How many of you are OS holdouts / luddites? Still clinging to your favorite OS?

[Dude111]

Do you really have a Win95 machine running??


I started on 95 and it was OK and then I got 98se and I really love it

 

[nemesismk2]

Do you really have a Win95 machine running??


I started on 95 and it was OK and then I got 98se and I really love it

i started on 95 and then went onto 98se which i really liked but some of my games demanded windows xp so had to leave windows 98se. i have had windows 7 (didn't really like it) but kept using windows xp so decided to stay using windows xp.

 

[PingSpike]

Microsoft's recommendation was to reboot Win98/Me machines every two hours.

No need, the OS performed this task automatically.

People rag on 9x, and it did suck in a lot of ways. Applications were not well separated from the OS meaning a crashing game/program blue screen the whole system. DLLs overwrote each other all the time causing the install to eat itself. But it was a big step up from windows 3.1 even with all its faults. And it supported running DOS applications in a kind of roundabout way which was a pretty huge deal at the time.

That said, even with its higher memory requirements it was well worth escaping to the NT based windows 2000 from windows 98. Just not having an application blow up the whole OS multiple times a day made the change a godsend.

 

[nerp]

I remember the days just after Windows 2000 was released and the realization that stability on a home computer was finally within reach. Do you remember how we all ran uptime tools and bragged about not having to reboot for days at a time? I can go months without a reboot now if it weren't for security updates.

Long live Windows.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Do you remember how we all ran uptime tools and bragged about not having to reboot for days at a time?

I remember the 49.7 days bug too. Not that it mattered much. Win98 would have crashed long before that...

 

[Zor Prime]

I used Windows 2K until Radeon drivers weren't released for it anymore. Sad day.

 

[master_shake_]

you can take windows 7 from me when you pry it from my cold dead hard drive!

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm absolutely hating Win10 at the moment (it was never my favorite anyway) its running like absolute crap, hitching, freezing and blue screening worse than any version of windows I've ever used.
Its the same hardware running pretty much the same programs, doing the same tasks as it ever has but its running worse (much, much worse) than it ever has.

 

[ultimatebob]

How do they still give you updates every month?

There is a registry hack that makes Windows XP think that it's Windows POSReady 2009. That should be getting security patches for a few more years.

 

[nemesismk2]

There is a registry hack that makes Windows XP think that it's Windows POSReady 2009. That should be getting security patches for a few more years.

i will have to look into this because i have 4 windows xp computers which are still being used. i think the windows posready 2009 will offer some support until 2019.

 

[bruceb]

Here is how to do it (from this link)

http://www.zdnet.com/article/registry-hack-enables-continued-updates-for-windows-xp/

As reported by Wayne Williams at Betanews and confirmed by us, a simple registry hack to a Windows XP system tricks Windows Update into providing updates for it.

UPDATE: Six months later, find out how this hack is working so far .
​

Williams says that the hack, included just below, makes the system look like Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 which will continue to receive updated until April 9, 2019.
To apply the hack, create a text file with a .reg extension and the contents below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady]
"Installed"=dword:00000001
​

 

[Mike64]

I'm still using Vista, not out of any particular love for it, but because it's what this (obviously old) machine shipped with and I've just never had a real reason to actually spend money to "upgrade" the OS just for upgrading's sake... In retrospect, it might've been worth moving to Win7 back when OEM COAs were readily available for cheap on Ebay, but OTOH, not doing so has never actually gotten in my way, and however slowly I've been moving on it so far, I dare say I'll be building/buying a new machine before (extended) support for Vista ends...

 

[EXCellR8]

Vista... the OS that made people love XP

I used XP exclusively up until the Win 7 beta hit, and then I migrated everything over. Never touched Vista. I'd say 7 is probably my favorite, and I still have it on a few machines, but I learned to like Windows 8.1 and 10.

So far Windows 10 hasn't really given me too many issues, aside from finding drivers for older equipment, but that was to be expected. I'd say overall that I like it, but there is still a lot of stuff it could have done without.

 

[Mike64]

Vista... the OS that made people love XP

I used XP exclusively up until the Win 7 beta hit, and then I migrated everything over. Never touched Vista. I'd say 7 is probably my favorite, and I still have it on a few machines, but I learned to like Windows 8.1 and 10.

So far Windows 10 hasn't really given me too many issues, aside from finding drivers for older equipment, but that was to be expected. I'd say overall that I like it, but there is still a lot of stuff it could have done without.

Microsoft really screwed up with Vista upon release, but after SP1 it was basically fine, and after SP2, it's been totally fine. I could have gotten Win7 with this machine, but my old one died in a somewhat spectacular-though-fortunately-not-fiery crash and I needed a new one "yesterday." With Vista, this was one was ready to ship immediately while I would have to have waited another week or so for a Win7 machine. In all honesty though, it's really never made a noticeable difference to me. Win7 might've saved me a few seconds here and there, but for my purposes, that's been irrelevant...

At this point, there are occasional things (drivers for new accessories and whatnot) that're hard to come by for Vista, but even that wasn't the case until very recently - if anything, it was in fact the other way around... (My hardware, of course, is another story, but even that's still bottom-line-functionally OK for 90% of my needs and Vista would still run on a faster, more powerful processor with more RAM anyway...)

 

[Zahid Iqbal]

I prefer to use only win 7 till now. Have a change to use win 10. but was a bad experience. so come back to win 7. Let see in future when move to win 10 agains

 

[PingSpike]

Now that I think about it I didn't actually ever use XP Pro for my main OS. I held onto Windows 2000 well past what most people would think was reasonable, but never had any problems with it. Then I switched to XP Pro x64 only because I wanted to use 4GB of ram. I switched to it well after its initial growing pains so I never had all the issues everyone claimed it had, it worked fine. I think one cheap ass USB 56K modem didn't have a driver and that was the sum total of my "no hardware works with it!" boogie man encounters. I only upgraded to Win7 because I got it for $30 through an .edu digital river deal.

No idea why everyone rushes to new OSes anyway. Let some one else fall on those grenades, then swoop in after the mess has been cleaned up. I guess some people are excited about the new features? I can't think of a single thing introduced since windows 2000 in the UI space that made me think I would be willing to pay a red cent to get.

 

[sweenish]

If you only consider the UI space, that's exactly why you have no idea.

 

[balloonshark]

No idea why everyone rushes to new OSes anyway. Let some one else fall on those grenades, then swoop in after the mess has been cleaned up. I guess some people are excited about the new features? I can't think of a single thing introduced since windows 2000 in the UI space that made me think I would be willing to pay a red cent to get.

Very wise words. The bad thing about Windows 10 is the home version users will be perpetual beta testers since they are the only ones that can't delay updates.

 

[nemesismk2]

just tried to activate my new copy of windows 7 and it's not activating anymore it will keep using it until i am forced to ditch it and have another windows xp and do the registry hack lol

 

[sbpromania]

I did clung to just one OS, Windows 7, the rest of them were dispensable.

XP and 7 were my top choice, and if you would've ask me what is the top OS, I would've said one of them.

Right now, I don't know which OS is the best, maybe 8.1, although I have 10 right now.

 

[nemesismk2]

after ringing up microsoft for a second time they have decided that my windows 7 is NOT illegal so every thing is okay now.

 

[Red Squirrel]

If you only consider the UI space, that's exactly why you have no idea.

The GUI is like 90% of the user experience though. So it is quite important. You can have an awesome car with all the bells and whistles, but if the dash is laid out in a super unusable and/or ugly way, and the steering wheel and shifter feels super clunky and the gas and brakes feel terrible, the overall driving experience won't be very great.

 

[fyy0r]

Windows XP on my 2nd backup / classic gaming machine -- (Core2Duo, 2GB DDR2, Radeon X800 128MB)
Windows 7 on my backup machine / light gaming -- (Core2Quad, 8GB DDR2, Radeon 4830 512MB)
Windows 8 on my laptop (keeping it at 8) -- (A6-5200, 4GB)
Lubuntu 14.04 on my main machine -- (Phenom II X4, 8GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 960, 240GB SSD)

I've ran Windows 10 for a while but it felt too unwieldly with the autoupdates (which also sometimes revert users settings), random scans, randomly deleting files (basically anything it thinks might be malware), task scheduled stuff and other shit that goes on in the background. Turning on at random times at night and shit. Most of this I fixed, but that was all the "default" experience, and it seems like there's always something going on and the CPU usage is always higher than normal compared to 7/8.

If you asked me what my favorite OS is, I would say XP by far. It feels pure, simple, clean and responsive. Runs on just about any computer, and plays just about any classic game. And the 2D experience is to this day much faster than any of the 3D accelerated desktops of Vista and up. I've got a dedicated XP machine and also an XP guest through my Lubuntu host with VirtualBox. The 3D acceleration for games is actually pretty good and I can play most Windows games up to around Doom 3 flawlessly through the XP VM.

Going to try and stick with Lubuntu on my main machine since it has a nice XP like interface with LXDE with very low overhead so most of my system resources can go to my own tasks. Boots up ultra fast and only uses ~250MB ram sitting at the desktop. Very little random CPU usage. I might reconsider Windows 10 in the future with a platform upgrade, but seeing as I would then probably have to purchase a license, I might not.

When I think about Windows 10 for my own machine, I cringe. It has a mind of its own, let me do what I want to do.
When I think about Windows 10 for a relatives machine, i'm kind of relieved in some ways. It has a mind of its own, let it fix itself.

 

[sweenish]

The GUI is like 90% of the user experience though. So it is quite important. You can have an awesome car with all the bells and whistles, but if the dash is laid out in a super unusable and/or ugly way, and the steering wheel and shifter feels super clunky and the gas and brakes feel terrible, the overall driving experience won't be very great.

You broke your own analogy by referencing internal systems like the shifter.

And it's a largely bogus argument. I don't argue that UI isn't important. Windows 8 demonstrates that very well.

Those that were willing to change the Windows 8 interface to fit their needs found it to be a far superior OS, not because of the interface changes, but because Windows 8 is a legitimately better OS than 7. The interface changes just got them comfortable.

Which is why the W10 interface hate confuses me. It's basically Windows 7. You don't need the tiles on the side if you don't want them.

What UI difference did Vista make that could sway someone from XP? Probably none, but you make the upgrade because XP is literally a security nightmare. Critical services are stored in static locations in RAM. You had to keep a handful of updates on hand for offline install before ever connecting the computer to the net to keep it usable. Vista was a massive security update over XP, and that's why you upgraded.

On this board, someone being so ignorant to say that UI drives their updates is beyond me.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Maybe you did not understand my analogy then. Basically anything that you touch in the car would be like a GUI in an OS. Those things like the shifter and steering wheel may control internal components such as transmission or steering system, those components may be mechanical or electronic or what not, but as long as the physical portion feels and works great, as a user you don't really care too much about the internals. The internals can be the most sophisticated design but if the physical controls feel like crap then it's moot point.

Vista was a terrible OS, there was no reason to switch to that, especially with 7 just around the corner which is basically the same as Vista but just more polished and better performance. The GUI changes were kinda annoying as they were not needed (changes just for the sake of change are just stupid), but they were not as drastic as 8 so once you get used to it it's not really that bad. 8 on the other hand may have been better internally but the GUI made it ridiculously unusable. People who say it's fine either don't use their computer for much, or installed 3rd party add ons. 10 has a better GUI but I still don't find it as great as previous versions of windows. Windows 2000 was probably the best and most usable GUI out of the box. Even with XP first thing I do is set to Windows classic, classic start menu, and put all the icons on the desktop that should be there in first place, like My Computer.