Electrolytics question

They are there for the benefit of others, not me. And until the number of complaints outweighs the number of compliments, they stay. At the moment the ratio is about 1 complaint : 5 compliments.

You do set yourself up for it don't you!

cheap, just add some.

The 'process' of being a desktop computer.

just upgrade it a little. Memory is cheap and is the main factor preventing a newer OS from functioning well.

up some security problems.

Then don't use the word.

What was I 'supposed' to do? Substitute whatever suits my fancy for what you said?

Windows Vista 64 bit on that machine

Try comparing apples to apples, like 64 bit to 64 bit or 32 bit to 32 bit.

That's three times the memory, not twice.

Thank you for making my point, You used three times (vs twice) the memory to get right back where you started.

I guess throwing up a splash screen works for you but I judge load times by when things become fully operational.

underneath.

more natural.

You mean 'looks pretty'.

That's a stupid question because there's nothing about a GUI that 'requires' transparent window borders.

operating like CloneDVD.

to use anything except perhaps the odd third party freebie utility.

Then you either don't know as 'many' people as you claim or they only use the limited software set you do but compatibility problems with Vista are legion and that's one reason, in addition to all the hardware incompatibilities, why MS has their 'Vista Upgrade Advisor."

Things have gotten better as vendors struggle to patch and 'upgrade' their products to work with Vista but that doesn't solve everyone's problem, especially if they're on an older version where their only choice might be to buy the latest release or do without.

And you do people a disservice by claiming they can upgrade and 'everything' except "perhaps the odd third party freebie utility" is going to work just fine afterwards.

They certainly amuse me. What am I supposedly being 'set up' for ?

Graham

I must admit, I found the 'ten steps to crapping like a man', particularly amusing. I think I could identify with at least nine of them ... ! :-)

Arfa

That is not very specific. What do you find it takes longer dto do? I have not yet found anything that is slower. I have found several operations that are more efficient though. The filing system is much better at copying (you get more choices if files are to be overwritten for example, and renaming files doesn't highlight the extension).

just upgrade it a little. Memory is cheap and is the main factor preventing a newer OS from functioning well.

up some security problems.

Use context and stop pretending to be a robot.

Windows Vista 64 bit on that machine

It works in the favour of my argument, the 64 bit OS is more hefty, and I would expect it to be slower if anything.

Who said "twice"?

Why do you keep saying "twice"? And I'm not where I started, it's the same speed, but better.

From pressing the power switch to the network logon prompt is considerably faster. From the network logon prompt to everything being loaded and at full speed is about the same.

underneath.

more natural.

A GUI is there so you're not staring at a boring text screen. The nicer it looks the better.

operating like CloneDVD.

to use anything except perhaps the odd third party freebie utility.

List a few things that have compatibility problems then. For christ's sake I don't even have many problems with games, and they're usually the worst offender.

Haven't had a complaint yet.

Isn't a 64 bit OS to fully utilise a 64 bit architecture - which shifts more bytes at a time to go faster?

I doubt it in Microsoft's case.

But there was 32 bit DOS and that FLEW.

Graham

Windows 95/98/ME wasn't very reliable either. Vendors ported their buggy apps to Windows, and they crashed there even more then they did under DOS. Win2000 was an improvement, but was ill suited to environments where it was exposed to a wide variety of hardware and software. Microsoft didn't really make a stable and versatile OS until XP came out.

I'm not sure that is strictly true. All of those versions were fine, if they were just left alone. You have to remember that in those early days of 'home' computing, people weren't as savvy as they are now, and their home computer was used for little else than word processing and perhaps some e-mail activity. That is the only expectation that most had, and it's what MS addressed with those early versions. It allowed simple folk whose only concept of a computer was something they had seen in the movies, to interface with what was, after all, a complex item. It simply wasn't designed to be 'tinkered' with by average users who wanted to start changing hardware in their machines all the time, or adding software.

Even given those limitations, I still think that most 'proper' applications that were actually written for those platforms, ran pretty well, and trouble free for the most part. Over the years, I have run many third party applications and my son has run every game known to man, largely without incident, on every version of Windows that there has been (excluding Vista, so far ... !! )

For sure, XP seems to be the most versatile version that there has been, but then I think that migrated down from the pro end, and was adapted for the home market, wasn't it ? There was a need for an OS that could tolerate the foibles of the 'modern' user, and XP was it.

It must be a terribly difficult balancing act for them to continually produce and maintain and OS that has the performance and facilities of a jet airliner, yet 'drives' like a Ford Escort.

Arfa

I've been running W2K for over seven years, and it has been extremely stable. I can't remember the last cras. And the few crashes I did have were Word lockups -- which I also haven't seen in several years.

The consensus is still that W2K is the most-stable version of Windows.

I can't comment as to versatility, but W2K was around for some time, and drivers for almost everything are available.

Mainly because things generally improve over time,

As is usually the case, it's not that simple and Windows NT, the 'family' XP is a sibling of, predates Windows 95.

People act as if Microsoft always 'ran everything' but they started off as a hole in the wall group writing software for other people, like IBM (DOS. OS/2, etc) and Apple (Word, Office, etc) They also had the foresight to retain rights to what they wrote.

Their first big break was keeping rights to DOS on non IBM machines, of which there weren't any... for about 15 minutes till the clones came out. Oops (for IBM). Actually, IBM didn't really care all that much about DOS, and OS/2 for that matter, as they considered it more of a necessary evil to sell hardware than a money maker in it's own right. It was the clones they hated.

But, back to the 'Windows' O.S., they were for different purposes. As I mentioned, MS retained rights to Office on 'non apple' products and I suppose Apple figured why not? since that's all it would run on. 'Windows' (for DOS) was originally developed so that Office could run on x86 computers. Oops (for Apple).

But, back at the IBM barn, MS was working on OS/2 when Windows 3.0 turned out to be an actual 'hit' (meaning they finally had a version that worked) so MS wanted to incorporate more of the Windows API into what was then called "NT OS/2" but IBM had different ideas so they split and MS's work went on to be Windows NT. (IBM would later change directions and advertise that OS/2 can run Windows apps too but why not get 'the real thing'?)

DOS based Windows was to simply 'run programs' (and multimedia) while NT was to be a multi-user, fully pre-emptive multitasking system portable across multiple platforms while being both OS/2 and POSIX complaint... as well as, of course, Windows (API). The holy grail in those days was "transportability" and that's where HAL, the "Hardware Abstraction Layer," comes from. It sits between the hardware and everything else so you need only rewrite the rather small HAL and the rest is none the wiser, or so the theory went. DOS Windows has no such need because it's only job is to run on x86 machines.

In some ways DOS Windows was functionally 'ahead' of NT in that it (GUI) was first out of the chute and got the consumer oriented 'multimedia' stuff. NT first got the Windows 3.x GUI and then, after Windows 95, that GUI migrated to NT but, for a while, people had a kind of "Back to the Future" experience going from their nifty looking Windows 95 home computer to the office 'super duper OS' NT system with the 'old fashioned' Windows 3.x GUI.

NT was the 'business' OS, where multi-user and multitasking was needed, and didn't get the full multimedia treatment till XP.

This, of course, isn't everything but it hit on a few of the major points.

Many people share your experiencences, myself included. And in every case I've personally seen, those who run it with few or no crashes do so in a limited and controlled environment. I had a few W2K workstations that I used for 2 or 3 years that never crashed. It was in a controlled environment, the hardware never changed, and only limited software was allowed on it.

Back in the SP1 or so era, I found W2K to be unusable on a few of my boxes because of the lack of drivers for some of my hardware. Specifically, I had ATI Rage Fury cards in my box, and ATI was unable to provide stable drivers for these cards. I had to abanodon it and go back to Win98 on those boxes. Other compability issues prevented me from using Win2K until later service packs came out.

Take it outside of the rather small hardware and software box that Microsoft designed it for, and you have crash city.

Microsoft started under a different business name, building electronic vehicle counters that were used to audit the traffic on a road. Then they wrote one of the first BASIC interpeters for the early kit computers under their new Microsoft name.

But that pretty much applies to any OS, and it is not the fault of the OS. Any OS is only as stable as the weakest driver. On this 64 bit Vista machine, the only issue I have ever had in 1 year's use was with a buggy ATI

This was purely a driver problem. Once I installed a different version of the driver (9 months ago), no more problems. Vista is now as solid as 2000 or XP ever was. This machine gets pretty hard use - dual monitors, multiple Virtual PC VMs (Server 2003, XP and Vista Business) running for weeks at a time for my development job, plus the usual Internet/Itunes/Media Player/MP3s/camera/pictures home use.

Most OS instability can be traced to either bad drivers or flaky hardware (usually RAM, but can also be power supply or hard drive - I have seen all 3 cause random reboots). Particularly with the NT/2000/XP/Vista line. All of these have been very stable for me, given solid hardware.

BTW, what does any of this have to do with Electrolytics? Topic Drift Much? :-)

Windows 2000 was the final release of Windows NT. Windows NT was very stable, depending on the platform it was run on. NT server was so stable that all the banks got rid of OS/2 and adopted Windows, thanks to NT server, and subsequently, W2k. OS/2 was run at nearly EVERY bank in the entire world at that time.

It would have been much simpler to change the video card.

You're an idiot. Don't give that 'It's just a sig' horseshit either.

Your stats, as well as your stat source are as retarded as you are.