's perfectly adequate. I could easily spend 80% of my computing time on Linux, the rest being games that simply won't run.
Unfortunately, I think most people want to play PC games, assuming they have a PC. Otherwise, they might have been just as well off by having a Linux PC + console of choice. And Linux still needs a "double-click install" that'll actually WORK and not fail on missing dependencies. No, I've had rpms fail on me several times, and then I have to hunt down some obscure package I've never heard of, that I don't know what does, but that the program requires. It'd be like manually hunting DLLs in Windows, it sucks.
Anyway, 80% is a lot more than I'd say a year ago. A little more, and I might just suck it up, go Linux and play NWN and other linux-capable games instead of sticking with win2k...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
At one stage I was given the task of writing a some data collection software for a casino. They had a very old program, that they didn't want to change, that could spew the data in raw format down a socket. My company was going to take the casino data and pump it into our software to do pretty visualisations. That meant we had to read that raw format coming of the socket, and process it into something useful that we could visualise.
I knocked up a quick program to read the raw data off the socket and just log it so we could get a wfew days sample of data to make sure it was conforming to the format they specified and check for unforseen glitches (of which there were, in the end, many). I left that running, but when I came back the next day the "constant stream" had cut out at 6am. I had only written a very simple logging program to collect, so I hadn't bothered t o handle the case that the server was going to close the socket connection on me, so I had no data after 6am. So much for a days worth of collection. The reason, I found, was the the "very old program" that they were using was a DOS program, which didn't run properly on Win2k (so they claimed) so it was on Win98. The reason I kept getting holes in the stream at 6am (I fixed the logger to handle socket closures, wait till it was back up and start logging again) was that they had to reboot the box every morning at 6am. Well, not had to - but they felt a regular scheduled reboot was a lot better than the slightly less regular unscheduled reboots they used to get.
In the end We wrote our proper socket collection code to just shut down at 6am, which was when we fired up our data processing on the nightly collection, then picked up again at 6:02 when the reboot was done.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Windows 2000 is usually better than XP on machines like these. I run Win2K as part of a dual-boot with Linux on my ThinkPad 600E (PII 400MHz 224MB RAM) and it is as comfortable as a broken-in pair of jeans. This includes Avast Antivirus, ZoneAlarm and the Palm Sync Link.
2000 is what the 600E was designed for. It shows in how well it performs. I'm sure if you killed a lot of eye candy XP would be just as nice, but I'm lazy.
Linux also runs beautifully on this machine...this was the one and only machine IBM was going to get certified for Red Hat Linux. It's running Knoppix/Debian and very happy.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I'm slowly putting myself out of business as my clients upgrade from NT/W9x networks to W2K/XP networks. I used to spend a couple of days each week repairing W9x workstations, or NT servers showing signs of instability.
With W2K/XP, there are still support issues, but with a well planned and tested initial rollout the support calls pretty much dry up within a week of user training being completed. Don't forget that with XP (unlike 9x), once you get a good configuration you can lock it down so the users can't screw it up. My company is having difficulty landing new clients quickly enough to take up the slack - I suspect because every other company supporting Windows is doing the same thing.
In our company, we have tonnes of old Pentium1 machines and copies of windows95/98 and NT4. Many have been donated to schools but still more are piled in our cabinets, so we decided to use them as Terminal Service clients at various locations on the factory floor. With WindowsNT, it becomes stable and secure enough not to need constant maintenance.
At home, I have two Pentium1s with old 14" monitors and Windows95. The OS runs well with 32-64MB ram and many nice old games some of which require DOS interrupts, others that access the framebuffer and soundblaster buffers directly, work very well. I have yet to find ways to run those old nice games on Windows2000 or XP.
The newer computers that we're buying nowadays are shipped with Windows2000. We do not prefer XP and will certainly avoid the upcoming 2003. As the older computers with Windows2000 will become obsolete, we'll use their licenses on newer workstations with Pentium4 2.2GHZ and 512mb ram, should work nicely.
I just dont like what Microsoft did with XP onwards. They tried to make the OS smart on its own and guess network configurations, which becomes a nightmare for net admins. We'll eventually move to XP, after the next OS after 2003 ships. Till then we'll try our best to keep the Windows2000 copies around, while using Windows95 with Terminal Services where it works for us.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Windows 9x on DVD? And this is from the Microsoft product manager?
Joe Sixpack doesn't care about keeping up with the latest and greatest. Take my parents for instance. The use their pc for browsing the web, e-mail, AOL instant messenger, word processing and CD burning. Their current system is fast enough for what they need to do, all the software runs fairly well and they have no real reason to upgrade anytime soon.
I'm sure a lot of corporations, especially small businesses, are the same way. If the system runs the software they need at an acceptable speed there is really no reason to upgrade. I service a lot of small businesses happily running Windows 98 (I don't see too many systems with 95 any more) on several systems and they don't plan on upgrading anytime soon. The larger businesses I service, on the other hand, are largely running Windows 2000 with some XP systems in the mix mainly do to the additional security and for group policy.
If your running Windows 98 and everything is working alright for you, there really isn't any incentive to upgrade to Windows XP IMHO. I can't think of any single must have feature for the average computer user. If corporations are using Windows 2000 or 2003 Server there are some incentives to running Windows 2000 or XP on the client end.
I do feel that your going to see more and more users upgrade, albeit at a slower rate than Microsoft is used to. There are applications being released (iTunes springs to mind) that simply will not run on Windows 98 and Me. I have a feeling that this will increasingly be the case. Eventually users will come across an application they need, or an upgrade to an existing application they run that has some new feature they want to use, that simply will not run on 98/Me and they will be forced to upgrade.
Most home users don't twaddle with operating systems. Ever. My mother bought a computer over 5 years ago and she hasn't updated the OS. I doubt she ever will.
Most very small businesses do the same thing. My dry cleaner has a 486 running a DOS-based database program that keeps track of my drycleaning. I remember using something very similar on a job in 1988.
Many companies don't bother going with the latest and greatest. It's just not worth it to churn their computers and operating software every 2-3 years. Unless they're in IT, it doesn't matter much which version of MS Office they're using.
My father is a blogger.
Good thing I bought a Win 98 cd off ebay earlier this year, then. I bought a Compaq Armada, 300 mhz, 5 gig hd, 96 mb ram, etc, from ebay, allegedly just off a corporate lease program. It was in pretty good condition; just a few scratches on the LCD case, that type of thing. The armada came with it's hard drive completely wiped, so I got win 98. It's _rock_ _solid_. It runs perfectly, no problems (Hell, my new Dell laptop, Win XP sometimes slows down for no reason at all, even when on AC power, when the fan turns on. And yes, I've swept for spyware and viruses, and only use the Admin account when necessary). The laptop is rock solid. Even though I only use it for testing software, (I'm currently looking over OpenOffice) it's a very nice, efficient little thing.
Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but you can format the new machines and install 2000 on them, right? I would think that paying for an XP license would entitle you to 'downgrade' to 2k. If this is not the case, I think a lot of corporate IT departments may rethink their strategy of buying Dells with the latest MS operating system on them.
The newer bigger viruses out there are being written for the WinNT/2K/XP crowd. Windows 9x, while vulnerable to older viruses if you don't have virus protection, is not as vulnerable to the newer viruses. I use Windows 2K, but I have a couple of the older machines with Windows 98SE and even an old Win95 laptop around. And yes, as everyone has noted, if all you do is word processing, e-mail and basic Web browsing, it's fine for that. If you want some of the great kids games, like some of the older Disney titles, you can't use the NT line for them.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
We use it for the majority of our Windows boxes, mainly due to imaging concerns. You can image any PC with the same copy of Win98 and it will work, while the NT based OSes have hardware specific drivers that require a seperate install on each machine. That equates to a lot of man-hours, and we are under-staffed as it is, so, we use Win98.
Algorithms, abstractions, etc. are all in the mathematics/philosophy realm. Yes, they are used in the process of science. But, science is a process of observation, notation, prediction, and publication. Predictions are based on the notated observations, review of scientific literature, and the scientist's creative ability. Predictions (theories), methods (of experimentation and observation), and creative speculations are published in journals of science - all to be reviewed by scientific peers.
Computer Science programs are more mathematics programs/vocational training than they are science programs.
Spare me the explanations of the poor starving software developers; I am fully aware that a software developer seeks renumerations for one's labors, and charging license fees and upgrade fees is a way to amortize the effort required to develop a complex piece of software. That doesn't change the fact that license fees are a kind of economic rent (i.e. money you can rake in because the law grants you a limited monopoly -- you can say that software won't get developed in the absence of such a monopoly, but that doesn't change the material facts that "intellectual property" law has the intent of granting limited monopolies to facilitate collecting economic rents).
I prefer the term tribute money to "Microsoft tax" because "tax" suggests governmental power and some sense of the consent of the governed. Microsoft is not to be dignified by considering it a government -- it is more like such extragovernmental entities such as high-seas pirates, Mafia bosses, feudal lords, and Delaware corporations in that money payed to them to avoid punishment (i.e. lawsuits, getting wacked) is to be called tribute and not a tax.
I also differ with the common usage of "pirate" to denote someone who avoids paying tribute money. I use the term "pirate" to describe contruction contractors that you bring into your house for remodeling and repair work. The reason contractors are pirates has less to do with the amount of money you pay them than the part about when you let them into your house they control every aspect of your life. Yes, it is about the money because whatever contract you sign, there is some uncontrolled eventuality that you have to agree to spending more money once work commences, but even if you are rich enough that the money spent is a minor concern, you become their pirate-hostage regarding letting them in and out of the house at their whim and work schedule.
So construction contractors are pirates simply on the basis that their clients are pirate hostages, and money spent for the XP upgrade when 98 was working just fine for you, thank you, is tribute money.
Which reenforces two things.
One in which Donald A. Norman (google the name) points out the problems with the computer.
Two in which "appliances" thrive (look at the previous "/." story about small servers*).
The computing industry overall has been a big letdown in failing to live up to it's promise.
*Look at the reactions. Most enlightening.
I've read most of the comments on this story - and I don't think anybody has mentioned Active Directory. AD is one thing companies are missing out on if they keep 9x on the desktop. Sure, those clients can participate in the domain, but you don't get group policy. Group policy gives you a pleasant way to manage the desktop, install software, enforce policies etc (assuming you're an all 2k shop)
Security - there something else missing in 9x. I'm sure there are plenty of shops don't need desktop security - there are plenty that do....
So - upgrades to 2k/xp are good for the -IT shop-, but the corporate user could probably give a $hit.
But who want to manage hundreds or thousands of desktops? Not us - so we are going to Terminal Services + Citrix with Wyse dumb ICA clients at the desktop.
Plug in Wyse, in 3-5 seconds you have a windows 2000 logon screen. Much less fuss to run Office2k + terminal emulation than A/D and group policy...
Some really important paradigms like object oriented and functional* require machines that are at least younger than the students. It's also arguable that humans should still be programming assembler. And it's difficult to say whether students would learn more writing their own basic operating system from scratch or modifying the byzantian cathedral that is Linux. Finally, its a waste of time to have students doing networking on anything other than TCP/IP.
So in general I'd say Windows 98 or Linux 2.0.x is great for CompSci, but anything older than that might be pushing it.
* Even if you don't think they're good paradigms, they're still significant enough to be worth learning.
It may surprise a lot of folks to know that good ole' DOS is still widely used, and wildly popular, in industrial and engineering environments. And why not? Very small footprint, mature and stable, relatively easy to program for, great for embedded stuff, and loads of 'net-based software archives Out There with enough handy applications and programmig tools to choke a goat.
During my tenure at Boeing, I saw a number of CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine-control applications in the factory that were all DOS-based. In the electronics labs, many design or data-acquisition tools are DOS-based. And here, in my home lab, I've got a blort-load of radio service software that requires a pure DOS platform or it simply won't run.
"Retired" OS's are popular for a variety of reasons, just as older test equipment is often favored over much newer stuff. One of those reasons is that the underlying principles of what you're trying to do never change: Only the degree of complexity needed to get it done does.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
If you need employees to plug in RAM, then maybe you should have hired college students instead of grad students? I'll admit though, that most grad students I work with are also horrible programmers; but they're in grad school because of their poor programming ability -- they know they couldn't hold a developer position so they're training to do things more abstract.
The point of university degrees is that the students are getting theoretical fundamentals and learning how to learn. Unfortunately, most students aren't actually interested enough in their discipline to understand how to apply the fundamentals and have no interest in learning on their own time.
You can't seriously expect schools to teach things like platform-specific hardware and system administration -- the platforms will have changed by the time they graduate! And fitting more than one major programming project into a curriculum is very difficult (that's what co-op is for!). Unfortunately, the private sector has just enough influence on universities that they're teaching students skills which are just applied enough that they become obsolete.
Ideally, universities would teach students programming on a very theoretical level. Then give them an idea of how to convert that theory into practice in all sorts of ways. And finally ensure that they get good co-op or summer jobs where they can try all of this out.
Visual Basic (and Delphi) famously let you connect events in child widgets to functions of the main form. Visual Basic doesn't have a way to use the Designer to connect child widgets to each other and while Delphi allows such connections, it doesn't get used that much. The result is that a Visual Basic main form is one big honkin' GoF Mediator Pattern -- every last thing that happens in a widget signals the main form, and the main form code is this rats' nest of figuring out what to do with all of those signals.
As far as I can tell, Mac OS-X Cocoa Interface Builder has these controller objects so the rats' nest of event processing code can go into one or more controller objects. You may say this is no big deal, Qt has had its "signals and slots" for some time now. True, but I think the innovation is that Apple allows you to do the Visual Basic-y think with signals and slots: automatically generate code for one or more controller classes rather than funnelling everything through the main form.
The reason for the link is that Apple is this amalgam of the corporate and Marin County buzzword cultures, and they go far beyond calling a program a solution. On the other hand, buried under the buzzwords seems like some neat stuff. Should I be wary of Apple?
No, what's happening here is these guys are still stuck in 1998 and are using Dogpile and Thunderstone or some shit.
So you are saying you upgraded to a P350 ten years ago?
When was the last time you saw a white-box laptop?
Getting laptops w/o Windows (or any OS, since Sun machines include Solaris, and TiBooks include MacOS), is still fairly tricky.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Maybe that is why Microsoft has been releasing OS versions increasingly rapid the last 5 years?! Just to keep the growthrate up. I remember waiting for the "Chicago" release quite sometime before it was released as Windows-95. Still our company didn't upgrade for a couple of years because our boss had some very sophisticated sales reports written in the programming language "Fred" in "FrameWorks" under DOS that worked under Windows 3.11 but not under Win-95 He was never able to port them to Excel and was probably the only pro user in northern Europe!
;-)
As late as the other day my computer crashed and I had no internet connection, no Linux CD, no Linux boot diskettes that worked on this new hardware etc etc. What saved me was three old original diskettes with DOS 6.22! The last diskette had some bad sectors but it continued to install and finally I got DOS 6.22 up and running. From there I installed Windows-98 and from there I downloaded some Linux Debian install disks. Phew!!
They didn't work either so I had to borrow a Debian CD at work, but that is details!
I prefer it to version 7... it's good enough for my and it has some facilities (nsnotify by example) I can't live without :)
So, 95 and 98 make up 80%, but somehow Windows 2000 was on even *more* machines? Is that just because of the way Microsoft makes you buy licenses for machines you don't have?
You've obviously never used Terminal Services under a Windows operating system. TightVNC and Terminal Services are entirely different and the Microsoft offering is much better. TightVNC basically sends a compressed bitmap image of the screen over the network to the client, several times a second. That's a lot of bandwidth, I've seen it crawl over a gigabit connetion, too, so it's pretty useless over a 56K modem. Terminal Services, on the other hand, actually just spawns a Windows desktop on the client side which sends special net commands over to the server. Terminal Services is a much more X11/UNIX-like implementation of remote desktop than tightVNC is.
Why WFW311? It's my music production machine. I work with MIDI and no digital audio. I have a Music Quest MQX32M MIDI interface with SMPTE I/O. That card is one of the best MIDI cards ever made, but Music Quest/Opcode was absorbed by Gibson and no drivers were ever released for WIN9x and newer OS.
I don't need digital audio. I have analog tape for the non-MIDI stuff and I use SMPTE to sync the PC to tape. I never have a problem with it.
I also recognize the fact that WIN9x/NT OS are optimized for the OFFICE and not for multimedia. They simply do not put emphasis on efficient MIDI processing. That is why WFW311 is superior for MIDI.
WFW311 also is a lean OS that has minimal latency on my MIDI tracks, the API simply does not get in the way unlike today's bloated APIs. I hear musicians complaining of MIDI latency all the time on newer OS, yet I get really tight tracks running on WFW311.
It also boots up a lot faster than any newer OS despite the 100Mhz 486 against the 233Mhz Pentium II. When I have one of those precious moments of inspirations, that means something not having to wait for the OS to boot.
There's a lot of wisdom to the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
All you home users still using 98, good work, 2k and XP is really over-rated. However, businesses & schools, If you guys are still using 98, your going to get your nuts stepped on. The security advantages of 2000/NT or XP are exponential versus 98's careless approach to any sense of security.
I can completely understand why people continue to use older versions of Windows. While XP is much more stable than ME or any 9X, the $100+ price of XP is hard to swallow. How do you explain to your (insert: parents,siblings,friends,neighbors,coworkers) that they should pay the $100+ for something that will be more stable but won't do anything else for them? And on top of that, they may need to upgrade some hardware to run XP?
People want bang for their buck, not to BE banged by MS for their bucks.
my wife is a district attorney, and she uses 1 (one) program in her computer at the office: MS Works 95 over MS Windows 95... since... 95, when she got the position, and I helped her buy her Compaq 486sx2 with 8MB RAM and 230MB HD. She was my gf at the time. I stuffed the boy with Works, did a backup batch file, which she runs every week, plugged the HP500C printer, that is also in use up to the present date, and voila... the typed/edited/printed 40-200 pages of documents every work day in the last eight and a half years and it just works. Even connects to dial-up internet if needed.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Well, I'm stuck on linux, but sometimes I have to run Windows for applications. And usually, Win4lin is able to come through very well, saving me from rebooting. Since Windows98 is the most recent version of that OS's ilk which will work in Win4lin (OK, OK, so WinMe will run on it, but I'm not entrusting anything to that POS), I use '98. Sometimes.
You have just unpacked your shiny new P4 and you now stand with your old pentium in a corner. What do you do? Well most often that computer isnt tossed away but used as a second computer or given to the kids.
I dont think anyone is stupid enough to shell out the dough for an XP license to Windows XP on an old computer that cant handle the requirements. Since Linux too have roughly the same requirements as XP to be a smooth workstation it isnt likely being installed with linux either. A server yes but a linux workstation on a Pentium 133 32mb ram? I dont think so since most dists install KDE/Gnome default.
All theese old PC's is good enough to surf the web and write letters etc so people dont want to throw them away. They dont want to buy a brand spanking new computer either since it adds so little value compared to the old one if you are just using it so surf and such.
Until a real killer app comes along that demands a faster computer to do neat stuff on the net those old rags will linger on. The internet is still just pictures and text and nothing have been able to change that so far.
HTTP/1.1 400
Well duh.. I wonder why... at $150 an upgrade I would stick with 98 too.. ME was a piece of crap, XP is great, but its expensive and I swear it just SEEMS that my privacy is almost non existant.. I honestly can't explain why I feel that way.. its just a feeling. Microsoft needs to realize that an OS shouldn't cost so damn much. They need to use it as a marketing tool for the rest of their crap.. god knows people buy it apparently. Cost of ownership of microsoft products is just too much for your average consumer. People simply just don't have the money for it all.. thus they pirate and then MS hikes the price more and makes it harder to pirate, thus.. they stick with 95 and 98.. I've always said that common sense doesn't drive consumerism in this society...
- Jimbob
Of our small network (25) computers, we are pretty much all XP Pro client machines and Win2k servers. We still have a Win98 box that is used to monitor the phones (record the length of each phone call on each phone, and where it went, for billing purposes - I don't think it retains any audio content). That machine will likely stay Win98 as long as it continues to work. I see no reason to spend any effort on it while it isn't causing any problems and it is working. It has a PII processor and I think hardly any RAM at all (compared to most computers these days). Only two people ever occasionally log on to it to gather the data and print it off - it never browses the web or downloads e-mail. It is inside of our network, so it is behind the firewall and as safe as that means.
We still have one user machine that is still Win2kPro, only because I'm hesitant to upgrade it and then have the programs on that machine to work (having upgraded many in the past, it is common to have to reinstall stuff, and this user has a ton of stuff on there).
We will be upgrading our servers and Exchange server to Win2K3 in the new year. I wanted to wait until more bugs had been resolved in it and see that we will be okay to upgrade to it.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
That's funny. This AP article says 20%.
Anybody who expects a company to provide support for a 5 year old piece of software (Sub $200) is a moron. If businesses provided support for their products as long as people were using them, they would lose money on their products. Even with a pay per incident support model, Microsoft loses money on support.
I used to be a HUGE mac evangelists. Now I just use it for personal use as a personal choice. I became a sysadmin for Microsoft run businesses (As well as a netadmin) and now I don't have to look very hard for potential employment opportunities. Cheerleaders would call that selling out. Grown ups would call it a wise career move.
All you MS bashers need to get over your alternative OS cheerleading, grow the hell up, and introduce yourself to the real world.
-Lucas
My CS degree taught me to look at information problems in a language and hardware independant way. I can often see where something is going to go pear-shaped long before the first line is written or the first box is unpacked. Unfortunately, the reason is often either extremely abstract or rooted in cognitive psych making it impossible to explain the problem in terms that the college guys understand.
Dude I am hanging my windoze box and porting to linux for good.
Windoze just plain sucks
The article quotes a businessman lamenting that Microsoft's decision to stop supporting W98 gives "free reign" to the net's baddies. Today's English lesson is as follows:
The phrase, dear learners, is "free rein" and it refers to a horseman letting the horse decide where and how fast they're going to go. There's no monarchical meaning, and couldn't be if you stop and think about it. The king can do whatever he wants by definition (except for the modern show-pony monarchs of the world) so there'd be nothing _but_ "free reign".
Here endeth the lesson.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Most of the studies and chatter from techs I've heared is that a very few number of users are using windows XP.
I work for an ISP getting home users and small businesses online via dialup/wireless/dsl. For the most part I've seen, almost every new user is getting setup on Windows XP. This isn't suprising. However, people who had an existing connection or who have lost their connection and need fixing(they themselves probably broke it) are still usually XP. I would expect this to mean that either XP breaks easier, or more people are using it. One thing is for sure, it seems half the people we help are using XP, and 25% are using Win98, and the rest are using some other OS. I'm curious if anyone else has seen the same kind of a distribution relating to home users, and if so any idea why this may be the case if there are so many people using Win98.
Maybe the majority are using 98 and will need to upgrade, but they don't seem to be breaking as fast as the XP users.
From Microsoft's own dictionary: quantum (kwontem) noun plural quanta (-te) 1. A quantity or an amount. 2. A specified portion. 3. Something that can be counted or measured. 4. Physics. a. The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation. b. This amount of energy regarded as a unit. So a "quantum leap" is the smallest possible change that can be considered an upgrade. ;)
Since a lot of protected-mode games will never be re-ported to Win32 or Linux, I still keep my old DOS disks handy.
I actually built a special PIII 733Mhz/133FSB dosbox with intentionally obsolete (for compatability) sound & video just so I could have an MS-DOS 7.22 platform to run those cool old 4GW games on.
Funny things can happen in autoplay mode, though...the frame rate is so fast the game looks like a bunch of munchkins on crack.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
"The results aren't too surprising. I get a lot of user mail from Netscape 4 users, and it only makes sense that they're running it somewhere."
Linux, anyone?
cu,
Lispy
"unlike M$, Apple has very strong support for those old programs"
Err... ya um I guess that would be the poor support for old programs that lets me run all my legacy software back to MS-DOS.
I mean is there an incident where you had something not work? Or were you just bashing windows on principle?
The only reason I bought another laptop is that the dongle of my PCMCIA NIC broke and it was impossible to find a replacement.
Couldn't you have bought another PCMCIA NIC?
Scratch that; I mean can I have your old laptop?
what does it do better than Windows 98SE?
Fail to crash and provide a truly multiuser environment to name but two things.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Anyway I had an HP Tech come in to test drives in the Vines Servers RAID array (they identified a problem with the drives....long story) and he sees a Linux Box (P2-233) in the corner. We start gabbing about upgrades and I tell him I am going to be upgrading the Linux Server soon. He starts mentioning all kinds of neat hardware and how if it were him he would do this and that. Then he asks me what I'm planning. I just look at him and tell him.."I plan on putting an extra 64MB of RAM in it".
The point is, that as long as it is useful people will continue to use it. Hide that 98 box behind a firewall, run Firebird/Thunderbird for browsing and email, keep the virus scanner up to date and don't do anything stupid. Flip the tec company marketing drones the bird and do things on your own terms.
This is actually good news. If lots of those unfortunate Windows users are complacent enough to stick with Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP ... then they may just be complacent enough to pass on Longhorn when it comes out. Just think, all those users with "old" Windows installations. All those users who aren't using Palladium. All those users who are preventing Microsoft from forcing the world to use Palladium because it would lock out so many people.
Use Palladium to lock out Linux and Mac, and you lock out all previous versions of Windows as well. As far as I'm concerned, this is a good thing. Let's hope that in 2005-2006 there are plenty of people content enough with their current Windows systems that they won't bother to upgrade. (And, of course, we must hope that Linux uptake has accelerated by then, too.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Win98 under win4lin is the officially supported way for me to run windows stuff on my Linux box at my NASA contractor site.
Granted, our contractor tech support is a bad combination of technically clueless and overly restrictive ( their typical response to any request is "we don't support that, and we refuse to try it"), so their approval of win4lin/Win98 is not a glowing recommendation.
When I left my last job, most of the developers were still using NT because there was no money for upgrades to 2000 or XP. Scary! I insisted on a Win2K box because I wanted to run Eclipse. They eventually gave me one after the layoffs when there were extra licenses to go around.
For algorithm stuff its better on an old computer because you can see the big difference in efficiencies. Implementing different algorithms in a learning environment really has impact when one version runs for say a minute and then a different implementation runs in 5 seconds. The natural response is "Wow" ... and you remember it. Though of course you could just increase the complexity for a faster computer, but perhaps not if you have to create data for it.
Bitter and proud of it.
Microsoft has deliberately designed the NTFS file system in Windows XP so that it cannot copy all of its own system files. Microsoft tech support employees have verfied that this is so. That's why you can't use XCOPY.EXE or NTBACKUP.EXE or ROBOCOPY.EXE to make a functional full hard disk backup of a Windows XP system partition.
That's crippled. Apparently Microsoft crippled NTFS for copy protection and to encourage people to buy a new computer when their old one fails. To me, this is completely outside acceptible behavior. I predict that there will be massive layoffs at Microsoft within the next 5 years, as more and more people switch to Linux.
I don't think anyone cares about the small extra amount they pay for Windows when they buy a new computer. I understand that the amount large system builders pay is less than $40 per computer. However, people are extremely unhappy about Microsoft's attempts to control their product after it is sold. For most people Linux is not attractive because it is free; Linux is attractive because, with Windows, you are partners with a company that consistently acts in a destructive way toward you.
This comment is NOT anti-Microsoft. I consider any anti-Microsoft behavior immature. This is anti- bad company management. Microsoft's marketing failure is destroying the company. It's one of the biggest marketing failures of all time, including the Arthur Anderson and Enron self-destruction.
The two statistics aren't in conflict. The 80 percent one only refers to companies that still have some number of machines running Windows 95 or 98. The 20 percent one refers to the total number of Win95/98 machines out there. If the companies who have Win95/98 machines only have 25% of their computers running Win95/98, then everything's pretty much squared up. (It's an oversimplification that doesn't take into account home users, but you get my point)
If it's QuickBooks, the payroll update expires in two years, regardless. QB is software that expires.
If it's any other package, there's probably no XP upgrade for it, period. Just about every other accounting package went out of business in the 98->2000->XP transitions. Except for Great Pains (Plains), the toy software now upscaled by MS to $50 million + companies.
Win4lin running 98 was the only way I could get my wife on linux: Flash, Illustrator and Arachnophilia (doesn't like the Java version). And the ability to see see what web pages are like on IE. Took a while but she is pretty good about using Win4Lin in one virtual window and linux on the rest. I have Windows 95 running in Win4Lin for encyclopedias and magazines that have proprietary Windows readers, Delphi and some Media Player content that I can't access with Mplayer.
I've read that VMWare is pretty good but the WFW3.11 I have running under Bochs is sort of a stupid computer trick so I'm a little leery about PC emulation performance.
It's no surprise to me that relatively few corporate desktops are running XP. You have to activate every copy! Yes, a few volume license keys were leaked that will get you a non-expiring illicit installation of XP but you can't apply certain updates (such as SP1) with them.
Compare that to Windows 98, 98SE, Me and 2000 where nothing stops you from borrowing a CD and installing it on every desktop in your organization with the same CD Key.
This is already happening, I've only just started using Linux again after about 18 months sticking to Windows. It was a consious decision, not because I could't keep my home network running, but because with the tools at the time, I couldn't be bothered. I missed the old girl, and thankfully I've come back to find that things are MUCH better now for the desktop/tinkering user.
John, I'm Only Dancing!
In the broadcast industry, more and more computers are replacing humans. Has been like this for nearly 2 decades. We have an old Scott Studios system that uses ISA APT audio cards. I have a copy of win98 on the shelf so i can still use these systems. Edit msdos.sys for GUI=0 and blamo, most recent dos i can get. Keeping in mind to the upgrade biggots, a new Scott Studios system is about $22,000 a studio... TO UPGRADE! I've got 10 studios...
Alex Hartman
Engineer KCLD 104.7FM
If you bought an oscilloscope (or any HARDWARE) which came with giant holes in it,
the manufacturer would be required to provide you with one which did not have giant holes in it
or to give you your money back.
They would not be allowed to say, "We're bringing out a new model in 2 or 3 years;
buy one of those--but we're not giving you back your money."
gewg_
Renumeration? What, are we indexing developers now?
Is this a real typo or one of those things like "For all intensive purposes" as opposed to "all intents and purposes" where a similar sounding but meaningless word or phrase gets into the lexicon because of mishearing words.
Photos.
Here's another way the Windows XP file system is crippled. Here is a direct quote from the Microsoft Press book Microsoft Windows XP Power Toolkit, ISBN 0-7356-1790-2:
"No Shared Folder Passwords in Windows XP
"The folder password security feature, available in previous features of Windows designed for home users, has been removed from Windows XP." [my emphasis]
Note the sneaky, dishonest language. Microsoft puts down its own operating system, Windows 98, which was definitely sold as a business operating system.
The lack of being able to assign passwords to folders is a huge shortcoming in Windows XP that deliberately reduces the security in the XP file system.
I expect the software to last longer than the hardware. They're just bits.
So where do I get my Windows 2000 disc under this program?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
...forcing users to upgrade "or else". I personally would rather use 98 than XP. Well, make that 98lite .
Again, this is Billy Boy's friendly way of saying "I don't give a flyin' cow pie what YOU think. I am the head of Microsoft. You will upgrade and send me more money that I can use to screw my customers over or I'll devour your heart and banish your soul."
WINDOWS!? We don't need no steenkin' Windows!
I meant to ask if renumeration is the remuneration as "for all intensive purposes" is to "for all intents and purposes". He's not the first person I've heard use renumeration.
Photos.
Will MicroSoft open source the code? Is that happening? Has it already happened?
I'm currently supporting the student residents network at a university in the UK, we have to audit every machine before it gets online. Out of over 200 users, only 3 have been running windows 9x/ME, 2 have been using windows 2000, 3 have been apple macs, 0 have been Linux, and the rest were WinXP. Personally I use Win2k because eyecandy in an OS isn't terribly important to me (I hate skinned apps and just want the thing to work and not crash, so Win2k is my MS OS of choice - yes I do use Slackware on my servers, because for them I need an OS that works and doesnt need to be usable every day)
So while I accept a lot of people still use Win9x, in the UK i think the majority of people have flipped over to XP, just from my own information.
"What is needed, is to have students with an enthusiasm for computers. I think the dot com boom rushed in a lot of people who "learned computers" because they wanted a good job, not because they liked computers."
And what's wrong with that? Is this the "entitlement mentality" manifest. "Thou shall not hold a position for money, but love". The facts of life is that the majority hold their present position not because they love it, but because they need a job. It would be nice if we all can have our dream jobs, were we are paid for what we love, but that's not reality. Computers or otherwise. Do you think all those people working a McJob rushed in because they "love it"? Hell no! What about the present influx into the service industry? I'm certain everyone's doing it because they "love it" and not because the economy is a train wreck. I wonder if the present employees are compaining about the inrush of people who are not doing it for the "love"?
It works -sorta
I was using Windows 95 until the summer of 2002, when I installed the free Windows 98 "upgrade" that came with my computer. My computer is 6 years old and I may or may not buy a new one with Windows XP this year. Even if I buy a new computer, I will save this one for games and as a backup Internet computer in the unlikely event that anything ever goes wrong with my new Windows XP computer ;) Hey, I know that's extemely unlikely, given how rock solid and dependable Windows XP is, but lightning could strike the house and disable the XP computer, so I will save my old one as a backup just in case ;)
29% of OSes hitting Goolge in Sept 03 were Windows 98
38% XP, 20% 2K, 3% NT, 3% Mac, 1% linux and 95.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Try running Mozilla on win95 and you'll probably find the same problem: mainly, it does in fact take a fair bit certain amount of system resources from a machine with low RAM/CPU.
You'll also notice that you cannot get IE6 for win95, so you can't compare that way... though 5.5 does most of what you need as far as basic browsing.
IceWM is nice, but when the apps you are loading are rather bloated (mainly to include the features we all desire) you still get slow on old hardware.
The reason I still have used windows 98 is rather simple... much of my games or older software simply do not work on XP.
As I wasn't into the linux scene until the last few years, I can't compare that far back, but I have seen several old linux projects that run just fine on current OS/kernel versions.
You dont have a choice and that makes it a tax
Leave well alone is always a good rule and lots of applications work OK on old OSs and won't work on new OSs.
Micro$oft has retired this version of Windows.
Enter your credit card number, and click OK to
upgrade
[OK] [Shutdown]
Yeah, you got that right. A quantum leap is extremely tiny. It is just about the tiniest thing known to man. So if it is a quantum leap improvement - sure... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure you can. Do what I did.
..
Boot
Use partition magic to convert from NTFS to fat32.
reboot to knoppix. Use FXsamba to transfer everything out
Install new drive.
knoppix again to move everything to new drive.
Boot.
partition magic back to NTFS.
Didn't lose a byte.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
I don't think anyone makes x86 laptops, except for Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, and a handful of other OEMs. They all have licence agreements with Microsoft to include the price of the Windows install in the MSRP. It is between the OEM and the consumer this charge for Windows which is not requested nor desired. It is not a problem of the VAR or shop.
They can delete it for you, but you are still charged for it. It's a tax, pure and simple, on buying portable x86 computers without paying Microsoft money because, "Everyone runs Windows!"
You can make white box PCs, but there is no such thing as a whitebox laptop. I can't buy myself laptop HD, laptop motherboard, laptop case + LCD, etc, and itegrate it myself. No such thing exists.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Apparently, just after the 2/03 MSIE 5.0 users upgraded to 6.0, only to downgrade again fairly soon afterwards.
"Use partition magic to convert from NTFS to fat32."
When you convert to FAT32, you lose all NTFS file permissions. However, your method is interesting.
The main issue is that Microsoft has tried to prevent the user from making full hard drive backups. It can be done with non-Microsoft tools, as the referenced Slashdot article says.
Many business applications did not run reliably under Windows NT, because the driver support was more primitive. Maybe Microsoft did try to sell people on the marketing fiction that Windows 98 should only be used for home use. If they did, that was dishonest, too.
What is FXsamba? No hits for this on Google.
More stories - I'm running Mandrake 9.1, with Win4Lin for win 98SE on 350 Pentium II. Linux runs great even with KDE ( once started ) and Win98 under Linux is very useable. Borland Delphi is fast and Visual C 6 is useable. Amazing, MS Word 2000 is as fast ( and starts faster ) than in my office system 1GHz Pentium with Win2000, Excel runs great, Mathcad is decent, and so on. Of course - 512MB RAM helps even if it is old 133 but the main reason for speed, I think, is that all I/O uses Linux file system ( I use XFS ). Can't compete my main 2x2.4 GHz, 2 GB memory, WinXP developement system in work but at home I don't need that much speed and this 350 with Linux is fast enough for movies, burning CDs, watching TV and programming tasks, etc. Oh - and of course, no need for boot, Linux just keeps running and Win98 can run weeks without reboot under Win4Lin even I'm doing heavy compiles and network programs testing on it, only MS Office seems slowly eating resourses and will require to reboot 98 time to time. Two Win98 crashes in a year - much, much less than when running 98 native.
It may have been clear to you, but it wasn't to me. Anyhow, I bought the corporate version, because it doesn't require activation. In the article you referenced, this question is very easy to miss:
"If I buy a notebook computer running Windows XP Home Edition for my child, will she be able to log onto her school's network/domain?
"No. If you want to be able to join a domain for which you have access, you will need to have Windows XP Professional on your laptop. Learn more about why Windows XP Professional is best for large networks."
Many people would stop reading at the word "child". Note that some dishonest, sneaky marketing person is implying that Windows XP Home would only be bought for a child, when in fact it is sold with almost every laptop.
"As the common people switch to Linux, they will encounter many of the same problems they encountered on Windows, except they won't have any idea how to deal with them. They will end up switching back to their Windows boxes because they at least have an idea how to deal with things on that"
... what makes you think switching back and forth will help that situation?
... she's married to a geek. As for the others, I'm not so certain I even WANT them to migrate to Linux. The MSFT tech reps ... even the two who speak English ... couldn't help them and I don't want to be stuck with their mess.
The 'common people'? You mean like my wife?
The 'common people' didn't have any clue how to handle their computer problems under Windows
I doubt if my wife will ever advance beyond the level of 'clueless user' but that I okay
I use both 98 and various versions of Linux. I am waiting for ONE program to be ported to Linux then MSFT is outta my house (5 computers on a home lan) forever.
OK, I am the spoiled 3 year old who didn't get the toy I wanted, but what does that make, say Ford Motor Company? Ford puts a lot of effort into their own R&D and patents because they don't want to pay tribute money (i.e. patent royalties) on anything going into a car because that really kills them on their bottom line. I guess the tribute money they pay for office-worker desktops doesn't bother them, although they are big enough they probably could have their own guys customize a Ford Linux Desktop, although Bill is probably smart enough to cut them a deal on a Windows site license below that cost.
Just because I call it tribute doesn't mean it doesn't make sense under circumstances to pay it. The reason I call it tribute is that I want to draw a distinction between, say my heating contractor charging me $700 to fix my central air (my heating contractor is a pirate, but the money I am paying is not tribute because parts are installed in my system and a guy has to come over to the house and do stuff) and what economists call an economic rent.
Tribute money would be if say, my central air ran this control program called Carrier 98SE, and every couple of days the AC would just quit and I would have to go in the basement, throw a switch, wait 10 minutes, and watch a message flash on the screen telling me that I shouldn't have turned the AC off by turning off the power. I could pay $100 to install a control program called Carrier XP, only I had to connect the air conditioner to the phone to be allowed to turn it on, and by connecting the AC to the phone, not only would the AC run constantly until the coils froze up, ten of my friends would have their AC do the same thing in the next week.
As I have said before Microsoft Longway as in a long way off is more discriptive.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Suprise suprise, not everyone can afford to upgrade their clients. Why is this so supprising to Microsoft, they have some intelligent individuals working there, or atleast they had. If the user cannot afford it, then upgrades are meaningless. Besides just try to run XP with 32 or 64 meg of ram on an old P2 233, good luck. Gates you can go suck wind, if you think you are going to get away with forced upgrades for small business!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
And they have no intention of upgrading anytime soon.
Could explain why they can all afford shiny new cars every few years!
Except all of your ACLs and security descriptors, of course.
I run Windows 3.1 for email and word processing. I won't put any later version of Windows on the Internet, because most of the viruses and worms are targeted at later Windows versions. Most of my web access is through Linux.
I ran my Windows 3.1 against that site that checks your security, and the report came back that my system was highly secure. Windows 3.1 doesn't support most of the newer Windows features that are exploited for attacks.
I'm running a mix of Windows '95 and Windows '98 on 110 desktop computers at work. The stuff does not wear out, and I don't need support from Microsoft.
Lates is not necessarily greatest, especially when you have to pay real money to keep up !
I am not a lawyer, but a possible answer to this is glaringly obvious.
Cable theft is different because it has a component called "theft of signal"; by adding another receiving device to the cable company's line you are not only recieving programming without permission, you are placing a tiny additional electrical load on the cable signal, and that's theft.
Yes, it sounds silly, but it is similar to the concept of criminal trespass to property (in the USA) which my lawyer friend tells me can start with something as minor as a single bent blade of grass.
The act of downloading copyrighted music without the rights owners' permission has no similar "theft" component (the copying costs are borne by the downloader in the form of bandwidth used and paid for by the downloader), and so the two acts are different under the law.
It is important to note that the interests of the cable company and the television programming providers, who make and hold the rights to the programs that the cable company distributes, are different. In the case of cable theft, the cable company, not the television programming rights holders will be the one pressing criminal charges against cable signal thieves.
Putting moderation advice in your
"Windows 95 plus Internet Explorer ran blazing rings around Debian Linux plus Mozilla"
Which IE exactly? I would guess 5.x tops; you could try an opera version from the same age. After some time, I found html 3 browsers quite useless.
Concerning linux: try lynx or links (both text-only browsers). The second is still maintained (elinks) and also has a graphical version, which I have been using on really old alphas.
If you are stuck with low ram, try to downgrade X11, stay away from gnome/kde (try afterstep wm, no need to edit dot-file) and don't run mozilla; as it can easily use more than 100mb of memory, though most current browser do so.
> I can build a new machine damn for around that cost,
I wonder why you inserted the word damn randomly in that sentence. It's almost as if it was a Freudian damn slip or something.
Still haven't been able to get quake to run on my laptop in Linux I get illegal option thats what I keep win98 around for. Also I have the first gta for windows I'm not sure about running this in Linux either. Anyone wanna help me get quake working in Linux?
While I think you're right at the local office level, three times in the past year I've seen a major company (in the banking and insurance industries) force an upgrade on the entire system at every level, which had no visible benefit to anyone but Dell and IBM (and in one case, pretty well FUBAR'd local operations). Appears whoever counts the beans still hasn't got a clue.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Can't find a lightweight web browser? What about lynx! I bet it would run just fine under console.
Actually, it strikes me as rather funny that someone quotes a price of well under $600 for a complete computer system (monitor included) and people gripe that it's "overpriced" and "spendy"!
It wasn't that long ago that you just couldn't get into the personal computer market for under $1500 or so -- and you get SO much more computing power today than you got then.
I maintain that to a large extent, you still "get what you pay for". All that's really happened in the PC compatible world is the sheer volume of sales and competition has pushed quality down, in order to squeeze rock-bottom pricing out of a system.
I work on PCs for a living, and frankly, the build quality and overall design put into most name-brand PCs today is piss-poor. If I never have to work on a "consumer grade" HP or Compaq again, I'll be very pleased! There's no good reason you should have to remove the power supply just to upgrade the RAM, folks! Don't even get me started on eMachines systems.... And even the Sony Vaios are simply pretty cases with failure-prone components inside. (I have friends at extended warranty companies who say they get more claims filed on Vaios than any other brand they cover.)
Honestly, these days, I have to think long and hard when a customer asks me what to buy if he wants a "top quality PC", and says "I'm willing to pay more, as long as I get quality." The whole PC market practically ignores these folks nowdays. Thank goodness for Apple, who still believes in offering top-tier systems for discriminating consumers.
Because I can't get Win2k or WinXP to run Dungeon Master, one of the most stress-reducing games I've ever played. (Also, one of the few games where you're encouraged to be bad, but doesn't draw inane comments from the moral majority. *grin* But that's beside the point.)
Not many work environments where beating the living crap out of your employees is an advised strategy...
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Yea, the company I work for still runs Win95, 98, and NT4. We only have 1 Windows 2000 system.
Since they all work just fine (although they are slowwww sometimes), there is no reason to upgrade. We're on a secure network, so security patches are of very little concern (yea, I know inside users can be a threat, but hey, it's not my network!)
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
So,
how many here still use RH3.0.3, Yggdrasil, SLS or the original Slackware?
Good lord. Please shoot these people as soon as possible. I'm not sure who your users are but even for the non-MS crowd there are PLENTY of better alternatives to Netscape 4.x out there now. If you are using Netscape 4.x on anything built in the past five years you are wrong. And judging from my own web logs I'd say your total percentage of users running anything else besides Internet explorer/ outlook express is probably less than 5%. But I don't doubt for one second that those 5% of the internet out there using shit like Netscape 4.x do a LOT of complaining because very little on the internet will work properly for them today.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
Got bit by a contractor on your house? Geeze, stop whining. It's YOUR responsibility to make sure the contract covers YOUR a$$. If you let them run you over, you got what you deserved.
Thank you, thank you for posting this link. If I had karma points I would lavish them on you (well, up to the max of one, at least). Posts like this are the reason I read /. : to get clued in to cool new programs like ultr@vnc.
It's got kind of a stupid name, but what an awesome feature set.
What I meant to say was that I don't forsee upgrading from an 1800Mhz to whatever's next until maybe 3 years from now.
The problem with writing an OS from scratch is that you'll never get into most of the features of a modern OS. In today's age of maintenance and consulting, it's more important for students to be able to read code and plug together reusable components than make a couple of basic components from scratch.
Ideally we'd be able to approach the study of operating systems from both sides, but as OSes are no longer a central part of CompSci curriculums, there just isn't time.
I drew the line there because that's when I started using Linux and so I have no idea what previous versions were like. >:)
In general my point is that students should be learning about fairly advanced features in OS design and therefore need to be looking at fairly recent operating systems. I'm not exactly sure which features are implemented in which versions, but I'm sure we can look that up before the first day of class.
If they are just using it for mail however,. that's hasn't changed.. Yes, as a web browser netscape 4.x is antiquated and netscape 7/mozilla should be used.. But for an e-mail client, netscape 4.x still works good. (though I don't even have netscape 4.x installed on my system anymore.. Evolution and mozilla mail..)
My brother recently found my dad's old 6 year old laptop when he was cleaning out to go to college. I now "own" (HP still legally owns it) the laptop, and it has Windows 95 on it. I like it. The problem is that it doesnt have the Quick Launch bar, which was introduced in Windows 98.
I came. I saw. I got the T-shirt
My friends use xp because it networks well and they like the features. I'm not concerned about networking and I won't be using it for anything apart from games. I want something fairly minimal and I was wondering if 98 can be brought up to scratch.
Any advice? Thanks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you copying from the installation media onto the hard disk drive? Under almost any interpretation of copyright, that's making a "fixed [copy] in [a] tangible medium of expression." (17 USC 102).
Random-access memory doesn't qualify because the copy is not fixed.
They wrote it into the law an explicit statement that it wasn't copyright infringement. See:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/117.html
Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1)
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
**
The whole house-of-cards of clickwrap 'contracts' was never well founded. Courts agreed and it was later explicitly written out in the law.
Of course, there's a loophole. Technically many applications consist of both software and other data: graphics, sounds, images, etc. Who knows if the exception would apply to the other important components. (With luck, the court may not make such a disctinction.)
No consideration, no contract. The most they can use is 'precedent' and 'this is the way its always been' and that the people they screw over cannot fight it.
This system has been touted as being the least buggy of all of microsofts system. That in itslef, should tell you something. Also, keep in the that from XP and 2000 on up, Microsoft as well as your ISP is adding code under the guise of security to know everything you do with your computer. I have even seen my ISP's dll's loaded with a hook into software which I am building. So keep in mind that if you are concerned about your privacy, go back to Windows Me, and let your ISP know that you don't like them looking at your stuff. I had an upgrade from my latest machine from Windows Me to XP. I decided not to upgrade since many of my games, and other products would not be able to run. I believe a company should remain compatible etc...