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Creaky Operating Systems Form IT Foundations
maotx writes "The Washington Post has an article on how aging operating systems are still widely used. The article states that "The research firm IDC estimates that of the roughly 514 million paid-for copies of Windows on desktops and laptops worldwide at the end of 2004, almost 21 percent were the aging Win 95, 98 and Millennium Edition releases." That equates to around 108 million copies being used."
Windows 3.11 for workgroups running TCP/IP and NCSA Mosaic. :-)
..don't fix it.
there are hospitals, companys, schools...etc that have ancient computer sitting around still doing random easy tasks. There is no need to update those computers...unless a larger load of work is needed to be done.
If it wasn't for C, we would be stuck using BASI, PASAL and OBOL.
A bank I did work at recently still ran Win95a
...doesn't that mean broken?
This sounds like a message for the users, but maybe it is a wakeup for the OS makers. If that many people still see their OS as viable and are willing to use it... then should the OS companies really be holding a gun to their head in what can only be an attempt to wring more money from them?
"This research into making sure companies have the latest version of Windows was sponsored by Microsoft."
Then, quite simply, for most people who just want email and browsing it's more than sufficient for them. Same goes for a lot of small businesses. They don't need multi-Gigahertz machines or recent OS licenses. They just need something that will run their word processors, spreadsheets, and print docs.
It's like the toaster to them. Who buys a new toaster or blender until the old one breaks? Same with computers for a surprising number of people. I've seen it with my relatives, I've seen it with friends. I've been appalled by what some of them use, but talk to them about upgrading and it's "No thanks, it works just fine."
Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but not everyone is on the bi-annual hardware upgrade cycle.
And if you think that the weakest links in the IT department are the computers being used, then you're part of the problem. Hint: the problem lies in the parts you can't upgrade.
May god have mercy on the souls of anyone currently running this OS.
Is there any OS more unstable?
You mean Windows isn't supposed to creak when it's new?
I used NT 4.0 forever because it just had such a workmanlike user interface.
Actually, ObOnTopic, the most interesting thing to me about this topic is how easily Microsoft killed NT 4.0 by simply witholding support for USB. NT4 actually was, ah, very workable, if not workmanlike, except for that crucial missing USB connectivity in the later years.
Remember these operating systems work as well as they did when they were released so why change?
Windows 95 or 3.11 doesn't suddenly lose features when they become 5 years old. the analogy to 'creaky' isn't flawed. operating systems don't wear out or 'break' over time they just get found exploits for or don't provide newer functionality that might be needed.
But you can patch them and do workarounds for their security problems that keep them every bit as secure as anything else new out there (maybe even more so!!!) and if you don't need newer functionality but just to keep doing a job then why spend money needlessly on something that doesnt need to upgrade and still works?
I bet there are many of completely secure Linux 2.0 and Windows 95 servers and desktops in use by business that will keep doing the job they are needed to for years to come, maybe longer.
Although using an old operating system is fine for just some box sitting there not connected to any sort of network, once you plug it into a network you have a disaster waiting to happen. Many of these old operating systems are sitting there unpatched just waiting to become a sysadmin's worst nightmare. Although, if it was possible to keep these old OS'es patched, I don't see anything wrong with using them.
I still use Wndows 98 because I don't want to pay for an OS I won't use for more then a few months. I'm switching to Ubuntu Linux soon and if my modem wasn't a winmodem I'd already be using it.
I like muppets.
A company I work for supports some software that has some pretty strict requirements to run. Their minimum requirements are relatively low for hardware, but we always say it will run slow and might cause other specific issues.
Despite the minimum of requiring Windows XP/2000, we still get a lot of people running windows 98 and NT. They don't even have service packs.
If you're looking for a way to get your company/organization to update their software, you should look elsewhere than minimum system requirements or suggestions from tech experts. It's just too easily disavowed with an /enlightened/ thought to the effect of "Well, it worked before."
This forum Sig is licensed under the LGPL.
...then you have my sympathy.
are using.
I used to work for the company that wrote a software for IBM mainframes. We had to deal with the different agencies. each used something REALLY old, I had to maintain virtual machine environment, so we can bring up some of those older OS versions if necessary for debugging. I remember one funny case when someone called from the agency I won't give a name (but you can figure it out), the guy said he had the software crashed, but he DID NOT WANT to give any details of what was wrong, neither to tell which operating system he was using. We had to deal with his boss and his boss' boss to get the information we needed to debug the problem.
Well, there were two reasons why they've used OS'es that old. First, if it works, don't upgrade it. It ain't broken so don't fix it. Second, upgrade may require bigger hardware, and you have to justify the cost of upgrade, so why bother?
For those familiar with the history of IBM mainframe-based OS'es, we had to maintain OS/VS1 (or something like that). blah.
Abelit being slightly offtopic, half of those people running older OS's probably don't give two whits about newer software (my girlfriends grandparents pc is still running win95 OSR2!) and the most complicated thing they have done is write aodoccument or print out an invoice.
The other half just accept their pc is getting slower and slower with all the cruft (and spyware too?) and other crap that is slowly killing their systems.
Then again i doubt anyone here is running anything older than win2k/ Macos X unless they are a tightarse.
(this is where i mention my laptop is a P120 running Win98)
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
Like running old cnc machines or some old databases for warehouses. They probably don't need new operating systems.
-BTW. Ncaa tourn.
I hope Duke loses. How did Washington get a 1st round seed. Northern Iowa selection shows me that the NCAA tournament is not fair. Too many school left out that could beat them.
My experience with laptops has been that the manufacturer only supports it with the version of the operating system that was originally installed on the laptop. They have no interest in expending any effort on updating the laptop-specific software to be compatible with newer releases of the operating system. That means that you are stuck with whatever came on the laptop until it finally dies. From the manufacturer's point of view, the "solution" is to buy a new laptop.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1) 98se, especially with 98lite installed and IE removed, *smokes* any other MS-windows based OS I've ever seen (and I've seen 'em all) in terms of performance. My machine crawls when I boot to the 2000 side, the 98 side is like *butter*, and I hardly ever have to reboot. Sure, the buttons aren't all round and bubbly, and there's no transparency support, but I have yet to find a single thing that I want to do that 98 won't support.
2) DOS-based (which is to say, 95, 98 and ME) OS's are not nearly as widely targeted by virus writers. The vast majority of new viruses target the 2k/XP/2k3 systems, for the simple reason that they're SOOOOO full of holes.
3) 95 and 98 (ME, eh, not so much) have been out long enough that 99% of the problems with them have been fixed. Of course, I wouldn't go to 98 until ME came out. My rule of thumb is go with whichever MS OS is the second most current one. That said, I still don't feel the burning need to upgrade to XP, and I doubt I ever will.
4) Like somebody already said, if it's not broke, and it's paid for, why change? Why waste money on the new version and then waste more money on the man-hours for MicroServices to install it, migrate everything, deal with all the users whining about where all their desktop wallpaper went, etc... just to wind up with a system that's ultimately slower and more vulnerable to attack?
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Not. How is this new? Anyone who has parents with PCs know they will never upgrade their operating system unless they buy a new system.
Hell, I'm not going to do it for them. I pretend I don't know the first thing about computers. "Mom, you know I'm a network engineer. I know as much about computers as you do."
Look at that - a hundred million+ machines running Win9x. This should be exactly where Linux shines, revamping old machines with new desktop life. Except, of course, that combos of KDE/GNOME + OpenOffice.org + Mozilla are even weightier than their Windows equivalents, thus destroying an upgrade path.
It's very frustrating. Yeah, you can use Fluxbox and Dillo and stuff like that, but it's hardly an enterprise desktop, is it?
Much as I love Linux, it's painful to see massive Microsoftian bloat in the major desktops and apps, all the time removing an incentive to upgrade. Or, in cases like this, eliminating an upgrade path altogether!
If Linux was slim, fast and snappy, it'd be an absolutely perfect solution. But while it offers barely any perfomance advantages over XP/MSO, it's not so attractive.
These 100 million machines could and should be running Linux, if we'd paid attention to elegant code and performance. But instead we're seeing ever more newcomers turned off by the weight and sluggish performance. It's distressing.
Had a customer yesterday 486 DX 66 with Win 3.1 There still out there.
...Just reinstall it.
About six months ago I had to access some information on an aging (as in 13 year old) PICK server. The multiport board was fried years ago and I couldn't raise a terminal on the serial port. After a few hours of trying to capture the data I had the person who needed access to it copy it to a pad of paper from the screen.
Not good, to say the least, but the server in question hadn't been fired up in years.
Since then I've been putting disk images of our currently running database software on a Qemu image along with a copy of the qemu source and binaries on a DVD (and in the future the media might change, but you get the idea).
For emergency situations I can put a dvd into any available machine and have a "live" version of our DB running in minutes. I'd have loved it if I could've booted that PICK server in an emulator.
-dameron
Dude, get DSL!
For those of us afraid of hardware-based trustworthy computing, this is why it will not happen for a long, long time. More and more home users are going to be satisfied with the machines they have now until they break, and companies wishing to sell online content to them are just going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to buy a new, trustworthy computer to access the content.
I thought that *BSD was DYING.
I mean, are you really going to upgrade a piece-of-crap P166 to Windows XP, where it will run like shit? Or are you going to run DOS or Win95 or maybe Linux if you're 1337 enough, and still have it run acceptably fast?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Installing a new release of the operating system often means that every application on that system must be tested, which requires time and money that does not exist or is in short supply. You can't just install a new release of the operating system and hope nothing breaks.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
We're still running an old app that needs DOS. We have part of it running in a DOS window on an NT4.0 machine (NT's DOS sub-system is different from later Windows' versions).
Any OS that knows no separation between data and executable code, that has a single word-writable system directory with a mix of executables, libraries and config files where everyone and everything can happily write and overwrite stuff, that has an easily corruptable registry in an obscure binary format, that uses drive-letters which are randomly permutated every time a new device is attached, that stores the system time as local time and not as UTC, etc etc etc, must be considered a "creaky" OS in the sense of this post. Unfortunately, it looks like even Longhorn will be just another creaky OS...
Of course officer records was a different matter. Modern computers hooked to a central DB. Bastards.
Almost every place I've ever worked at that wasn't an IT/support shop has legacy software or hardware not supported by 2K/XP or even OS X, and they usually require Win98 (Or MS-DOS, or MacOS classic) to run it.
Sometimes it's a matter of supporting expensive, complex solutions that they don't want to pay to upgrade, like database apps like FileMaker. Yeah, you can upgrade and migrate that. But for how much cost? Time? Training? Lost data and functionality?
Other times it's things like Quark XPress forcing print shops to keep MacOS classic around because they took 3 or 4 fscking years to release an OS X version.
I'll *never* run XP. I primarily run 98 - behind a strong firewall of course - but will occasionally boot 2K for specific apps or network functions.
But never, ever XP. If I want wasted cycles propping up candy-like shiny red buttons I'll launch linux/KDE and get some real functionality with my eye candy.
What this really demonstrates is how stifling Microsoft's OS monopoly has been. When the core functions of a product have changed so little, have offered so little innovation, that there's no compelling reason to upgrade after more than ten years, it's clear that it is a stagnant product.
When no other businesses can enter the market and compete against your stagnant product, but a significant competitor for your product can be put together by a bunch of enthusiasts, then you have a company that has been successful in suffocating an industry.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm a shameless garbage picker and recently I found an old box with 8 mb memory running Windows 3.1. Being curious and hoping to get an old hard drive to running a smoothwall box, I snagged it and took it home.
Even though it was sitting in the rain, when I dried it off/out it booted right up and I played a little game of solitaire. But the really crazy thing is that it actually booted up much quicker than my Windows XP box with a AMD Athlon 2400+ & 1GB Memory.
Go figure!
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
oh....I'm current
It's amazing how many game titles on the shelves at CompUSA require Windows 95/98/Me and won't run on Win 2K/XP.
If Microsoft had a reasonable upgrade model we'd all be current. Instead, they strong-arm everyone to pay for the latest version. Imagine if shareware authors did the same...
Regards, Lex
A copy of a 10-year-old OS does everything it did when it was first compiled and installed (and maybe a bit more with the right add-ons). It is the software-industry (and virus writers) that reset peoples expectations and make the old OS seem decrepit.
Sometimes maintaining an old OS for an old system can be the best use of time and money. I have a 10-year-old machine that does a great job scanning old slides, negatives, and photos. And another 10-year-old laptop ($20 for the laptop, $2 for a WiFi card for it) that is perfect for light editing jobs and running a much-loved application that is no longer supported on newer machines (and that has no modern counterpart). So many common computing tasks don't need GHz speed or the latest OS.
Sometimes the best tool for the job is an old tool because old software never wears out (and old hardware is so delightfully cheap).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
so theres over 600 million pcs out there and only 1 million zombies? bullshit!
ps . and people said stable debian was old. ha!
Don't worry. All of those computers will be running old content anyway.
ROLOFFLE
mod up for being original, insightful, and absolutely hilarious!
"Paid-for" is the operative word. Don't forget about the pirated copies. Joe Blow burns a copy of Windows for his friend and on and on.
Similar, though. We're highly regulated and slow to change.
...of a telephone being slashdotted!
Since I went to Win2k and thence onward and downward to XP, I have had less and less uptime before lockups, and lots more problems on reboots. My current XP system on a 1.4G Athlon is slower, by a lot, than Win98 was on a Cyrix 333. Windows is NOT getting better.
;)
Every new system that runs Windows that I need to be sure of, which ain't many I'll admit, I now install the same old 98SE copy on. I also install Slack dual boot, so I can back it up easier and faster.
My next "PC" will probably be a miniMac.
I hate sigs, and refuse to have one.
Among them being that some of us simply have to make do with what we've got.
I am the IT department for a non-profit in San Francisco. We're an Apple only shop, and our charter does not allow us to spend money on hardware. Everything is donated. The result? Besides 8 Rev C and D iMacs and 3 Rev 1 Yosemite G3s, the other 40 or so machines are a motley collection of older, even ancient Macs.
On the iMacs and Yosemites, Jaguar is about as high as you should go if you actually need to get your work done in a timely manner (especially when you only have 192-320M in them). The other Macs run mostly 8.6-9.1, with a couple still running 7.x (if it ain't broke...).
While I (and the admin peeps) would love to have everyone on an OSX box running OpenOffice.org, it's simply not possible at this time. So, we have Office 98, 2001, and 2004 running... depending on the OS installed. I have AppleWorks installed most everywhere, but no one really uses it. Fortunately, Mozilla 1.2 is serviceable on the 8.x-9.x machines.
Like Sting said, "when the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around." Creaky or not.
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
To me a "creaky" OS is Vax/VMS or RSX-11. Although the latter is more fossilized than creaky. Windows 95? It's barely 10 years old for chrissake!
Apple's difficulty to getting people to upgrade (since the days of System 6!) have given them a perspective that they market each major upgrade (a.k.a. burdensome incompatibility) with flashy new features, programmer optimizations, and cosmetic improvements that all could have been added to older releases but are saved and introduced as the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Their marketing actually makes many people eager to pay for a set of major changes and incompatabilities each year. (All the Mac rumor sites are awash in speculation over the release date, pricing, and last minute features for Tiger.)
Microsoft's attempts to do this with Windows don't work nearly as well. Programmers willingly forgo new api's on their projects to reach a bigger market. Any cosmetic changes are made available by third-parties for older machines and many people demand a way to regress changes to the older, less-flashy version. Free code doesn't isn't always persuasive either. The major incompatabilities of services packs make some people choose not to stay current if it means that they don't have to hassle with making changes where they have no interest in making changes. If the changes benefit MS, they should be paying me to sabotage (err upgrade) my own system is how one of my previous bosses looked at it.
One of the disadvantages to free software is that there is no automatic way to transition the data, email, porn, and games over to a free software OS in a way that sates the desire people have to not have to screw with their computer. There do appear to be some software projects that are working on these issues, but I bet a partial hardware upgrade (e.g. new hard drive with Linux, transition tools, and way to make a complete archival backup of the old system) would be more along the lines of what Joe Artist or Grandpa Smith would want.
and pirate software using bittorrent! /(mp|ri)aa
My dad runs a 40 employee technology startup [not a computer-related company.]
And he's running Win98 on his PC, along with Firefox and Thunderbird and MS-Office 2000.
Running Win98 isn't a problem for him. I offered to upgrade him, but he wasn't interested. "Why mess with something that works? Why spend the time and money?"
Conclusion: Only upgrade when you're compelled to upgrade.
---
Me: Fedora Core 3, Mac OS X 10.3.
Dad: Win98
Mom: Win2000
Kids: Mac OS X 10.2
Sister: Win2000
Brother-in-Law: WinXP/Home
Girlfriend: WinXP/Home
Grandpa: Casio calculator from the 1970s.
Half don't care, the other half don't know better
Really?? I must not exist because I don't belong to either half. I've been running an unpatched Win98SE for more than 4 years because I care and know it's best for me.
The other half just accept their pc is getting slower and slower with all the cruft (and spyware too?) and other crap that is slowly killing their systems.
If anything my Win98 PC is faster than when I first installed it... I don't think you even know where spyware comes from! (hint: before NT it was super-hard if not impossible to catch malware through the OS alone)
This, my fellow geeks, is you opprtunity for revenge. Mod this 'gentleman' down, and scream out the name of the largest bully you've ever known! Live vicariously through slashdot; punish this man as you would punish no other.
The shop uses a single user, single task, DOS-based app. On some machines in a fullscreen DOS-box under Win95, on some machines even pure DOS. PentiumPro/Celeron era hardware.
Ancient? Sure. Stupid? Nope. If I would run this shop, I'd use network-booted thin clients, power-saving LCD screens, and some small opensource system like NetBSD, with maybe some custom code on top of it.
But this DOS-based setup isn't all bad: Windows may provide multi-tasking and GUI, but what's the use? If you run a single-user, single-task app all the time, DOS is good enough, and relatively stable. License-wise, DOS is virtually free, Win95 licenses should come almost free these days. With very limited selections to make, DOS-based menu's navigate as quickly or faster than any GUI. The system requirements to run this, make the hardware almost free as well. Sure it's old, but it works, and replacement hardware costs nothing.
Win95 not updated anymore? So what? The hardware doesn't change all by itself, right? Insecure? Maybe, but that only applies if you connect it to networks outside your own control. I doubt these machines have internet connection (not sure though). Maybe you could wreck operations here with a floppy disk smuggled in, but likely you'd get spotted, fired, and made to pay damages. If you work here, why would you risk that?
Drop something newer like Win2k or XP in there: massive upgrade of hardware required, license and maintenance costs skyrocketing with these bloated systems, and maybe a full rewrite of the known, working, and trusted app needed. Please point it out if you see any advantage in there.
Yes, newer systems may provide nice functionality, but if you don't need it, upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, is stupid. Upgrade if it lets you do something you couldn't do before, or if it fixes a (potential?) problem you have. If not, leave it.
Not true. I'm running Win98SE because it does what I need the way I want it to and doesn't get in my way. I've used NT4 and 2k at work and supported both Me and XP and I won't use any of them. I don't like the way they work, I neither need nor want their bells and whistles and I'm not going to use them at home.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Recently, when my school was cleaning out a bunch of unused equipment, a friend of mine saved an old IBM RS/6000 (AIX) system like this one.
It booted without ill events. We found that it had been an internal mail server for Northwest Mental Health Services. Last bootup was 2001, and before that 1995. Currently it's running as a small group of *nix machines at the school.
"aging operating systems are still widely used"
I'm pretty sure that the numbers will even further increase when Longhorn comes out with a working Digital Restrictions Management.
There are already a lot of IT people that use win2k instead of XP because of several advantages they see in win2k.
Those are not the people who don't care or don't know what they are doing and still they refuse to use the newest and shiniest MS OS.
Besides that there is a undeniable trend towards F/OSS software even among Joe Sixpack users.
So it seems more and more people will use old windows versions or a *nix OS instead of a new windows version in the future.
Personally I think that is a good thing.
I use Win2k on my desktop at home as it seems to have the greatest stability of anything i've used thus far. Mind you i do keep reasonably vigilent in the avoiding-viruses/spyware arena. I use Win98 on my laptop as that is the oldest OS i can get away with on it (my wifi drivers just wouldn't talk to win95 at all :-\).
;-).
And yes i was generalising in my grandparent post, but isn't that what we do best on slashdot?
I try and avoid using XP as much as i can as i dislike the crufty interface and bloat that has been introduced. And don't get me started on the a-wizard-for-anything-you-need-to-do ness that XP can try and shove down your throat from time to time.
I'll stick to network support, the last time i did desktop i was sure i was developing an aneurism (not really, but it felt like it).
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
in that case I admit I am a 'tightarse'.
I hear some weirdos still use a 36-year-old operating system called "Unix".
operating systems don't wear out or 'break' over time they just get found exploits for or don't provide newer functionality that might be needed.
Correct! They dont break over time. They are broken when the customer gets it.
OS Dev: Were not ready to ship, we still have known bugs we need to fix.
OS Company: I dont care, you will ship on x/x/x date so that our stock prices look good. We will fix it later.
(Company ships broken OS)
(Customer uses OS and finds out its broken)
Customer: The OS you shipped me is broken.
OS Dev: Customer is complaining about those things we needed to fix before we shipped. Can we fix them now?
OS Company: That would cost too much money. Dont fix it.
OS Company: Thanks for your bug report customer.
(5 years go by)
Customer: Your OS is still broken. PLEASE FIX IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
OS Company: You have reported a known bug please read our entire knowledge base before you think your smart enough to send us an email.
(5 years go by)
OS Company: Customers, we are no longer supporting your OS. Good luck, and BTW you can buy our new OS.
Customer: Since you are no longer supporting my OS or selling it, can I have source code?
OS Company: That is intellectual property, if you even think about it again then expect a call from our lawyers.
I dont care what anyone says, MS can ship an OS with less errors. Sure it will cost more money.
So what. I expected an OS that wasnt broken.
Could you imagine what joecomputer user would think about 'OS Company' if they had to tell him about all the broken stuff before he bought it?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. --E.C. Stanton
My family's revision a iMac came with Mac OS 8.1 and it most certainly supported USB!
Moving parts wear out. Books wear out after continued use. Software does not. Define OLD for me please?
We all text speak now, does that make proper German, Spanish, or English old? Did my amortization program I wrote back in 1982 somehow become obsolete because the math has changed?
The only reason any software should be considered obsolete is when computers stop using binary and move on to something else. The 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, and 4 bit computers all speak binary at the same level.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Upgrading the jag machines won't slow them down-- Panther will actually dramtically speed them up. I did similiar upgrades in an education setting and the difference was quite palpable. Apple releases (for the most part) only speed up (esp. since X was first announced). As far as the ancient macs, let 'em be. You're right in that case if it's broke don't fix it, but if you're looking to upgrade functionality while mantianing speed-- Linux may be an option.
transmission_err
that's where all the zombies are coming from...
Well, Windows 3.11 may not lose any features, but it only had one useful feature to begin with: the ability to zap out into DOS mode to get some real work done.
I wonder how closely related it is to the statistic that 29% of people surfing the web have the screen res at 800x600. If the computer isn't broken (all jokes aside) and the user doesn't mind scrolling sideways a lot, a non-techy will probably keep that machine until dies.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Sometimes upgrading breaks applications. I had to upgrade to XP to upgrade a software development package I use, but it broke an old version of Acrobat Distiller, my CD labeling software, and a not-that-old version of LaTeX (for some lame reason I can't get a less then or equal sign anymore). I guess I had to buy a new Acrobat Distiller, download a patch to the CD labeler, and I try to avoid less than or equal in my LaTeX documents until I can upgrade that -- nothing that can't be fixed with time any money, but the point is there is a whole lot of futzing around after an OS upgrade, just to find everything that is broken, and it takes so freakin' much of your time. The only compensation is that during software development and debugging, errors that would lock up the machine can be dealt with through Task Manager to shut down a rogue app.
After a sequence of: upgraded browser to access website that demanded more recent browser; upgraded OS because browser wouldn't run; OS refused to support the quite decent and not over-featured wordprocessor that I'd written 2 novels with - I said "ain't never doing that again". That was a few years ago. Last year I broke my vow to try and get my home computer to talk to the work servers across the Mac-Windows divides, spent a week restoring my customizations, longer figuring out why the PHP scripts I'd written to operate my reference database had stopped working, and said "ain't never doing that again", again. Maybe this time it will stick.
Sometimes, if the technology you have works, you don't need to "update" it.
Plus, my TTY has a paper tape reader, so I can still generate that ASCII porn, on demand! Yeah baby!
110 baud dial-up is getting kind of hard to find, however...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
UNOFFICIAL Windows98 SE SP1 1.6.2
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4131.html
Rhapsody
(work in progress)
http://www.openstep.se/
~hylas
IF I know the IP of your fresh Win 95 install, I could easily take it down with a number of simple "nuke" attacks, such as the old OOB exploit or the 'teardrop' attack ;)
I worked on some NT servers for the last couple of years and hated every minute of it. Microsoft pulling support is great motivation for managers. I was so happy when we finally got the funding to migrate to Windows Server 2003. Now I can move on to something more interesting like this new Linux thing I keep reading about. I've always enjoyed being an early adopter!
Speak truth to power.
Are there any sites on the internet where 800x600 doesn't work? I run 800x600 (computers are bad enough for the eyes without making everything smaller) and every site I visit doesn't require me to scroll over. Worse comes to worse, F11.
I can't afford to upgrade to XP. I mean, what with repainting my car every 3 years, the house every 4. Upgrading my living room from futons, cloth sofas, then to leather, then Ikea... and I don't even want to get into what keeping my entertainment center up to date costs. I mean, just going from DVD to DVD-RW to DVD-R/RW and now Blu-ray is on the horizon? I'm sure you can all imagine what it costs for a new TV technology lately. My god, the technology upgrade cycles were insane for a while there. Why, in one year I upgraded from a rear projection, to a DLP projector, to a wall hanging LCD and finally a plasma screen.
No, I'm sorry but I just can't keep *everything* up to date.
My neighbors do love my yard sales, though.
... as a dedicated fax machine. I have an old sheetfed scanner that's not supported under any newer version of Windows (comes with it's own proprietary ISA card and drivers), but works just fine under Win95. The computer also has a decent faxmodem. So, it is now my "fax machine".
Cause we have an EPROM programmer hook up to it, and we dont like to rip it out and replace with newer hardware.
My laptop (recently aquired for free) runs Windows 3.0. I often type homework on it (from my bed) and transfer it using floppy to print. I'd like to upgrade to 3.1 so I can use WordPerfect 6, but Windows Write (heh) has been ok. And that stuff came out in 1990. Plus it's faster than any of my XP/Linux machines. :)
I use a Pentium 166 MMX laptop with Windows 98 (98lite install) to do Java programming assignments for school.
I actually wrote a letter to the IT department of my school when they upgraded the OS on a lot of old computer lab PCs from WinNT 4 to WinXP... they run like molasses now. They didn't feel so slow just a few months ago.
Strange though how the iMacs tend to feel faster when they upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X.
Um, my name is Karlo and I'm a DOSaholic.
Seriously, I still keep two P-III class PCs running Win98SE for one reason: DOS compatibility, supporting a single application -- Autodesk 3D Studio R4.
Like most 3DS users, I eventually migrated to 3DS Max (on Windows). But for basic modelling and some animation tasks, I kept going back to 3DS4 (DOS), mostly because it was faster and more efficient. Actually, I was faster and more efficient. I'd spent so much time with this program that the keyboard shortcuts were second nature. And it didn't have the 64K limit on DXF importing that Max had.
With no model loaded, the total RAM footprint of 3DS4 and DOS is under 4MB. With no model loaded, the total footprint of Win2K and 3DSMax is around 200MB. On a system with 512MB RAM, this is a significant amount of overhead, though Moore's Law and the price of RAM makes this increasingly irrelevant.
I'm not doing much modelling and animation these days, so these systems don't get much use, but I still fire them up to keep my skills sharp.
I still keep an old Mac Quadra 700 around, running System 7, because it's got an Audiomedia II digital audio card in it, my choice for digitizing audio from analog sources. It's like the old, careworn pair of vise grips that lives in the bottom of the toolbox...
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Why do engineers prefer DOS? Why are all these old OS's kicking around? Because the apps they run still do their job. Mac Classic is also a good example of having to support a plaform for older apps. Old unix boxen abound because the systems are running 24/7 mission-critical stuff from 20 years ago. I know people happily writing and running DOS-based POS software for *the last 10 years* and making a good living from it.
Then again, I have a Linux box limited to 2.6.7 because the winmodem code won't work with anything higher.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Its not like its a completely dead system.
Many older laptops can run fine on win95.
If he's actually running the company, and it's a startup, he's likely doing that so he can look frugal to investors. In a corporate environment I have difficulty believing it's not worth it to upgrade to XP, if only for SP2 security.
In my lab, we have 486's using dos to run an old laser. Two win98 system running an X-ray spectrometer and magnetometer. The reason is not from inertia or a great love of win 98 but rather the instrument providers don''t support XP. Hell, our new laser won't interface with anthing but an old computer with a ISA slot and dos. It is so bad we are stockpiling old computers as replacements.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
...but there's a reason.
I once paid money to a store for a copy of Windows ME.
And those motherfuckers will be paying for that shit for the rest. of. my. LIFE.
Isn't beer free? (Oh wait, it isn't. Nevermind.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
No worries about doing anything useful for any lengthy period of time either.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
there are 4 CNC machines in the shop that I use. 1 uses a Fanuc controller which is an industrial control, 2 use DOS, and the newest one uses Win 2k. I would not want to stick any body parts within the working envelope on a CNC that ran Win95, as it crashes too much. (and yes, you do need to stick your hands within the working envelope often to remove parts and change some tools) The Fanuc is so old, that it uses the tape metaphor for memory. i.e. memory is expressed in terms of length of tape, talk about creaky.
I'm pretty sure that the numbers will even further increase when Longhorn comes out with a working Digital Restrictions Management.
Is that even really an issue anymore?
Here it says "the software maker stressed that Longhorn will work regardless of whether the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) is enabled."
Also
Has Microsoft killed off its secure computing architecture?
Perhaps someone who knows more about this than I do can comment.
...It's definately time to upgrade when someone pops out of their cubicle and asks, "Hey, what does Guru meditation error mean?"
What does this button do...
I answered a bunch of questions--er, complaints--from readers in my newsletter after that column ran (which was, um, almost a month ago). In case anybody's curious, here's that link.
So on my old 486 SX-25, I ran 1/3 of a program? Please don't tell me this guy was actually teaching CS.
All those virusses are on the loose and we can't do a thing. -Symantec
No sig for now.
Then a live Windows CD is all they need. For all other needs listed, they should be running an open source alternative -- more stable, cheaper, and can run on minimal hardware.
Linux at home
When I took COBOL in high school in the 1980s (to get time on Bitnet), the teacher bragged that 80% of the SW running at that moment was COBOL. If an app can run for 10 years on a "creaky OS" without failing, and it's already been in all of the states in which it will run from then on, why is that bad?
--
make install -not war
Our OpenVMS server has been running without issue, unmaintained for the past 3 years. It has survived all kinds of disasters, and shows the legendary resilience that UNIX is actually known for.
On the other hand we have an SCO Unix machine attached to an industrial equipment whose original and supporting companies have both gone under. It hasnt failed us in a decade, no maintenance, no support. TVs dont last that long without maintenance.
Finally Ive seen DOS apps installed in various places. They do get Y2K type problems, their Dbase3 databases overflow, and files get corrupted. The OS stays good till the day the disk dies.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
My Macintosh LC using System 6.0.8 starts up and is ready to use in about 14 seconds. About 20 if I install the Japanese version of the OS.
The OS8.6 machine I used to use took a couple of minutes, so imagine my surprise when I got a new iMac and the thing gets to the desktop in just under a minute.
Nothing doesn't die like software, which is why ommatidiae and retinae use the same gene and have for 300 million years. Apologies to Admiral Hopper, but COBOL's not even in the running.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
why would you want to run open office on OS X , yuck, office for OSX is actually a pretty nice suite
From TFA:
Mac OS 8 and 8.5: These 1997 and 1998 releases are as dead as Windows 95, thanks to their own lack of USB support --
Bull.
8.0? Yes. 8.1 shipped with the RevA iMac, 8.5 with the RevB- MacOS has had full, solid USB support since 8.5- enough to run the basics. Keyboard, mouse, zip drive, scanner, trackballs... hard drives, SCSI adapters, printers... I was running all this shit under 8.5 well before the 8.6 update was released.
Aside- Stability-wise, 8.6 is still the most stable release of MacOS I've ever used. If you can stomach IE5 or Mozilla 1.0 and aren't using the box for music (SoundApp is as stable as it gets for mp3 playback, pre-iTunes), 8.6 will do ya fine- especially on beige machines.
Also aside- the article author has such a giant juicy pants-bulge for USB that he's obviously forgotten that loads of PCs still ship with PS/2, parrallel and serial ports... and that there are still shipping devices that use 'em.
Here's an offtopic question about Win2K.
Do you notice that windows set to 'always-on-top' appear just over the top of the taskbar? Sometimes this happens when I toggle fullscreen Mozilla or IE with F11. If you then click on the taskbar it will go back to how it normally looks, covering the bottom of the maximised window. Is there any way to fix this? For some reason I find this display rather annoying! And it doesn't happen with XP's fat taskbar.
Analogy to Model T Ford is spot-on. In fact this analogy can be extended beyond operating systems. Imagine you're a terrorist making a nuke for recreational use. Would you use (steal) the designs for the latest and most powerful weapon, or would you merely use the declassified documents from the Manhattan Project as a good starting point to make your own crude but perfectly acceptable nuke?
But you can patch them and do workarounds for their security problems that keep them every bit as secure as anything else new out there (maybe even more so!!!) and if you don't need newer functionality but just to keep doing a job then why spend money needlessly on something that doesnt need to upgrade and still works?
/. million bots writeup the other day from German researchers that a current Windows PC is usually infected within a couple of minutes, sometimes seconds, after logging on to the internet, average being ten minutes. Prior to that I had read the average is twenty minutes.
:) I also usually just keep Javascript turned off as well to get rid of ads and popups, turning it on only when needed.
Actually, almost all of the security problems have been with IE, Outlook, and Windows 2000 and later Microsoft Borg technology. I have stayed at Win98 SE and Netscape/Mozilla browsers and email (currently 7.02/5.0) with a BlackIce firewall and I simply don't have malware problems.
Without that I read in the
Of course I don't click on email attachments or click on any button in a popup, either.
rd
The nonprofit in question is NAMBLA.
In the US, Windows 98 and less is less than 8% of the installed base.
Of course, those 108 million users of ancient
Windows versions DO NOT represent new WinXP
customers for MSFT -- their hardware will not
support the new OS (and vice versa).
MSFT will not, under any circumstances, release
the complete source code to their ancient OSes --
they would rather let the email worms, viruses,
and spyware so impede these stubborn users that
they spring for new hardware, including the
built-in MSFT tax.
These 108 million users represent the most likely
candidates for a switch to linux -- Linspire or
some other linux/wine implimentation. IMHO, a
grassroots movement of this sort to linux would
drop MSFT stock by 5%. All these users need is
the encouragement (and assistance) from the linux
community. Some well-placed ads (a la NYT/FF)
that also listed LUG websites and phone numbers
could provide the tipping point. A well-designed
and implimented (bootable) single CD solution
that was available (and free as in beer) could
help the process along. Imaqine a free linux CD
released on the scale of (any) AOL "coasterware".
Then again i doubt anyone here is running anything older than win2k/ Macos X unless they are a tightarse.
You're supposed to pay for Windows?
That's more likely to be related to people's eyesight than their OS. Higher resolutions might be OK for you, but when you're over 60 it's a lot harder to see.
I wonder how closely related it is to the statistic that 29% [w3schools.com] of people surfing the web have the screen res at 800x600. If the computer isn't broken (all jokes aside) and the user doesn't mind scrolling sideways a lot, a non-techy will probably keep that machine until dies.
Why would I need to scroll sideways?
rd
We still have an old Digital AlphaServer 1000A 4/233 that we still use as a File/Print Server, so not only a creaky OS but on a dead chip ;). I still use it to surf the web with sites I don't trust and check out what I think are dodgy emails on it as it dosn't run Intel Code and ActiveX so I feel safer than doing it on one of the Wintel Boxes.
Jonathan
The other Macs run mostly 8.6-9.1, with a couple still running 7.x (if it ain't broke...)
See, I would claim all Mac OS's before 10 are broken by design...
Mac OS 8.6-9.2: These releases are slightly better in terms of software support -- there still aren't any good browsers
Hey! Moz 1.2.1's doing me just fine here! :p
You must think in Russian.
Right, I run tech support for (currently) six suburban schools in my area, being the sole person responsible for upgrading, maintaining etc. I am in high demand.
Yes, we have just got one school left which is running 98 in any significant amount. For large installations and computers which "need" to be up 24/7, you do need a nice shiny new OS. Most of the schools have a mixture of XP and 98, one has 95/98, one has 2000 throughout.
I can see the argument for those having to be upgraded, but there is a significant cost involved in doing so that means a complete upheaval of the entire computer base.
However, at home my most powerful machines run 98SE. It's cheap, easily available, VERY easily repairable. If maintained properly, there are no security problems, you just have to not rely on the OS seperating out user privileges like in XP.
I've actually seen people deliberately run commands (e.g. testing their unverified downloads out) on their computer just because they believe the OS will seperate the danger out enough because it's under a non-privileged user.
Most home users don't want the hassle and thus most home machines are probably running under a single, full-access account anyway. Also, an experienced user, with some simple freeware and an adequate firewall, is just as well protected as a modern OS user.
The older OS are not as stable, no, unless they are well-maintained (not installing crap just to see what it looks like). If the older OS's do go belly-up, though, they are VERY easy to recover (even down to the filesystem level, FAT is much simpler to recover from than NTFS).
I bought this machine 2-3 years ago, installed 98SE that I had bought an auction and it replaced my 6 year old machine that has been running 98 all that time.
Point 1) I've never had to reformat. This "do it every six months" is NOT a solution, not practical, nonsensical, inconvenient and totally unnecessary. I've worked on home machines that have been collecting spyware, viruses etc. for years and brought them back from the dead without having to reformat.
Point 2) My computer HAS NOT slowed down just because it's had more software installed. I carefully control exactly what software I use and how it's set up. On machines that have been allowed to do that, I've seen ten-fold increases in speed just by running AdAware, Spybot and getting rid of 90% of the crap using Startup Control Panel.
OS's do not get slower the more you install, they get slower the LESS you manage WHAT you install. They can ALWAYS be brought back to speed.
Point 3) Stability is not that great a problem compared to modern OS's. Yes, XP is less likely to crash Word on me and need a reboot but similarly if 98 goes COMPLETELY belly up, I can bring it back by copying an day-old registry file over the current ones.
I don't get stuck in constant blue-screen reboot loops (seen at least 6 of these in schools recently that, because the computers can be booted over the network and restore to their original configuration, I end up just reinstalling). If 98 ever did do that to me, it's much easier to fix. Additionally, 98's are used as home machines where 24/7 stability is not essential and most people use them for an hour or so at a time.
Point 4) I refuse to fund an organisation that is demanding money from me if I wish to upgrade to a "stable" system. Stability problems didn't suddenly get discovered in the year 2000, they were ALWAYS in there. The fact that every few years MS redesigns it's systems, charges EXTORTIONATE amounts for the next version, drops support for older versions and then discovers that they are just as buggy as the older versions makes my blood boil.
In my early years, Microsoft made more than enough money from myself. DOS was worth it. Windows 3.0/3.1 were worth it. Office up to and including 2000 was ALMOST worth it. After that, it just got silly. Now I buy my OS and Office packages from eBay. Money is VERY important to home use
It may be hard for some folks here to believe, but a large number of systems out there are doing the most mundane things, and for one reason or another (budgets, it works, etc.) just aren't being upgraded.
For example, the other day I needed to take a load of construction debris (drywall, pressure treated wood, etc.) to the local dump. For this sort of stuff they weigh your truck on the way in and the way out to figure out how much to charge you.
It took awhile -- the scale computer was running Windows 95 but the scale software (which was recently upgraded during servicing and calibration) now requires XP. So the software kept crashing. The scale operator explained that the town wouldn't release funds to upgrade the computer. But the company under contract to service the scale requires the use of the new software.
It just laughable...
You haven't seen speed until you upgrade this baby with 512 MB of RAM. Yes, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 can take advantage of 512 MB of RAM over DOS 7.1 (the guts of Windows 95B through 98SE.) The trick is to patch the IO.SYS so that you can install older versions of Windows, and then change a line in the SYSTEM.INI file (for systems with over 256 MB of RAM.) I also remove the swap file and use a RAMdisk to tweak performance further, but neither is required. A google search on OSR2fix will give more details.
At work, we've got three basic kinds of staff workstations: there are the
VT510 dumb terminals connected to the minicomputer that runs OpenVMS; there
are the Windows systems with DOS (either PC DOS 7 or MS DOS 6) running inside
of VirtualPC, with special DOS software (that won't run under WinXP at all
and not very well under Win98 either, hence VirtualPC and DOS) that connects
to the VMS system and does stuff; the third kind of staff workstations are
the non-mission-critical ones that don't do anything but web and email;
everything important is on VMS and DOS. And no, we couldn't get by with
just VMS, because there are certain highly-important functions that cannot
be done on the dumb terminals; we absolutely have to have the DOS systems.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Whenever I need to call up IE to read a
Shouldn't everyone?
Will be to make future OS's expire automatically..
Prevent the chance of ever having 'hold outs'...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I work for a university and we do a lot of stuff with a medical facility; this isn't a surprise to me and I can't imagine it is to anyone who deals with medical facilities and/or universities. If you have mission-critical servers, why change them? I've run across people using: AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO UNIX, Solaris, SUNOS, DOS, Mac OS 7, every flavor of MS Windows down to 95, Novell stuff. I know techs at a hospital where they are _just now_ starting to migrate from NT Domain Controllers to a Win2k/AD mix. If it's stable, and it works, you don't want to be the guy that made the network go dark. Especially if there are doctors trying to get patient data.
I installed NT to a 4 GB NTFS partition (IDE drive, BTW) before adding the remainder of the drive to an extended partition. NT will boot to an NTFS partition just slightly over 8 GB. NT is also one of the only OSes I know of that can create a 4 GB FAT16 partition.
Because they were crap when they were released. OK maybe not 95, but 3.11 certainly was. You can get things which are so much better looking under raw DOS it seemed ridiculous how horrible 3.1 was. Oh wait, that's because 3.1 is really really horribly. I stayed out of it and used raw dos whenever I could.
I am trolling
This very same article was referenced in a Slashdot posting about three weeks ago....great editorial oversight, folks....
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
If you're relying on donations, why are you running apples only? Seems to me you could have a lot more computers if you accepted any architecture.
I am trolling
Much of the IT infrastructure in my area is made up of older OS and hardwarde platforms. In many cases, support for those old dinosaurs pays more than support for newer infrastructure. I'd love to be able to put my DOS experience to use instead of having it sit there on my resume (yes, I put it there... you never know). AS/400 support with a few years of general LAN/WAN experience is worth $70k+ a year in a lot of places.
Now might be a good time to tell you just how positive my experience running Mandrake 10.1 on a G3 600 MHZ ibook with only 128 mb RAM has been.
Even KDE is quite usable with some of the sillier features turned off.
For the older machines, there's always debian & something thinner like IceWM or fvwm.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
That was a great article, but they forgot some great oldies. I am running DOS 6 on my 100 mhz machine to do the titles on my analog video editor. I am running DOS 7 on my arcade machine so it boots right up into the game menu. I love it because it has large disk support. I have been using these for so many years, I couldn't imagine using anything else.
I think this is the most telling part of the article, and also something that really exposes the author's lack of experience in IT:
"Take one common question I see, getting an iPod to work in Win 98."
If he heard this question more than once in his lifetime, I would be shocked. It's more likely that he's a self-serving, lying journalist. It makes the whole article invalid, in my mind.
You can get USB for NT if you really want it.
InsideOut's stack is by far the best available, but you can't buy it standalone. You either have to buy one of their Edgeport serial converters or try out the version that Dell has on their FTP Site.
I've also used this one from Bsquare , but it doesn't support Memory Keys, and it's old code.
There are a couple of other ones out there as well.
I remember trying to install Win95 on a 4MB 386 all to well. No FPU == Win95
where i work, we have just been told that our windows 3.11 computers are no longer allowed on the network because the IT department have "upgraded" to windows server 2003 using kerberos!!!
W indowsServ/2003/all/techref/en-us/Default.asp?url= /Resources/Documentation/windowsserv/2003/all/tech ref/en-us/W2K3TR_sepol_local_set.asp
my faverate line from google:
"Some very old applications and operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and Windows 95 might not be able to communicate with the servers in your organization via the SMB protocol."
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/
IF your machine is isolated from attack, who cares how old it is.
I bet there's more than a few Atari 2600's still in use but nobody's complaining about them.
Heck, I still fire up my Linux 1.x boot floppy from time to time, because they let me do disk maintenance on my older CD-less machines. Yeah I know I could get a 2.x boot floppy but why bother?
Now anyone running an insecure OS like no-longer-supported versions of Windows on an open net is just plain asking to be 0wned.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Honestly i can't say that i've come across that particular glitch, but i can understand it would irritate you. Good luck, google is your friend i guess...
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
That's exactly what I was wondering. How can you ever be an Apple-only place if you rely on donations. Do you seriously tell people to go away if they donate PC hardware?
I run several old systems. 1)an old 386 with an old legacy sound card patched into the PA system in one shop give employees alerts when their breaks start and finish 2) an old win98SE machine with a load of ram and a good sound card is used for recording sessions for a couple of small bands I do buisness with. Hey, 2k and xp eat up too much memory, and I don't need any of their fancy features for my recording software... 3) an old eurocom laptop runs win98 and office97. My aunt only uses it to check her email and type out the occasional letter. There is some wierd display glitch on that machine and win2k just blanks the screen out.98 works fine
They probably have still have 14 or 15 inch monitors that could only really do 800x600. The 15 and 17 inch monitors that could do 1024x768 were a bit more expensive.
Alternately, you can offload much of the CPU load from the ancient desktop machines to some terminal servers, say a pair of dual Xeons or dual G5s, using the Linux Terminal Server Project. The public schools in Portland, Oregan have done really well with this method for a small fraction of a Redmond set up.
BTW if your school's buying new desktop hardware, go with something PPC-based that can run OS X. You can still run Linux or BSD on it if you want, but you get more performance for price.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What is your non-profit and what is the minimum Mac spec you guys take?