PC going down and Microsoft is the anchor

[Jags]

I can pull out some 8" floppy disks if ya want to see them.

 

[pen]

I can pull out some 8" floppy disks if ya want to see them.

As to windows 8, bought a laptop a few months back and of course got stuck with it. Was in a need-a-computer-today situation.

I'm not impressed with Win 8 at all, even after giving it a several month trial period. Just seems unfinished / like nobody tested it before putting it out.

Also some things are just plain hard to figure out how to do on there, and if they are an action that one only does once in a great while, time to lose another 20 mins trying to relearn again forgetting what you did to make it work 2 months earlier.

Just plain awkard IMO.

pen

 

[jharkin]

The first PC we ever had (a 7MHz 8086 Tandy 1000) ran DOS 2.0 I still remember spending hours tweaking config.sys playing around with all the himem.sys and emm386 settings to tweak the memory settings and get specific programs to work. I completely wore out my Peter Norton DOS guide book....

I don't miss those days.

 

[Jags]

I don't miss those days.

Truer words never spoken.

 

[Delta-T]

I can pull out some 8" floppy disks if ya want to see them.

this is the punchline to a joke I heard that starts out:
"so 2 retired prgrammers walk into a topless bar in West Palm Beach......"

no offense to memebers from West Palm of course.

 

[MishMouse]

Did you ever notice for any serious windows issues, you always have to go back to C:>

For me I was unlucky enough to buy I new computer when Vista was the only choice.
Honestly I always considered windows one of the biggest viruses out there.

 

[maple1]

Windows 8? 7? Never even heard of that.

I have XP my on my computer, works just fine.

+1. XP Pro. Gonna ride it until it runs completely out of gas & there is no more gas to be had.

 

[Mrs. Krabappel]

H8 W8

 

[Swedishchef]

I have windows XP Pro as well...a legit copy nonetheless and I won't ever part with it. Only problem is that I wish I had a 64 bit OS to support more ram. I am maxed at 4 gigs...

 

[jharkin]

I thought I would never give up XP but I took the jump to 7 and really like it. All the Vista problems are fixed and its the first Windows release ever that I have not had a single blue screen. Its fast and rock solid stable.

8... no way tho.

 

[ScotO]

I, too, loved my XP. I wasn't impressed at all with Vista (parents got a computer with it and I hated it). Our newest PC (around a year or so old now) and our laptop both have Windows 7 and we love it......

I'll NOT be getting anything with '8'......

 

[fossil]

I have no complaints about Win7...and I've run nothing but MS products since ~89. (Before that it was HPBasic on an HP-85 doing all my own coding). I do like my new iPhone5, though

 

[ScotO]

I have no complaints about Win7...and I've run nothing but MS products since ~89. (Before that it was HPBasic on an HP-85 doing all my own coding). I do like my new iPhone5, though

I wish that Mac would make a Windows-compatible iPhone (of course we know WHY they won't).....that's one of the main reasons I WON'T buy an iPhone. I have literally hundreds of songs on my phone and tens of thousands of songs on my PC, I like to be able to put them on and off the phone/computer without converting them to another format.

 

[Swedishchef]

So win7 is the next best thing after XP? Maybe I will give it a try when I build my new machine...

I agree Scotty: I received an iPod as a gift and have not put any music on it. In fact it is full of kid apps and my son plays with it. I, on the other hand, use a Sony Walkman MP3 player. I simply copy and paste my mp3s....

 

[billb3]

The tablet paradigm isn't going away.
Win and iOS.

 

[BrotherBart]

Hard to picture the business office desktop going to tablets.

 

[jharkin]

Hard to picture the business office desktop going to tablets.

It won't, nor will engineering CAD workstations (used to be all Unix now windows) or artist/animator systems (Mac). Tablets just suck for content creation.

But for home web surfing and content consumption they are great. Outside of work I hardly use the desktop except for occasional games.

 

[raybonz]

Ray where are you ? You know you want to say something here ! we have windows 8 at work and to be honest it is a piece of trash. I reloaded windows 7 on my machine.

Pete

I don't like the interface of Win 8 and don't like the idea of a smudged up display.. I work for P&G and they are slow to adopt new OS's and just recently Win 7 professional is becoming the standard but I recently ran into a problem installing software into an HMI because the software was written for Win 2000 so the VB code needs to be rewritten to install on a Win 7 machine. This is what God created programmers for Pete I like Win 7 and see no reason to go to Win 8 at the moment.

Ray

 

[BrotherBart]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...ile-test-delayed-by-windows-8.html#entry-more

 

[begreen]

It won't, nor will engineering CAD workstations (used to be all Unix now windows) or artist/animator systems (Mac). Tablets just suck for content creation.

But for home web surfing and content consumption they are great. Outside of work I hardly use the desktop except for occasional games.

Overtime that will change too. The GPUs are becoming more powerful and multicored. Remember how absurd it seemed to envision a laptop doing workstation work even 10 yrs ago? I have a laptop now with 16 gb ram, 250GB SSD and an i7 processor that is totally capable of doing complex motion graphics work.

 

[jharkin]

True, but touch screen is still woefully inadequate as an input method for these uses. A tablet with a keyboard and mouse might as well be a laptop.

 

[simple.serf]

Hell, I remember the commodore PET days (I still have one, and a c-64 and an SX-64 portable). About the only version of windows I liked was XP. Now here's what I find funny: Canocal (the maker of Ubuntu Linux) did this exact same thing with their 12.04 version of Ubuntu. Totally new interface that us old timers just didn't like. It looks alot like a smartphone now. Guess what? Ubuntu is no longer the #1 desktop distro of Linux. Microsoft is going down the exact same road, and it's going to hurt.

 

[raybonz]

True, but touch screen is still woefully inadequate as an input method for these uses. A tablet with a keyboard and mouse might as well be a laptop.

Touch screens can be a good thing. For instance at work we have HMI's (Human Machine Interface) on all the machines which are great for machine operators. When I work on them I bring along a USB keyboard/touchpad to do what I need to do. Touchpads might be the latest craze but can't replace PC's for what I need, at least not now. For home use they are fine but I still prefer a laptop and haven't bought a touchpad yet but someday I will.

Ray

 

[raybonz]

Hell, I remember the commodore PET days (I still have one, and a c-64 and an SX-64 portable). About the only version of windows I liked was XP. Now here's what I find funny: Canocal (the maker of Ubuntu Linux) did this exact same thing with their 12.04 version of Ubuntu. Totally new interface that us old timers just didn't like. It looks alot like a smartphone now. Guess what? Ubuntu is no longer the #1 desktop distro of Linux. Microsoft is going down the exact same road, and it's going to hurt.

My 1st computer was a C-64 too and XP was good.. Windows 7 blows XP away in quite a few areas especially the search feature, it is instant and security appears much better too..

Ray

 

[maple1]

Question: What is the newest version of Windows that can still run DOS programs?

XP Pro can - what about 7? I'm suspecting not?