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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.
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.
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'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 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
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^]
Yes, I know MS sucks, but they did a great job with Win2k.
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--
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)
MS OS/2 1.0 was not EOL.
It was abandoned by MS at 1.2 so that 3COM's 3+Open and IBM's PC Server OS's that built on top of it would have to react and lose market share.
MS was in an agreement with IBM and 3COM that allowed them to take advantage of the developments of the other two while leaving them in the cold. IBM tried to pick up development of OS/2 (including WARP), but that is a different story.
NT, Win2K, and XP all use the "net xxx" commands that were the heart of 3COM's OS even before the "alliance" with Microsoft. I think this is why Bob Metcalfe seems to hate Gates with such a passion.
"Come into my den said the spider to the fly."
~8^]
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.
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.
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
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.
3Com's 3+Open was based on Microsoft's Lan Manager product. 3Com's contribution to 3+Open was the network transport and drivers for a bunch of network cards. The later enhanced it to add an x.400 mail transport and a bunch of other stuff.
The "net xxx" commands all come from Lan Manager originally, NOT from 3Com.
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
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.
It may be the same as abandonware, but that doesn't mean you can copy it. Abandonware is still copyright violation, just with a different justification from normal warez.
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.
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!
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 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 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
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.
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.
... 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?
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.
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"
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 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)
Apparently, just after the 2/03 MSIE 5.0 users upgraded to 6.0, only to downgrade again fairly soon afterwards.