Windows XP Support ending April 8, 2014

[jeffg]

"How on EARTH do they expect to produce anything reasonable without an adequate monetary-basis to fund R&D from?"

IMO that question mistakenly supposes a company with a 95% market share has to care about either R&D or producing reasonable products.

 

[washer111]

I understand that, but I don't know how they expect to be making money from Windows if they aren't making people pay for it (Same with Apple), and especially upgrades at that.

And Microsoft is slowly losing Marketshare on Desktop PCs, Laptops and Tablets as better versions of the Linux family of operating systems come to fruition, so they have about 90% at the moment (and only 32.9% in Servers and less than 2% in Smartphones)

 

In case anyone else didn't know, Windows 7 wasn't actually version 7 at all. It was actually Windows 6.1 (Vista was version 6), and Microsoft sold that for big-bucks too. Why they couldn't do that with 8, I don't know...

 

[foraloysius]

Once you have upgraded to Windows 8.1 it isn't very much different than Windows 7. Click on the Start button and when you have the icon screen click on the arrow in the left bottom corner. You get all the programs as in the start screen. Also if you click left on the Start button you get a lot of options. It's actually really easy. I don't have any problems with it, although I do have preferences.

 

[arbilab]

Looks like we're all in the same chapter.... a page is too small to even outline microshaft's shortcomings.

I wonder if they did what Ampex did with their first full-software product, the ACE edit controller. Our station, loyal to Ampex, bought an early one. They hired a whizkid from CalTech to write the code--I rode to lunch in his new Camaro at the demo--and he did but without knowing ANYthing about what the application was supposed to accomplish. It worked well enough to demonstrate but not really to use. So they told him to fix it and he told them "well now that I'm a software professional I want more money". They told him 'no' and hired ANOTHER whizkid from CalTech, no better oriented to the real world than the first. He fixed some things and broke some others. Rinse and repeat, the third guy put some of V1's bugs back into V3. Then somebody bought the station and laid me off. I don't think the thing ever did what the salesman said it would.

You know the infamous Windows memory leak bug? I know (secondhand) the guy who identified it. He worked for Adaptec writing test code that ran indefinite cycles 'to failure' which always occurred so he set out to find why. It's a typo in the Windows source code. He reported it to Microshaft and they sent him a coffee mug, but they never fixed it. Oh, it's reiterated in C++ so that needs rebooting every (finite) cycles just like Windows does.

Meanwhile Unix was designed to run the phone system. Had they engineered as slovenly as Microshaft, there wouldn't be enough American workforce available--even with unemployment--to keep the phone system rebooted. "Your call has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down".

 

[jeffg]

"It's a typo in the Windows source code. He reported it to Microshaft and they sent him a coffee mug, but they never fixed it."

This is why I laughed when I read the other comment about MS's supposed R&D. Many coding errors that existed in NT3.x were simply copied to NT4, Win2K and even XP. They can't be bothered to fix their current programs, let alone develop new ones. Even Windows itself was a ripoff of Xerox's OS.

 

[rp2813]

I'm as disappointed as others here with Windows 8's dumbing down of the user experience, but I can't help but make comparisons to all of those grandmas who got new automatic washers as gifts and shunned them in favor of their trusty hands-on wringers.

 

When I look at it that way, I wonder if maybe I should rethink my aversion to Windows 8.

 

 

[jeffg]

MS's stated goal is to make computers indistinguishable from TV's. So I think we have not yet begun to see what "dumbing down of the user experience" means. IMO within five years it will be virtually impossible to build your own PC (because of proprietary standards, mainly MS's), and you won't be able to even get to a web search prompt without watching forced advertising. Or in other words they're trying to impose a 20th Century business model on a 21st Century medium. It's not only futile (e.g. if you think 1.5 billion Chinese have to deal with commercials and copyright laws, you'll first need to explain the concept of copyright law to them, etc) but downright pathetic imo, and a direct result of our government not properly protecting the internet as the essential utility it's become. Would we stand for telephone companies being allowed to delay or reroute our calls until we've listened to commercials? How about the USPS refusing to pick up or deliver our mail until we've watched at least 100 Geico commercials?

 

[sudsmaster]

Fry's has had periodic sales on Windows 7. OEM version, not upgrade. I've had a copy for a while, sitting on the shelf, waiting for me to find all the parts I bought to build a new PC to receive it. I'll probably keep the XP I'm on now as a backup and to run programs that won't run elsewhere. I stayed on W2K until a couple of years ago, then finally installed the XP I had on the shelf for 10 years, after some evaluation CAM software refused to load on it. But even I recognize that for some stuff, later versions of the Windows OS do offer performance and compatibility benefits. It's just not a priority. Yet.

 

[mark_wpduet]

Classic Shell

Best thing to do is go to youtube and search windows 8 classic shell.
tons of vids on it......tutorials....It's easy.

It doesn't come with the microsoft start button, but rather a "shell" start button where the microsoft start button is on windows 7, but it functions the same. I wanted the microsoft instead of the shell button, to make it look exactly the same, so after googling I figured that out too....

I put it on a friends computer that has windows 8 and they LOVE IT!

 

[whirlcool]

Years ago I was working on a friends PC, it was an old early 90's model and when I booted it up, it came up with the Windows 3.1 screen on it. But it wasn't Windows.
It was an HP product, it had the HP logo in several different places on it. From what I understand Microsoft wasn't the first to have a graphic user interface, and supposedly they bought it from HP and then developed it into Windows.

 

[jeffg]

From Wiki's article on operating systems:

"The decreasing cost of display equipment and processors made it practical to provide graphical user interfaces for many operating systems, such as the generic X Window System that is provided with many Unix systems, or other graphical systems such as Microsoft Windows, the RadioShack Color Computer's OS-9 Level II/MultiVue, Commodore's AmigaOS, Atari TOS, Apple's Mac OS, or even IBM's OS/2. The original GUI was developed on the Xerox Alto computer system at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the early '70s and commercialized by many vendors."

PARC had the multitasking GUI idea, what is now called Windows, and I know this because I worked with XOS in the mid-late 1970's, before Windows existed as a product from MS, in fact even before MS was founded as a company. If you can find a copy or screenshots of XOS you'll be amazed how much it looks like Windows.

Edit-- Found a screenshot:[this post was last edited: 3/26/2014-19:28]

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en.wikipedia.org

 

[whirlcool]

That example of PARC looks more like a Mac than the one I saw on the old computer. It looked exactly like Windows 3.1 but with a HP copyright, plus it predated Win 3.1 by a few years. Only saw it that one time, never came across it again.

 

[mattl]

Here is a good summary....

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www.techrepublic.com

 

[arbilab]

Steve Jobs pirated GUI from PARC for Mac and Gates pirated it from him in sequence. Gates also pirated DOS from its author who had no idea of its value while Gates knew IBM was looking for just such a gizmo.

Thus in treachery was the software business born and remains to this day.

 

[jeffg]

Allen, if I could still edit my last post, I'd change it to, "..you'll be amazed how much it looks like Windows. Or Unix. Or a Mac." All of today's major multitasking GUIs (even Novell and OS/2) have the same Xerox grandfather.

 

[DADoES]

 
Nephew's laptop got stolen at college.  His mother dropped by a new HP unit with Win 8.1 for me to prep (install RAM upgrade, various software).

Ewwwwwww!  Me not much like it.

 

[sudsmaster]

I remember poking around with an early version of Microsoft Windows in the late 1980's, definitely before the 90's. It was of limited functionality, though. Pokey and I don't remember any useful apps. It must have been version 1. It wasn't until 3.1 that it became minimally useful, and not until 95 did it actually enable one to be productive in an office. The MAC of course had already demonstrated the concept, but with an closed OS.

Windows 95 screwed up our local area network pretty good, with network shells that broke Netware. It was a nasty bit of commercial competition. Windows 98 was a bit better, Windows NT was Microsoft's attempt to dominate the local area network market, but fell far short, and Windows 2000 along with Active Directory finally became a power user's OS as well as a workable network file/print/application server. Novell no longer exists, RIP.

 

[jeffg]

Novell is alive and well and substantially downsized:

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en.wikipedia.org

 

[whirlcool]

You all will love this one.

I got a phone call from some elderly people who bought one of my computers from me several years ago. They are very worried about this.

Their neighbor(40's) came over and told them that on April 10, 2014 hackers will take over their computer and steal all their information, try to take over ownership of their house, open credit cards in their names, etc. I asked them how does he know about all this. They said "he knows something about computers and that he came over and installed some software on our computer that will prevent this." I asked what did he install? The woman said "It's some kind of icon that has a skull and crossbones over a little picture of what I guess is a hard drive." So I asked "What does this software do? She said "Well, the guy told us that if a hacker is on our computer to click on it. Then the software will completely destroy our internet connection and start erasing all the information on our hard disk so the hackers won't be able to find it."

Whhaaattt?

Do you have a recent backup of your data? The response was "What's that?" I told them don't click on that under any circumstances and don't listen to anything that guy tells them. If you click on that all your programs and data would disappear!
Her response "But he knows something about computers.." My response, lock the doors and never let him inside your house again!

 

[washer111]

@whirlcool I'll assume that was the truth, and if so, its such a shame people take advantage of the elderly and those who just don't know any better. Not only do people like that guy you mentioned do it, but also the "guys" "up top" at Microsoft... 

The worst part is, the elderly couple do not realise this guy is actually a hacker himself... When it seems too good to be true... Run away screaming.

 

@arbilab: I'll reply here instead of hijacking Robert's thread. Despite your situation, its still great to here an old computer can give (perhaps better) service than a newer one - especially if the task is mostly word processing and light web-browsing. 

With the OS being about 15 years old now, I'll bet any viruses that have come your way might have popped the message "This program requires Windows NT or better in order to run." (Please excuse that humour). 

 

On a more serious note, who's to say that older computers are useless. One of my favourite sites was once hosted by an IBM PS/2 Model 65SX, and on the PC-Server 500 before that. To top it off, I believe the former, on its Cyrix 486SLC2 processor upgrade was even participating in "Distributed.net"'s project of distributed computing. (Distributed is the oldest running program of its type - older than SETI and FOLDING AFAIK). 

Read more about the 65SX's service here: http://web.archive.org/web/20030607111017/http://greyghost.dyndns.org/