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Microsoft Developing Windows for Low-End Machines
Jeff writes "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware. The move is to appease businesses and universities that don't want to scrap the old hardware. This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
Nice that at the end of TFA, the exec still told people to buy new computers.
According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware.
Wait, since 95 and 98 barely ran on the old hardware, how is Microsoft going to make XP, a system that normally takes at least 4 times the hardware compared to the old systems, going to run at any workable speed in this scenario? Microsoft really only has two code bases for their systems (the 95/98/ME code base and the 2000/NT/XP/2003 code base), so this new system must be a pared down version of the XP code base, especially since (according to the article) service pack 2 fixes are in place for this future system. So, if they can do this for XP on old hardware, why can't they do it for modern hardware? Is it that Microsoft is simply admitting XP has a load of unnecessary crap in it?
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The best thing about this is that they will be forced to make their code more efficient to work on slower PC's. They'll integrate that code into future versions of the OS and we'll feel that efficiency and increased quality. This will also force the competition to do the same thing, building a culture that leads to more efficient OS's. Best news I've read all day.
why not just make a 'faster windows' all around, that runs fast on both old and new hardware? /boggle
I think this is a good move for them. I have linux running on two machines that could otherwise run windows if an even remotely modern version of windows would run on them.
Sadly, since installing linux on them I've fallen for it and wouldn't change back unless there was some compensation involved.
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It is already too late! I already had to move a few of my machines over to Linux b/c they were so old and did not have what it took to run Windoze (RAM mostly). And now that I'm free of that Windows virus I'm not going back!
Many of us in the higher ed space have to use older machines and the RAM/HD requirements are painfully cost-ineffective to try and run XP Pro.
i'm actually pleased to see microsoft doing this. having gnu/linux run on old pc's as network clients isn't always the best (because come on, most people think windows is the only os ever made). why the hell didn't they do this 2 years ago?
Folks, this Microsoft thing just isn't taking off. So many versions of Windows and code forks. For business reliability and maximum TCO, take a look at Linux!
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According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware.
Umm.. Shouldn't improving performance always a metric for systems developers? Really. Apple manages to make new versions of OS X that run and perform better on the same hardware. Is it too much to ask that MS, who has significantly greater development resources, try to improve the performance of their OS?
Is this due out before or after Longhorn?
The OS will only run IE and Windows Media; everything else will be on an application server. I do not think this solves the actual problem. We have terminals.
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Still in the early stages of development, Eiger will run a bare-bones set of programs directly from the desktop. The list will include the Internet Explorer browser, Windows Media Center, a firewall and antivirus software.
Most other programs, however, will run off a central server.
so can this replace old stand-alone machines that aren't connected to any useable server?
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
If it's made to run faster on old hardware, then why wouldn't I prefer this speedier system on my new hardware? Sounds like they could just take some of the bloat out of Windows XP and come up with an altogether better OS, rather than forking.
from TFA:
...
"SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. is working on a new Windows-based operating system designed to help companies make older machines run better."
bwa ha ha ha ha
I'm sorry, I just can't read any further; if I laugh any harder, I may rupture my appendix.
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The people at Dell aren't going to like this. Why buy new machines if the old one works just fine?
Is this going to be the stripped-down barebones version of Windows that many of us have been wanting for years? Here's hoping so. Now maybe I'll just go off and RTFA...
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If the former, then I don't see it being popular for the usual reasons (see any thread on Starter Edition). If the latter, then why don't they just release a new version of Windows XP that runs more efficiently for everyone? It seems stupid that a (presumably) cheaper version of windows would run faster than the full price version.
Check out the specs below. What, are they going to make another "thin client" or just a version of Windows XP that runs on something slower than a Pentium 233? These are the requirements for Windows XP Pro, from Microsoft's own site. They say it'll *run* but what they don't tell you is that it'll run slower than cold syrup trying to flow uphill (both ways) in December in Minnesota.
It'll run, but once you try to open an application, you'll wish you hadn't.
"Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional
PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device"
I've seen Windows 2000 Pro work great on machines as slow as PII-300's. Very stable, and no slower than 9x.
It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware.
Why do not thay change GUI (theme) of Windows 9x to look like WinXP
I find it funny how it's easier to just build an OS similar to XP, but will run quicker on lower end systems than to patch their already created Win95 or 98
... it's the same stupid WinXP Starter Edition they were trying to get down the Brazil's government throats? Thankfully, Brazil ditched the stupid software -- whose features, among other things, a limit to the number of simultaneous windows open at the same time, 3 -- in favor of Linux for the project in question: popular micros with government finance...
I don't feel like it...
It's a great idea. I don't want it, and anyone that knew a thing or two would be better off with Linux, but most people will think this is great.
What will it come bundled with? I hope it comes bundled with atleast IE so that as soon as people install it they can get on the web and download FireFox ;)
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Isn't this just Started Edition? The one that WILL NOT BOOT on Pentium 4s and Athlons?
If I must run Windows on my older hardware I'll just stick with 98SE. I know they quit supporting the product, but atleast I'm familiar with all of the bugs. I can't imagine the hack job they're going to release (I picture Windows ME Redux), but what do I know? I'm just the user.
You know, wouldn't it just be in Microsoft's best interest to create a version of Windows that works really well on most computers, rather than cluttering the market with thinware? Also, how is this version different from the one that they're shipping out to third-world countries right now?
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If I wish to keep using an old computer I install OpenBSD or Slackware. That works for me! I just set up an pc with 32 mb of ram and an 500Mb harddisk. OpenBSD had absolutely no problems with it and with 30 minutes I was up and running.
I have successfully run WinXP Pro on a 350Mhz Pentium 2 with 96MB of RAM... that is below the specified requirements, but it ran just fine. It even played DVDs and some (albiet older) games. I would think that if they just used XP Pro, maybe with some customized pre-set registry stuff, it would scale just fine down to 200-250Mhz machines. And I'm sorry, but if you are using a sub-200Mhz machine still... ouch. Ouch. And did I say OUCH? Get up to speed.
One simply needs to remove all the eye candy.
This is true for XP.
This is *especially* true for Linux.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
It would be nice if they were doing this because it came from the old-school initiative of "wouldn't it be cool if..." rather than as a business tactic to "respond to the Linux threat". And maybe, just maybe, they are.
Is it the corporations or the industry analysts that suck the life out of otherwise interesting projects like these?
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
...that Microsoft is in cahoots with hardware manufacturers to maintain the "software update == hardware update" status quo and force people to constantly buy new hardware. Because evidently, with this announcement, they *can* create a "diet-Windows", it was just not in their best interest to do it before Linux started gnawing at their pant legs.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Puh-leaze. Yes, this announcement is obviously aimed at preventing adoption of Linux on low-end hardware. The real question is whether or not a product will ever emerge from the vapor. How many times has Longhorn slipped? And what kind of bleeding edge hardware specs does it have? Microsoft can't build an OS with a blank check for hardware specs, so how are they going to do it on a budget?
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
It's nice to see a company making a program that is optimized for LESS powerful hardware, rather than the other way around. It gets old having to upgrade hardware year after year because you can no longer run the software you want to. I think it's a great idea for companies to sell "lite" version of their flagship products.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Does anyone else smell what I'm referring to in subject!
I wanted to say positive but all I see is a central server controlling our desktops more than ever before.
Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware
Hmm... I think I saw this once, and it was called Windows 2000... I can run Win2K just fine on my 233MHz PII laptop w/64MB of RAM.
So... why upgrade them? If doesn't make sense to me other than MS is trying to sell more software to an already_tapped_once market.
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
How cheap is hardware getting these days? I mean really, I can build a brand new AMD system for less that 300$. Why would I want to run a stripped down version of XP on an older system? Half of older hardware (video/sound, etc..) drivers are not even supported in XP due to the companys being out of business. Most people only use Outlook/IE/Office and that runs fine under XP on a Pentium 2 300 with 256mb ram. This just looks like a way for Micro$oft to market XP-Lite in the US. Hardware is Cheap, It's all the damn software that is expensive. That will still be the problem for people wanting to upgrade to XP. It's all the custom DOS accounting packages/etc.. that do not run under XP is why most of my customers are still running 98 anyways.
while im not a fan of their practices, but from a business standpoint, its a great idea if they can actually pull it off. its a market that they have never tended to and has been a feeding ground for linux. the company i work for deals with places that have 'old' computers that dont run linux. so they end up with these systems that chug through win98. if MS can make windows XP efficient enough to run on older systems then good for them. i really dont like the fact that they are basically saying 'we loaded useless crap onto XP and we are just now getting around to it' but hey, better late then never. toNt0r
please excuse me..... I haven't heard a good
joke like that since I ingested 6.5 grams of some really groovy shrooms. ROTFL
Seriously though... they think they're gonna, Whaaa?
LOL
What's wrong with DOS 6.2?
How about writing an effecient GUI/WM with features that can be disabled by users so that you don't need a "special" version to run on "slow" hardware. There aren't separate versions of Linux/BSD for "slower" machines.
I understand that all GUI/WMs are becoming "prettier", which requires more memory, processing power, etc, but all of these features could be toggleable (is that a word?) so that when someone wants to ugprade their computer they don't have to switch to the non "low-end" version of their OS. Geez.
now your 1ghz p3 with 2gb of ram can run windows xp....
"run a bare-bones set of programs directly from the desktop."
surely the problem with windows isn't the apps running from the desktop, it's the built in "everything" resting on everything else that's the problem?
if I was that desparate for a windows thin client, maybe I'd investigate how folks have been running win98 netbooted....
OK, so they release a version of WinXP that runs on a Pentium II 300, finally, but still has all the stability and connectivity features of "real" WinXP. So.... why buy the "real" WinXP for your 2.4 GHz P4? If WinXP-for-old-stuff is more efficient than WinXP-real-version, then it will run even faster on that 2.4 GHz system.
Which means that WinXP-for-old-stuff will have to be reduced functionality, too, in order to avoid cannibalizing their existing OS revenues. Just how much and what features I'm not sure, there's plenty to choose from, but expect another "Starter Edition" fiasco.
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Quoth the blurb:
This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
So...everywhere, then? It's much easier to just come out and say that than to string all those other words together, you know.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Stop charging a ridiclous price and I might buy XP, untill then all the games I want run fine on Windows 98 and I'm not switching to any OS except dualboot Linux when I get a new modem.
I like muppets.
This a dupe of Microsoft to Release a Thin-Client Windows XP By RTFA, this isn't a "lite" XP to run on old hardware, but a thin-client XP to run on old hardware with the help of a server. Big difference
They aren't really making a faster version of XP for old machines. They are making old machines into dumb terminals that run things off a central server. It will look like XP in terms of interface, but isn't anything close.
My guess is that this won't work especially well with older apps anyway. That central server would also have be orders of magnitude faster if you want to allow multiple people the ability to run their apps at the same time.
What you might see is a situation in which small offices could either upgrade each machine for $500 and get way better performance, or purchase some high end server for tens of thousands of dollars and still be limited by the junk machines you have around. Also, any PC that old has to be near the end of it's life anyway. Any money you might save by converting these PCs will probably be lost when you have to replace all of the parts over the next year.
/. ++
Will this version of Windows be the hardcore gamers OS of choice?
A stripped down, bare bones version of Windows XP is what the gamer masses have been claiming for since years. As long as there is the latest DirectX, this means more horsepower for resource intensive games without the hassle of tweaking Windows till it bleeds in order to acheive the maximum horsepower for resource intensive games.
Hell yea, bring it on! Since I do all my work on other operative systems, I'd be willing to part with some dough to add it to my multi-boot as the gaming OS of my rig, at least for those games that don't run well under the latest Cedega.
If Microsoft really cared about it users, this version would be available free of charge for registered Windows XP Home and Pro users.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
This is likely bullshit as Almost any Linux distribution today requires more hardware horsepower to run as fast as Windows XP.
Now, I know that you will all jump up and down screaming at me and moderating me a troll but try this:
Perform a dual boot install of XP and your favorite version of Linux. Then with Firefox installed on both operating systems time how long it takes from the Grub menu screen until you can see the Google search page. No matter which distro you use, Windows XP will be there at least 15 seconds before the Linux disto and in some cases XP will be as much as a minute before. And this is on the SAME hardware!
Have you tried running KDE on a low-end machine lately? Or Gnome? And I mean a 100MHz pentium here with 16M of RAM. Modern Linux desktop is certainly not much of a competitor with Windows 95 on that hardware.
Microsoft's salesmen must be having major problems out there in the market... what with no offering to keep people from switching to Linux with thin client so that they can keep their existing hardware...
so announcing this means that the salesmen can now offer a solution to those companies contemplating switching to Linux which will mean that they can stick with the nice soft fuzzy blanket of the devil they know (Microsoft) rather than the leap into the unknown of Linux...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You are forgetting Windows CE. Should perfectly run on old hardware. Already has IE. Some tweaks and a citrix client....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I already run Windows XP on a IBM Thinkpad that is only 266MHz. The laptop's was made in 1997. And it runs fine. A bit slow but it will get you there, like a senior citizen. :-) But it's reliable.
You mean there's a major popular Linux distro that runs (with GUI) fast on older hardware? Where can I get this marvel of coding technology? Obviously we're not referring to the latest versions of Redhat, Mandrake, Suse, etc. as I've NEVER seen them run responsively on older hardware.
I get so sick of the "WinXP is a hog!" whining when there's no "real" alternative that requires substantially less RAM/HD space, and runs as responsively as WinXP on newer hardware.
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It's why you should avoid using Windows.
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As soon as you use a graphic interface, the advantages of Linux on old hardware pretty much disappear, in my experience.
Where Linux shines on old hardware is server or firewall functions where you don't need anything more than a command line. I run eleven firewalls, almost all of them on P-133s with 32MB of memory, one of them with ten VPN tunnels. Works beautifully. No Windows product could possibly do that.
Anyone find it odd that Eiger is only letter from "Tiger"? Even funnier - E and T are two of the most commonly seen letters in the alphabet (at least, in English).
Is make Windows 2000 available without charge. Just about any Win98 machine can be upgraded to Win2000 and it's quite stable. The problem, of course, is that people would use it instead of XP.
This is another oxymoron that potentially will be a bomb for them economically. Fact is that if you still have legacy hardware with a legacy OS on it, you are not likely to upgrade or repair any of it in the first place. It's the old addage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Microsoft's not going to trudge on that.
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EIGER was a version of Unix being reworked by SCO when they bought whatever it was they bought from Novell. It's dealt with specifically in the contracts.
Let's see...MS needs something that runs on oldder machines and is more secure than Win95/98...yep, sounds like a version of Unix would work just fine.
Maybe that's what MS bought from Caldera/SCOGroup for $50M...?
It's not a patch on DOS 6.22
(But 6.22 is patch on 6.2).
I see this as part of a long-term Microsoft strategy for taking on Linux. Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, the core of the strategy revolves around marketing. If they can get the mainstream media to buy into the notion that Linux is only valuable on older hardware, then they roll out a new "Windows Lite" OS for use on old hardware, they've taken a bite out of Linux mindshare.
Of course, this strategy won't work, because as you so well put it, Microsoft isn't exactly adroit at making lightweight operating systems. Plus, the Linux seed has already been planted, and it's too late for Microsoft to define the field of battle. They lost that one a long time ago.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is a Bad Idea TM. A machine to "just surf the Web" sounds great in concept but in reality does not cut the mustard. Look at the Web these days. People want to watch video, read big PDFs, and do it all with "teh snappy," in other words fast page renders.
And rare is the employee who can get work done exclusively on the Web. Most will want one of: Word, Excel, PowerPoint. And for sake of compatibility they'll want versions that can read docs created by the most recent version without pain.
With a new Dell starting at $299, why would one invest in
*Employee training to use the new centralized/Webified OS and workflow
*Licenses for the client OS
*License OS for the server
*Buy hardware for the server
All to keep poking along on the same old hardware? Are corporations really this short sided? A new copmuter is less than a tenth of one month's pay for someone making just $30,000 per year.
Security.
Such as it is, security of XP IS better than that of 98.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Microsoft Developing Windows for Low-End Machines
... Developing, Developing, Developing, Developing ....
... Developing, Developing, Developing, Developing ....
Developing, Developing, Developing, Developing
psst, linux is taking us on the low-end.... *shit*
Developing, Developing, Developing, Developing
Scratch it, this isn't even funny. I wanted so bad to fit the "developers" thing in here. I'd mod me down if I could....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Windows NT 4.0 ;)
(btw: NT4 + USB + DirectX would be more than enough for most people)
No, this is aimed at selling a second copy of Windows to people who have been resisting such a practice. First you examine your potential market, calculate the development and marketing cost, and determine if/how much money you'll make on the deal.
This is all about what Microsoft does best -- make money.
Why haven't they done this before? Simply because they've done the calculations and determined that they've alienated enough people that there is now a sufficient market to make it worthwhile to reverse the practice.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers.
No, I don't think that's it. Though Linux advocates will be more than happy to try and lay claim to any victory over marketing opportunity, I doubt Linux had anything to do with it.
I think this better characterizes Microsoft's train of thought:
==> Any business that isn't growing is downsizing, and downsizing does not bode well for stocks and outlooks.
==> For Microsoft to grow, it has to sell software.
==> Microsoft's greatest profits come from two sources: Windows and Office.
Therefore, Microsoft has to keep selling Windows and Office. But therein lies the dilemma: how can you sell a new version of Windows to someone who's content with their current version of Windows?
This has long been a thorn in Microsoft's side. Developers still (for the most part) support Windows 98, and everybody supports Windows 2000. These are versions of Windows that are now seven and five years old, respectively. Now, think back to the year 1997, when Windows 95 has been out for a little more than two years. Was anybody back then still supporting Windows 2.0 (seven years old at the time), and how much support remained for Windows 3.1 (five years old at the time)?
Microsoft is trying to find a way to make upgrades look important and desirable again. I personally think that Microsoft won't find any takers, but who knows...
Depending on what your problem is. If you need to run XP apps and XP drivers then yes, this might be a good thing. OTOH, if you need Server 2003 active directory support for your old win98 box, just download Active Directory Client Extensions and install it. Microsoft obscures it's existance to encourage new boxen and OS sales, but it's there and it works.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
when they already have 98? Because 98 is unsupported? That'll only make a difference if they've never tried to get MS support.
I am trolling
The best thing about this is that they will be forced to make their code more efficient to work on slower PC's.
Sorry that won't happen. This new lightweight XP is gonna be the barebones OS, with IE/OE, Media Player and probably a terminal services client. That is ALL it is. They are cutting out features and doing nothing at all (or the barest minumum) of code optimisation. This is MS we are talking about here--they haven't done anything radical with their OS since NT 3.1 came out. Innovation might be BillGs favourite word, but MS rarely does that--they mostly just evolve.
Other apps could probably be installed, but then those old machines would be bogged down just as before. MS' strategy is to try and entice cash-strapped enterprises to keep their MS infrastructure: Instead of buying 30 new workstations, just buy 30 licenses of "barebones XP" and a $5000 server to handle the apps. I don't see much there forcing MS to take the bloat out of their software.
Problem with that idea is that there isn't much cost savings up front (perhaps none at all) vs. upgrading the workstations, because the customer still has to buy a big app server and most likley upgrade ther office suite software, etc. too...in addition to licenses for the barebones XP (unless they give that away with server CALs).
Any admin worth his salt will figure out he could just get the application server and run terminal services on the Win98 boxes without upgrading them...or better yet just convert all the terminals to Linux...and save up front and get all the same TCO benefits in the long run. I don't think this dog of an XP distro will hunt.
I am not ever switching from Windows 2000 Pro. I think it is the best Windows available. If microsoft stops supporting it then I'm moving to linux or beos.
Actuallt they are going to just bloat up Longhorn so you'll be happy Running XP on a Pentium 2 with 64Mb.
Seriously though there are some windows processes things that run just as slow on my amd64 than my celeron 500 - some things about windows are just fundamentally slow, if they can make Longhorn more like this it won't matter how old or new your hardware is,
Not that it isn't a good idea but the universities etc can already do everything mentioned using Windows Terminal Server. I'm not seeing the requirement here.
Deleted
I mean a 100MHz pentium here with 16M of RAM.
I find it hard to believe that Microsoft can strip Windows XP down to the point where it runs comfortably on that platform. We have stacks of x86-based Multias here, and even running NT4 they needed at least 32M to be usable.
Windows 2000 runs fine on a Pentium-133 with 64M, though. So does FreeBSD using Windowmaker as the window manager. I'm sure they could strip XP down to that point, since XP isn't much more than 2000 with an uglier color scheme.
If your head were pressed against the end of the barrel (obviously not sealing it), would the air compression kill you before the howitzer shell tore your head off?
Behold, the power of caffeine and bbq chips! Better than drugs sometimes.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Utter bullshit! You simple choose one of the many lean desktops such as xfce or blackbox.
Want thin computing? The future is here.
For most people, almost all work can be done on a internet terminal. Although I prefer Gmail, Yahoo! mail has a few nice features that Google has yet to offer including calendar tools (events, tasks, birthdays) and a notepad (though you could use the drafts feature and spell check for a "notepad"). Beyond that, there are PHP applciations such as Horde that offer similar and even extended functionality.
Even special applications are making thier way to the web - think of doing your taxes online, or even diagnosing health problems. You can share pictures online, and do a further multitude of tasks.
There was even a push several years ago (6 maybe?) to put the desktop paradigm onto the web through DHTML. The idea never took off, but the portal functionality has always continued to develop.
Now if only I could open a window to Slashdot within my web browser!
I know this is slashdot, but please RTFA.
This isn't about making a custom version of windows that is more optimized so that it can run on old hardware. What they are doing is running the slow applications remotly, probably using citrix like technology (MS has their own version but I can't remember the name).
So what this probably is is a version of windows that cuts out a few OS features that affects performance, and then preconfiguring it so that it will run a pile of applications from a central server.
Of course, this is something that's always been easy to do on unix. Linux sounds better and better with every announcement comming out of Redmond these days...
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
I just installed Fedora on an older 700 Mhz Celeron w/ 64MB of memory. It runs horribly slow (or rather, the Gnome desktop does). This is my first time to install linux for actual use. I intend to use this machine as a file server for backups of important data.
I expect it to run ok after it's all setup and running without Gnome, but is there a better desktop app that's less of a memory hog (I'd like to be able to use the GUI interface while setting it up)? Similarly, given the limited machine resources, what's the best performing distro?
A modern day witchhunt.
So? How about XFCE? Or fluxbox? Those should still work pretty well.
Goffe said Microsoft will continue to recommend that the best way to get more out of any operating system is to replace computers when they get old.
That's funny, my customers and I are always trying to get more out of our computers, not the other way around.
When a business begins to ignore the needs of their customer, the customer needs to ignore that business.
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Fact of the matter is, with most OS's the most important factor for reponsiveness on the desktop happen to be a decent amount of memory and a fast low latency disk.
Take a PII 233 with at least a gig of ram and a modern IDE drive + UDMA 100/133 controller and your normal apps like web browsers and such work just fine.
Don't go expecting to do serious gaming on it or something computationally intensive, but for regular stuff it will surprise you how much faster a memory upgrade and a new hard drive can boost an "obsolete" system.
Personally, I need a bit more power for world processing than is available on current hardware. Right now I'm limited to processing just the Americas.
This is an historic development. Like when detroit actually started making smaller cars with better mileage, and stopped encouraging greater consumption of petroleum. The interests of Microsoft and Hardware makers are diverging. It was once coincident that when a firm upgraded their software, they bought new hardware, and vice versa. But with the economic slowdown in IT, many firms can no longer afford both. And since less than 1% of the resources of a typical CPU are used by most office tasks, Microsoft can easily sway companies to believe that a software upgrade provides the biggest bang for the buck. But if they are too greedy and stupid though, Microsoft may really be cutting their own throat. If they establish that new software can run on old hardware at imorived performance, they will break the 3-year upgrade cycle for PCs, and since most copies of Windows are purchased simply because they come installed on a new PC, customers may begin to think of hardware and software as separable purhcases again, which may very well lead to wider-spread use of Linux.
It may also take some of the economic incentive out of new chip design for AMD and intel. With slower hardware sales, they will have to raise the price of new chips to recover their plant costs. Which will slow new hardware sales even further. Here's a marketing idea for some enterprising soul- hard drive upgrade kits for older PCs, that come with Linux pre-installed (because there's no where to hide the $100 price of windows in a $69 disk drive.)
Interesting idea -- a decent os that works on reasonably fast computers without needing 3ghz dual processors and 1 gb of ram.
...
But unless it's free, or MS doesn't followup on pirating
The reason they're doing this is so they can sell software upgrades to schools who can't afford new computers. They couldn't care less if the schools bought more hardware, but for them to stop buying software? The horror.
There are better thin client applications out there than Windows. Apps that will run with fewer resources, less psychotic licensing schemes, and which cost a hell of a lot less.
And Microsoft's never been known for "thin".
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Applications.
You might have a very very thin XP that'll run on a Pentium II, but who cares? As soon as you load Office on it, the only thing it'll do quickly is take a nosedive.
Although the Windows OS is a famous place to look for software bloat, it's only half of the problem. With the API being the way that it is, and the application developers for that platform pushing for more and more useless features as a revenue stream...99% of todays apps will still bomb on a thin XP machine.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I could see using a Windows box like this as thin client for a UNIX server running X11, because X11 uses the user's computer for the actual drawing... it doesn't maintain and render a local copy of the screen, it just sends drawing commands to the client. A Windows Terminal Server doesn't do this, every session has to maintain its own *unaccelerated* screen image, locally, and send bitmaps containing changed areas. Much higher load on the server, so if you have a room with 10 low end PCs in it, buying a server that could support 10 concurrent terminal server sessions would set you back WAY more than 10 new PCs.
We ran into this. When we got our first WinDD servers (Tektronix' version of the Citrix software that became Windows Terminal Server) I sized them based on our experience with UNIX servers... and thought doubling the per-user RAM and CPU was pretty conservative. Boy was that a shock... and the requirements have only gone UP since then.
1997 called. They want the NetPC back.
In fact, these are those machines, again. Where's Larry Ellison saying the NC is the next big thing? Huh?
No? To hell with it!
I drank what? -- Socrates
And then there's Wine/Crossover Office which let just about any Linux distro run Office 2000 and Office XP. So institutions that love Office, and have a lot of Office 2000 licenses sitting around, and don't want to get new hardware and do want to get rid of Windows 98, have a very clear path of where to go.
Also, knowing how well Microsoft does with release dates, this is going to be too late to matter. This is something which should be in the market RIGHT NOW to have a good effect. People with old Win 95 and 98 boxes are upgrading them now. A year or two from now they may just ditch the hardware instead of upgrading, because the hardware does eventually start failing.
The Eiger is also one peak of 3 mountains in a mountain chaain: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, which have an interesting story to them.
The names Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau roughly translate to Ogre, Monk and Young Woman (Or Virgin).
The story as told to me is that The Ogre is attacking the Virgin, but the Monk is standing betweee the Ogre and the Virgin.
Should Microsoft name their product after a monster & rapist?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The difference is that you can run a current, maintained Linux distro on old hardware (hint: use a light window manager). But the equivalent Windows version will be obsolete and non-maintained. Security updates are good, yes?
And as far as drivers go, Windows drivers tend to disappear (or become hard to find) after several years, and will probably never be updated. I'd much rather deal with open source drivers, once a driver is written it tends to be included with the Kernel source.
Microsoft's solution is thin clients. Well, I have run a 100MHz machine with 16M of RAM as a Linux X server with a relatively unimpressive desktop as the application machine which does run KDE and it's quite nice.
You can even play quite a few games as it turns out; stuff like LBreakout work fine. The fact is that an X terminal runs a much smaller footprint than the one proposed for Eiger.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
[from the "It's not a troll if it's true" dept.] ...Microsoft announces it's trying harder to keep breaking software sales records by selling software to people that a) don't WANT it, or b) don't NEED IT.
Oh wait, this isn't 'other news', it's this news article too.
No one needs to ask why micrsfot does ANYTHING. The end game is always to make money, everything is justifiable, so please don't be surprised when they announce another way to sell the same thing.
While on the topic of MS OS's, I want to say personally and professionaly, I like Windows 2000 due to its stability and reliability (as I sit here at home with nothing to do). So much so, that I've recommended only it (as opposed to WinXP or Win98 etc) to all of my clients.
When Longhorn hits, I will evaluate it and make recommendations, though I am sure I already know my answer (seeing as though WinFS alone consumes over 30MB of RAM, and the advent/prospective incorporation of TC/DRM).
My point is that I wish MS would quit with the trinkets and toys for business OS's and give me predictability, stability and reliability (== the most important attributes an OS can have).
Windows2006 should be Win2k SP5.
Inject.
I wish I hadn't blown all of my mod points earlier, but oh well. XFCE, Fluxbox, IceWM, etc. do a *great* job on low-end PI/PII machines.
Windows 3.11 is coming back?
Wow, I can't believe I have insight into this. Windows already has a thin-client product. It's called 'Remote Desktop/Terminal Services' and this probably isn't a bad idea.
Let me tell you my experience: we were recently denied the ability (via a firewall) to map drives between our individual machines and our data center windows servers, as this was seen as a possible virus vector. (insert Microsoft bashing here.) So we took one of our mid-size Win2k3 servers in our data center, added a bunch more Terminal Services licences, and now we spend alot of our time terminal-serviced into our datacenter. As IT folk we still have a bunch of fancy high-powered development software installed on our machines, but otherwise they are acting as thin clients.
If you were a school with 1) a whole bunch of decaying windows boxes (50+), and 2) a strong desire to stay with Windows, and you were offered the chance to buy a single beefy server for $5-6K, and install a Terminal Services + IE package (named 'Eiger') on all your old machines, you'd probably go for it.
Is either 'Windows 3.0' or 'Windows 3.11'
As soon as you use a graphic interface, the advantages of Linux on old hardware pretty much disappear, in my experience.
Not necessarily. You still have the option of running lightweight window managers and you have a whole raft of alternative applications (AbiWord instead of OO.o Writer, GNUmeric instead of Calc, Firefox, Sylpheed instead of Evolution...)
As a single data point, I run Slack 10 with WindowMaker, Firefox, Sylpheed and aterm/vi on a P1-120/32Mb laptop. It's cozy but it feels like home. And I can work on it.
Like everything else, these kinds of compromises are more effective if you know what you're doing.
I saw that shot more than a few times back when Starbuck was a man. ~ lucabrasi999
was previously used by Novell as an intermediary
name for UnixWare 2. Let's just hope the Microsoft's
new offspring will compare in terms of reliability!
Going on means going far, going far means returning. Tao te Ching
High end machines (any of those on the Top500) run something other than Windows - often Linux.
It such a joy using it.
It is very fast, it rarely crashes, runs on a mere 48Mb Ram, and I can run stuff unported software like Corel Draw 11, Macromedia Flash MX.
Never had problems with viruses, even though no AV is installed.
For me it is the perfect solution for many of my needs.
Brilliant stuff.
I can't get the image out of my head: an albino Ballmer discussing the 'Eiger Sanction' against Linux ...
WordPerfect 8 was faster, more stable, more features, and SMALLER than Word Perfect7.
The rest of the office suite wasn't so great (CorelCentral wasn't cood enough to be used bey Corel in house), but the WP wasn't bloat-ware.
But, I agree that the tendency to bloat is in office-ware, as it is on almost all other home computer software.
You will probably need Terminal Services licensing and you will still need to replace the hardware eventually. Nice way, though for MS to get back into your budget!
It would have been far easier for these customers to keep applying Win9X service packs...
But sooner or later DOS simply need to be buried.
This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
Sorry guys, already happened...
We all know that Linux is great for slower computers if it is set up properly. GNOME and KDE will be slow most of the time, but a small window manager will work fine.
Windows XP can run fine on older hardware if you disable all of the extra crap, like the themes and the side panes on Windows Explorer. Getting rid of extra services will also help. The key is to disable everything that makes it pretty. Sure, it will look more like Windows NT 4 or 2000, but it will run fairly well.
The problem with Windows and Linux isn't the OS and included programs as much as it is the other applications. Every program keeps getting more bloated. Let's use AOL Instant Messenger as an example: every release adds more and more crap that really isn't necessary. More and more programs are doing this. Most people don't know about Gaim, so they continue to use AIM. OpenOffice.org runs slow for me on real old hardware, while Microsoft Office for Windows 95 runs fine. That would probably be the real reasoning for running applications from a central server.
Linux is great. I use it whenever possible because it is a better OS in terms of code quality, efficiency, and features. However, the applications seem to cause most of the problems on both sides.
When I'm talking about Windows, I mean the NT based versions. The old 9x/Me releases were not good operating systems.
.... report it, and keep your damn opinion to yourself.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Say I'm a school IT admin - in charge of upgrading that outdated computer center with anywhere from 10 to 100 older PC's. They're running Win95/98 just fine right now (OK, mostly fine) - Now I get to reload all of them to a "Win-thin" OS and buy a medium to large server to offload most of the applications to? How does that save me money? Instead of having up to date PC's, now I have a server to maintain plus the row after row of zombified PC's? So I lose time and money?
How modular is the Windows O/S? with Linux, I can use a very simple window manager and run the O/S effectively in a lowly pentium (some would even say a 486), because the O/S is very modular. But what about Windows? after all this new technology (.NET, Aero, WinFS etc etc), has modularity became non-existent in Windows? or is it a lame excuse for providing central management of programs, reducing piracy and increasing revenues?
That doesn't change the practical truth that OS X has consistently, over a number of years and .1 revisions, gotten *faster* on older systems. That's on G3, G4, and G5 models. Ars Technica has commented on how unprecedented that speed gain is, more than once -- in its detailed reviews of the various wildcat OS releases, for example.
Sometimes it's okay to compare Apples to oranges. If you're just trying to figure out which fruit to eat, and one of them tastes better, it's a valid comparison. There is a high-level comparison here that's valid: Apple has put a premium on this sort of performance improvement, showing results, and MS hasn't made that effort or shown similar results. You can say Apple has an "unfair" advantage, or that MS is trying to do something else, but the contrast's still there.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I've got an ancient 200 MHz Pentoum MMX-based PC with 96 megs of RAM and a two gigabyte hard drive, that I use for a "guinea pig" of sorts. Newer Linux distros using KDE or Gnome -- Fedora, Ubuntu, and even Vector -- crawl to the point where the computer is almost unusable. Any GUI action takes a few seconds or more just to register; click a mouse, and wait to see the button image depress. Windoes 2000 runs just a bit sluggish, but it's responsive, and the computer actually seems uable, even though it's slow.
Maybe in 2000, using what would have been considered old hardware at the time, Windows-based operating systems seemed slow and compared to Linux distos of the time. Back then, Linux was always recommended as a way to extend the working life of an older PC. Now, though, when a Linux installation seems slow on an elderly box, the alternative is to repalce it with Windows 98 or 2000, or make it a power-hungry router or firewall -- a waste of computing power, considering that when the computer was built, it was intended to be every bit as functional as the PCs of today.
I know someone will chime in and say "What about TWM/FVWM?" For a school, non-profit, or church, you know the answer is "no."
The sadest thing about this whole story is that the parent is moded funny. *Sigh*
So, let me get this straight. Their target market is to sell something that costs $150 to people who can't afford to pay $350 to upgrade to something that's 10 times better and would even *include* this new software?
The real reason for the lack of upgrading over the past 10 years is because a) a *complete* lack of funds, in which case they can't afford the new software either, or b) They're too clueless to even know the difference, or c) don't even use the computers enough to *care* about upgrading anything.
This is PC hardware we're talking about, not old mainframes running legacy code that the company can't upgrade because the software they rely on will have to be rebuilt from scratch. If you want to run the old software, you just take out the hard drive and put it in the new computer, or copy it all over the network.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I want to use RedHat and KDE on my p2-350...I installed (I think it was RH8 and KDE3.0?) so long ago that I don't even remember when and what. It's been collecting dust for a while, but I do remember it was very slow. (In comparison, Win98 flew!)
What's a good combo for a p2-350 w/128M ram that I would only use for development, playing mp3s, and for the love of all that is holy...support a GeForce 2?
This is true for XP.
This is *especially* true for Linux.
Yes, it's amazing what you can get Linux to run on if you remove all the eye candy. However, most people these days get upset when you call the GUI "eye candy".
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Linux actually has pretty amazing support for some legacy hardware, although configuration can be kind of opaque and most newer distributions don't know what to do with it. There is support remaining in the kernel for ancient ISA cards that haven't been properly supported under ANY Microsoft OS since MS-DOS.
I agree that modern desktop Linux is not the best choice for older systems, but I think the reasons have to do more with software bloat than hardware support.
Support for new hardware that the manufacturers are loath to release specifications for is IMO much more of a problem.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
...which may/may not be a valid assumption.
My bet, OTOH, would be that an org unwilling to upgrade hardware, etc. to support full-blown XP, for whatever reason, is probably not going to be ponying up for the latest/greatest Office. What I'd want in that situation is an OS that provides somewhat better contemporary peripheral hardware support, as well as closing off some of the more egregious security/performance holes of the early OS, while letting me run Office 95/97 and other long-in-the-tooth apps in peace.
The $65MM question for MS in this case is how many of these older apps will be broken by XP, hence forcing an unwanted upgrade.
What you might see is a situation in which small offices could ... upgrade each machine for $500 and get way better performance...
It hasn't been said yet? Alright then: Mac minis for everyone! OS X isn't de-featured, but I'm sure upgraders will be able to manage.
I read Slashdot for the articles.
Here's the news story.
1 5438,00.asp
s p
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,18
And, here's why I, anyway, think anorexic XP, aka Eiger, will only end up helping the acceptance of Linux desktops.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1815779,00.a
Steven
this is open source software, winning.
.. getting it to actually fix its bugs and fulfill its 'promises & dreams' for hardware of yester-year.
swaying the giants' attention off the 'bleeding edge, hardware upgrade treadmill', and
right on.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What are they going to do to put MS-WinXP on a diet from being barely usable in 128MB? And MS-IE that needs about the same? Many of these machines are only 64 MB RAM or less.
I first read this article title as:
"Microsoft developing low-end Windows for new machines."
and I thought to myself, "What, another article about Longhorn?"
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
So that includes everyone who's using Windows, right?
Nope. It's because Microsoft is a monopoly, and they can squeeze what they want out of the market. The evil bastards, being a monopoly, don't have to listen to what their customers want.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Like the ones they are talking about, built for 95... I like to use Damn Small Linux... Works great. And it's free. And it's available now.
MadOgre.com
caffeine IS a drug
and probably as addictive as bbq chips
I thought the firewall and antivirus software were the reasons XP needed such high-end machines to run on! Seriously, at Intel we calculated the majority of CPU cycles were devoted to running Intel's fascist security programs, leaving less then 50% of the CPU for actually doing productive work... no wonder Intel is interested in dual-core CPUs!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
apart from the masses and masses of outdated computers in my school, what to do about the mediocre networking? if our school wants to use this system, they're going to have to buy at least 3 diffnern't servers, and get a proper admin to keep this all tied together (probably with a piece of string judgung by my school's financial state). not to mention the fact it'll have to run side by side with a winXP computer room payed for by companies for a special accountant/economics course. what a mess :(
Of course my only question, is if this version will run even better on newer hardware or will MS mess that up. I need something for games, not multimedia, not internet and not office. Anything streamlined that works even better on newer hardware will be a plus.
And guess what, looks count! It is, after all, a GUI! Other wise we could all just use X11's built in window manager, couldn't we?
Flame all you wish but, KDE is the most aesthetically pleasing desktop environment with Gnome being a distant second. Neither of them can run as well on the same limited resources as XP.
Every time Microsoft does something new, or blatently uses an open source idea, every one assumes that they are trying to stop linux from propagating? I seriously doubt that microsoft considers linux anything more than an annoyance, because in a buisness sense, they aren't competitors. They know that in the end, if someone wants to use new programs, then they are going to have to buy a computer that will do it. This is probably just a pacification attempt so grandma and grandpa can at least get an idea of what to expect from thier operating system once they get a new dell. Not to mention that they make more money if you buy a piece of software straight from them as opposed to how much they make per copy from OEM's. They are making money, and to some extent keeping the customer reasonably satisfied.
Where Clint Eastwood is an assassin out to kill a mountain climber. He doesn't know which one to kill. So everyone dies in an accident on the north face (except for Clint). This is my guess as to why MS chose the name "Eiger."
"This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
Uhhh, maybe MS is just trying to satisfy customers that currently use Windows and what to stay with Windows but want an update and can't currently have it because XP is designed for newer computers.
Why does every news story on MS have to be entirely tainted and slanted against the company? Why not just report the story and the possible reasons why MS is making the move without posting a slam against MS and no alternative view?
cease to run on Pentium 4 or Athlon XP?
Command line freaks are weird.
What will happen to geek dumpster diving if businesses don't have to buy new hardware every few years? That's where I get most of my computers!
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
This was spoken about 4 or 5 years ago, about the time that XP came out; Server based apps delivering content to barebones PC's. This marketing scheme was the basis of the .NET product line.
It's You and I against the World... When do we attack?
Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. The move is to appease businesses and universities that don't want to scrap the old hardware. This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
So instead they are going to alienate their OEM-builder customers, which are looking forward to the next version of Windows spurring a wave of purchases as consumer toss their Win98/ME machines for new ones necessary to run a new version of Windows decently.
Or, is Microsoft going to only make this Windows version available to eduaction and business customers, spurring howls from consumer watchdog groups and cheapos?
by rendering those low-end machines unusable within 3 weeks of windows installation.
Don't get upset guys.. but Windows is a faster and smaller resource using OS than linux/KDE or GNOME
Congratulations! You can replicate the functionality of a 386 with windows 3.1 by using web tools! And it's actually clunkier, albeit with a prettier interface.
In fact, it's not even as good as the 386. Word 6 doesn't have a decent web app replacement - call me back when it does. The same goes for dozens of other apps.
Linux still wins because it runs on all levels of hardware. I install the same kernel on my 486 that I install on my Pentium 4. I'm just more selective about what goes on the slower machine.
My lame blog.
Microsoft? Windows? Smaller? Faster? Compatible with older hardware?
Don't make me laugh...
Damn, too late, I just wet myself.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Presumably if Joe Bloke has an old PC running Windows 98 then he's probably never going to upgrade to Linux anyway. The only reason he might want to install Linux would be to run maybe a web or mail server, something that he probably would not want to do on Windows 98 anyway.
Otherwise, if he has older hardware, he doesn't need the additional driver support (say for USB 2.0) that comes with Windows XP and today's games that only run on Windows 2000 or XP are probably too hefty to run on his hardware anyway.
Sure, Microsoft would love to get Joe to spend more money on a new OS, that's just plain business, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Linux.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
WHY why - because Microsoft is a biggest treat to humanity after some obvious ones..
Just imagine M$ guys talking about the super server this crap needs, quad cpu @4GHz, 4GB RAM, 1Gbit ethernet, super hardware RAID, etc...
Think again! VNC and linux _is_ the solution, again.
Start in the linux VNC-X-servers as clients there are, each client connects to its VNC server, and in there run their stuff.
How much linux hardware you need? Not much, been there already, with a dual P3 512MB, and exporting displays to at least 10 people, using mozilla, open office, etc. So I think that a dual core athlon 64 and 2GB RAM can take at least 20-30 users, decently, and a software RAID 1.
Again, linux fixing the crap M$ makes...
Funny!
"The move is to appease businesses and universities that don't want to scrap the old hardware." ... ...
"Most other programs, however, will run off a central server."
"Microsoft will continue to recommend that the best way to get more out of any operating system is to replace computers when they get old."
So let me get this straight.
Microsoft is going to offer a cheapo client side OS to cheapskate businesses and po' universities.
It will either:
Require a big investment in a Microsoft based servers.
OR
a mess of free OS, say Linux and BSD, running well on existing older or new, less expensive servers.
I think you're imposing your own standards on everyone else - purely because something is "old" does not make it unusable to everyone.
Take the UNIX editor vi - a console based text editor that has been there just about as long as UNIX has yet is still the most popular editor despite many more modern editors, especially those with GUIs. Yet I and many other people can edit faster using keyboard-only vi than mouse and keyboard alternatives.
I still enjoy playing Duke Nukem 3D, original Doom and original Civilization - keeping a copy of MS-DOS to hand is great for that reason alone, whatever you may think.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...can't be objective about Microsoft?
Alienating? LOL.
Personally, it's all a toolbox to me, Windows for games and some web services, Linux for most everything else (I love Slack/KDE's ergonomics.)
Nearly every post that references Microsoft in some fashion is written with a ridiculously biased verbiage.
I hate to appear to be defending Microsoft, but most slashdotters come across as zealous (not as zealots, although there are some of those.) Why? What good does that do? Most slashdotters appear to be fairly intelligent and knowledgeable, so what possible benefit is there to such childish behavior? I know Microsoft does everything it can to beat the competition (including illegal suppression and represssion), so does every other public company including Apple, and Red Hat. Personally I dislike Red Hat more than Microsoft because Red Hat is giving industry in America the impression that it alone is 'Linux.'
Anywho, end rant.
Loading...
"Goffe said Microsoft will continue to recommend that the best way to get more out of any operating system is to replace computers when they get old."
I will continue to recommend that the best way to get more out of any computer is to replace the operating system when it gets too cold.
If the target audience for this product is going to be businesses and schools, why the hell are they bundling Windows Media Centre with it? If this is going to be installed on older hardware, hard drive space is going to be at just as much a premium as everything else, and yet they're wasting it on software that isn't going to be used while offloading important stuff (MS Office?) on a central server!
I think this is going to be another 'XP Starter Edition' rather than a serious product.
Jaguar has VNC built into the system, you just have to enable it. Pretty painless to 'remote into'.
Try again.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So don't think to use this to turn old laptops into portable terminals, according to this spec:
Windows XP "Eiger":
[...]
Not supported
Windows image acquisition (WIA)
Telephony, VPN & Dial-up
Wireless networking (802.11)
You must think in Russian.
OPTIMIZED SPYWARE!?!?!1
I'd never thought I would live to see this day!
Your skill in reading has increased by one point!
I had XP pro running on my machine with only 64mb of memory. All i did was turn off all the unnecessary services that run at XP boot up. It ran smooth too, word processing and interent browsing worked fine, even photoshop worked smoothly (it took a while to start up though).
I'm happily running Windows XP SP2 on an AMD K6-2 300 with 196mb ram, and it performs very very well. Although I cheated a little and used a great tool called XP Lite to remove all the stuff I don't need from XP. XP can run on low-end PCs fine, just remove the bulk nobody really needs.
My other sig is crap too
is, ironically, much nicer than RDC for Windows ;) (it connects my main G5 to my secondary ::cough:: slave ::cough:: Windoze machines I use for testing and for whatever I can't use the Mac for... which isn't much)
I can't want to "upgrade"!
The memories of network booting twenty-eight 386's to run Windows 3.11 off of a single (486 66Mhz) Netware 3.11 server just started to fade from my mind, and now I can bring back the same joy, but this time with Internet Explorer!
I have a VAIO PCG-R505TSK with Win2K on it. I bought it 3.5 years ago. It had 128MB of RAM and 800MHz processor with 20GB disk. Well this setup works just fine for my own little projects, for email and internet browsing. It didn't work at all for what I had to do with this laptop on my current contract. Running a J2EE app server, Sun ONE Directory Server and Vitria BusinessWare system while trying to code, read a very large word document and run some other small tools (Yahoo and MSN Messengers,) and Norton Security - all of these I needed for work and all of a sudden this laptop became useless in its original state. I added another 256MB Ram and put a new disk in (60GB) and now I can sort of do half of these things at the same time.
So now I decided to get myself a Dell laptop - a nice 2GB Ram, 2.13GHz Centrino, 100GB disk and I find out that it will have XP on it. O well, it's for work.
You can't handle the truth.
I do a lot of setting up machines for giving away to families that cannot afford a computer. The group I work with takes old business computers that have all software wiped from them - most at present are P3 500 to 600mhz machines. We now use Linux to get the job done. I can do a drive to drive install in about 30 minutes, Have everything a regular user will need. XP is way too slow -- 98 is way to hard to install a few machines at a time. Both would kill us on license fees. The only thing that makes this project even posible is Linux.
Just like MS to miss the mark again!
like Geoworks?
And I may be misinformed, so don't hesitate to correct me here, but wasn't the Win95 source code released to the general public?
With that said, why wouldn't someone with brains take all the crap that made Win95 suck, fix it, make it able to handle drivers (Since most Win98 drivers were just updated 95 drivers, or in some cases were actually 95 drivers re-badged) for the newer hardware, slip a modified version of WINEX into it (Since I think the most recent DX9.0 stuff won't work on anything less than ME) and release it to the public for testing?
I don't think it'd take THAT much effort to take an old, outdated OS, and bring it up to some reasonable amount of compatibility.
Just don't add bloat to it, please.. And while you're at it, strip out all that unnecessary crap. Core OS, Driver base, something sufficient enough for you to be able to download your browser of choice (since IE wasn't integrated at that time, and could be removed) and then let the consumer do as they wish?
This is, assuming that 95's source code was actually released. Again, I may be misinformed.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
and if your wondering what the titles about:
;)
its a linux distro (duh) made for use by the schools in norway.
basicly they are pulling much the same move, a thin client for use in the classrooms and on other public terminals, a workstation that can be both independent and connected for use by the teachers and other people arund the offices, and a server to drive it all.
but to install it all you only need one iso
you just select what kind if system your about to install.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
If they get the price right, and the server software easy/secure (And included in a group licensing of the thin client)
Firefox's RSS feed menu picked a bad place to cut off the title of this one...the story could have been so much more interesting. ;)
Presumably they will not only make $$ on systems that might have 'gone over to the dark side' and had Linux or other FOSS OS installed on them, but they will also get to sell institutional buyers Windows Terminal Server licenses as well as Client licenses, etc -much of which they would not get from selling XP Pro -They could also try to limit installation of 3rd party apps and other such lockin/detuning trickery....
u y/licensing/ts2003.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtob
My company will try to use this as long as it runs office (word, excel with macros). We still have many Windows NT machines and Windows 95. We skipped Windows 2000 altogether, and have begrudgingly moved some PCs to Windows XP. If its as good as Windows NT 4.0 we will take it.
Why can't MS just fork Wine? [winehq.com] A real good stripped Windoes!
And admit that Windows belongs in a hidden folder, in the home directory of a happy Linux user.
Kantotix [kanotix.org] and Damnsmalllinux [damnsmalllinux.org] rules!
Windows CE that runs on many thin client systems has IE builtin and supports RDP/terminal services.
Microsoft seems to be repackaging Windows every which way these days...
Sounds like a half-hearted effort on the part of MS to make some low end customers happy and to be able to say "We still support the old machines!". It won't get much real support nor will it get much enthusiasm by the dev team assigned to it. Therefore... Its gonna suck.
[n/t]
This company has about as much direction and vision as Sun Microsystems. Bleh. "You want that, we got that and, by the way, wait until you see this little thing we call 'tabbed browsing'."
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
With a couple of add ons & a new skin, that's my guess.
I assume the minimum requirements for XP Embedded ie32 are less than for Windows XP for the PC
Just for the heck of it I installed Windows XP on a 100Mhz pentium with 128mb or RAM. It ran ok. I wouldn't say it was great but it wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Some posts mention the thin client idea, a lot of others seem to have missed it and wonder why MS doesn't just use this project as a new general release.
The need for a server eliminates the possibility of using this "Eiger" version of MS windows on a single machine.
It would be nice if MS released some version that could easily be configured to run with less and let the IT department worry about configuring application servers...
As far as acceptance of this idea, it is suprising what lengths people will go to to use Microsoft-- mostly out of fear
*This* one better run on 640k!
I can already do thin clients, even run Windows apps, hell, I can probably even connect to a Windows server, using Linux tools. Microsoft is reimplementing VNC and attaching PR to it.
Basically, this is what Apple and Microsoft both do 99% of the time. As Orson Scott Card said, Apple could market air, give it a new name, imply that they invented it, and people would believe them, and call all other air "imitators".
That's right. Get it through your head, people. The "iPod killers" are NOT imitations, because THEY CAME FIRST.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
More info about Windows Eiger here.
I use an XDMCP connection to transform my old PII266 laptop into an AthnlonXP 2800+ powerhouse ;)
It's much faster than vnc and takes just a few minutes to set up.
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
How much of an effort did you put into deliberately misunderstanding the GP-post, just so you could spew your totally off-topic crap in here?
You suck.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
http://www.blackviper.com/
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
Aren't they using the New Thin File System nowadays?
- Peder
Hmmm...the lowest end machine I have right now is one of those ancient Gateway Handbooks. It's a tiny little subnotebook, circa 1993, with a 486 SX25 processor and 20 megs of Ram. Firefox is a pipe dream on this machine (FF runs slowly even over the network via X). Dillo is barely usable; it takes about three seconds to redraw the screen (such as when scrolling up or down). I can't get older versions of Netscape or even the Ted word processor to run on this machine. The last major release of FreeCIV does run, albeit slowly, if I use the XAW client.
I might be able to get a Small spreadsheet to run on this antique.
I can't believe that you are running Firefox on a system with only 32 megs of RAM. The Firefox I'm running right now is using over 100 megs of ram, judging by its VSZ size. I know there is an embedded port of Firefox for PDAs, not to mention an embedded version of Konqueror.
Last time I had 24 megs of ram, I used Netscape Navigator 4.x until I could get a system with more memory; it was just not possible to run Mozilla on that machine.
Those clever microsoft people! Sounds like Windows 3.11 for workgroups is going to make a come back, and here I thought the days of fiddling about with my sound blaster settings in the config.sys were a waste of time!! Hey what about DOS?
On my Panther install its in the 'desktop sharing' area of the system settings. Its one of the options ( i dont have it with me to give you exact details )
Its there.. It works.. I heard it was included with Jaguar too.
The using 3rd party 'share my desktop' applet helps configure things, but its not required.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm running the clones of Windows 95 OSR 2.5, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows NT 6 & Windows 2000 inside of VMware-workstation-5.0.0-13124.
I don't use Windows XP OEM because i'm not stupid.
I am going to recommend you stick with Fedora (I am sure that many will chime in with "use this distribution" or "use that one").
/etc/inittab, and change the line "id:5:initdefault:" to "id:3:initdefault".
So, here goes.
Fedora...
Generally takes the same hardware requirements as Redhat.
So, that would be 64MB for a NON-GUI installation (say, a server) or headless.
For GUI, 128MB is minimal.
700Mhz CPU is just fine...
I recommend 256MB as a "sweet spot" for GUI. 64MB is fine for a file server; although 128MB is a sweet spot for console or headless operation.
You are using the machine as a file server -- so DON'T use the GUI.
Edit file
This will make your machine come up in console mode.
You probably don't need multiple consoles -- so save some memory:
A little further down in the file you will see 6 lines like:
"1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1"
They differ in the first and last digits. Comment out (add a # in front) all lines, except the first one. This will remove all virtual consoles, except one.
Ensure that ssh is started "/sbin/service sshd status" (and "start" if it isn't on already). Also, add sshd to the programs that start at boot: "/sbin/chkconfig sshd on"
Now, you can ssh into the machine, and do GUI configuration (X will be forwarded automagically). Remove the keyboard, mouse and monitor. This is a file server, and doesn't need them.
Review other services - the fileserver can also do local NTP, but I wouldn't recommend CUPS and print services unless you use 128MB (for Ghostscript).
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
That would make the virgin Ruby?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...is called BeatriX.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This isn't to help you. It is to help them. Now the salemen have an answer for when the school administrators say they can't afford new hardware. They get to sell more licenses on every visit. And they make it hard for the school IT staff to go Linux because now the bosses at the front office have a solution that works on the old hardware and maintains Microsoft products at the same time.
They are simply increasing their ability to continue getting a bigger piece of the pie in the face of Linux competition.
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