Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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/
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
#
"The interface is clean and simple -- not like the fruity looking XP default one. With a little tweaking (and a good firewall, of course), you can make it relatively secure too."
Well with a little tweaking, you can make Windows XP look like Windows 2000 as well.
"Yes, I know MS sucks, but they did a great job with Win2k."
I have been running Windows XP Professional for a while now and although I am, as well, not too fond of the way Microsoft goes about business, (I hate them with a particularly fiery passion regarding their purchase of Bungie Software...) I admit that Windows XP, if used correctly will work better than Windows 2K, dare I say, even good enough for me to get stuff done, and even on a regular basis.
My computer is a custom build, I leave it on all the time, and I do all sorts of wierd things to it. It has survived - there is life after Microsoft. My ability to do this (leave it on, have it work under stress) actually increased after upgrading to XP (and a bit more when upgrading to XP pro) and increased a lot when I ditched my HP Laptop and went to this custom rig.
Of course, I also get MS Windows XP Pro from my college bookstore for $6.00, so if it weren't for the piracy busting price, I would be all over linux like a bum on a ham sandwich.
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.
It's scary how many NT 4 boxes I come across in the work world.
You know, the last couple of years haven't exactly been an economic cakewalk. Lots of companies have better things to do than spend money on new computers when their existing ones are working just fine.
For the record? I still use NT on my desk. Actually, I have two machines - the second runs Linux. Why can't I upgrade NT? Because the machine only has a P2/300 processor in it, and I'm fairly certain that a 'newer' OS will slow it down to something unbearable.
Why don't I care? Because I do all my real work on the Linux machine. The NT box is merely for Outlook, and testing our app using IE. I don't need anything faster, and frankly if the company was spending money, I'd rather have a raise than a replacement for that box.
I figure most people who are still using NT or 9x are probably using it for similar things. If all you're using is Office, why do you need to upgrade when everything works just fine on the machine you've got? And yes, I get irritated that our sales folks always have the newest, shiniest computers on their desks while I have old machines on mine trying to do software development, but I've been able to make do just fine. Perhaps I could use a new machine more than they could, but it's not a battle I would win.
At least for Linux we can use OpenMosix to get some improved performance. The suckers using Windows don't have anything like that.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
No, he's saying it's stupid.
I have a house. The dirt that surrounds that house works quite well. It's good dirt, and grows stuff I want, quite nicely. But, it's old dirt. In fact, it's as old as the planet. Should I upgrade it? Will new dirt somehow "add value" to my dirt-needs, even though my existing dirt fills those needs (and is more than I need) already?
I have a hammer in my basement. It's a nice one, pounds nails quite nicely. Perfect balance, excellent weight, comfortable to use. It's also about... 80 years old. A new hammer will somehow "add value" to what I need it to do?
I have NT all over my shop. We have these machines in our shop because of some specialized software that we need, and the software works quite nicely. The stuff in the racks all run NT, the majority of desktops all run NT. Upgrading will somehow "add value" to what I need them to do?
Not hardly. The biggest problem with NT is that 70% of the crap it comes with is completely irrelevent to what we need. Worse, this 70% is where all of the exploits lie... so I can't just ignore it, instead I'm forced to maintain this "baggage".
AS2003 is even worse. Internet Connection Wizard? Where's the option for being a quad-homed box with multiple DS3 lines? Ooo! MSN! On a rack mounted box! And LookOut Express! Irrelevent, and unwanted. Let's see... we're now up to an OS footprint of over an entire gig. And, I'm gonna actually need to use... uh, 20 megs of it to pound these nails in. And the nails end up pounded in exactly the same as NT does it. Yep, that's value...
Don't confuse an OS with an Application. If "everything that comes with the OS" is all you need... you probably don't actually need a computer. On the other hand, if you need to drop a few million for a real application to run on that OS, then you'll quickly discover how f*cking irrelevent that specific OS is.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
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.
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.
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.