Before everyone loved XP, they hated it.


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You do realize this was the first version of NT designed for the average user, and the average user is an IDIOT. But guess what they did? They gave you the option to TURN THE DOG OFF!

I liked Merlin the Wizard. He was the best

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I upgraded from 98SE on the day of release and have used, enjoyed, and liked XP from the get go. I still use it today at work as the craft terminal we use only works on XP.

 

I never once had a problem with it that, I or a crappy program, didn't cause.

 

Most people, that are not tech savvy, don't care. Most of the haters just jump on the bandwagon slagging it off as it's the cool thing to do. Same with Windows 8.

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Marketshare and common sense.

So, none then, got it.

 

I work at a large financial company and my machine in the last month finally got upgraded to Win 7. I asked the local IT guy how far along our site was to upgrading and he seemed to hint around 10-20%. I'm confident to say that will accelerate with XP receiving no more patches but to claim that the majority of companies have already upgraded to Win 7 is unfounded with no source.

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So, none then, got it.

 

I work at a large financial company and my machine in the last month finally got upgraded to Win 7. I asked the local IT guy how far along our site was to upgrading and he seemed to hint around 10-20%. I'm confident to say that will accelerate with XP receiving no more patches but to claim that the majority of companies have already upgraded to Win 7 is unfounded with no source.

Think about it. I doubt there is one business entity today that hasn't completed or started their Windows 7 upgrades. Marketshare for Windows 7 supports this claim. If they haven't like Sintheo appears to claim, then 1) shame on them, and 2) they're literally up the creek right now. I would hate to be that IT director who has to tell management that their network is flapping in the wind.

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Yep, and everyone keeps repeating XP was good by SP 2 then everyone upgraded! No basis on this.

 

Really. I was around back then and I remember people upgrading left and right. I think it is just a myth. XP was a great OS and windows 8 is not hte same with nearly the same hate and disdain with Windows 8.

 

Only one employer last decade stayed with Windows 2000 until 2004 when they switched to XP Sp 2. Everyone upgraded except for the few die hards who like today whine about change and how fast their 128 meg pentium II's were with Windows 98. But XP die hards outnumber them today 10 - 1!

 

XP is different than Windows 98/Windows ME. Windows ME was barely 2 years old and Windows 98SE was just 3?! XP is 12 years! So likewise it has 400% more marketshare assuming people bought the same amount of pcs back then as today which also is untrue.

 

The Chinese were too poor to buy computers then so we had 400% longer OS support + asia buying computers + people seeing no need to upgrade anymore + bad economy in the west + Hate on Windows 8 more more than luna = a perfect firestorm of strong XP support and those not willing to leave the platform kicking and screaming.

 

 

So, none then, got it.

 

I work at a large financial company and my machine in the last month finally got upgraded to Win 7. I asked the local IT guy how far along our site was to upgrading and he seemed to hint around 10-20%. I'm confident to say that will accelerate with XP receiving no more patches but to claim that the majority of companies have already upgraded to Win 7 is unfounded with no source.

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Think about it. I doubt there is one business entity today that hasn't completed or started their Windows 7 upgrades. Marketshare for Windows 7 supports this claim. If they haven't like Sintheo appears to claim, then 1) shame on them, and 2) they're literally up the creek right now. I would hate to be that IT director who has to tell management that their network is flapping in the wind.

 Go google internet marketshare and look at the results or Google businesses staying with XP. 

 

Zdnet.com has articles on this. My statement was 90% didn't start until the last year or two. Most are still in process like my own and have security disabled and local admins on which will raise support costs but the accountants do not want to update our software. Support or not we are hacking Windows to run our XP non supported apps. When you have a license of $2,000 per pc and reports generated with the ancient tool that are so ingrainded in the business process that we will cease to exist without now, then what are you going to do?:

 

XP was around 400% longer than Windows 98  and China didn't  have computers back then. Most Chinese buyers still go to cyber cafes where owners never update them still. So longer percentage means app makers only certified their apps to run on XP. Nothing else as late as 2012 for business apps.

 

I never had issues with XP starting out. The only thing I had to do was upgrade ram and 384 megs were alot in 2001 but were needed to run it good. By 2004 512 megs of ram were the norm to comfortable run it. 

 

Compared to Windows 98SE the stability and corporate features and yes even security compelled many cheap corporations to upgrade as you could easily make a ROI case for accounting. With Windows 7 that is more difficult and accountants today are more stringent and anti technology compared to 2004

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Think about it. I doubt there is one business entity today that hasn't completed or started their Windows 7 upgrades. Marketshare for Windows 7 supports this claim. If they haven't like Sintheo appears to claim, then 1) shame on them, and 2) they're literally up the creek right now. I would hate to be that IT director who has to tell management that their network is flapping in the wind.

I work for a school district in NY that is part of a 10-15 district purchasing program. Literally thousands of systems across these districts still using Windows XP....sp2. They refuse to upgrade the systems and the fruitball CIO is trying to convince them they can't upgrade the core 2 duo machines each has 2 gigs of ram and have to purchase new machines. I watched them spend $40,000 on 1 system that has 4 pci slots for their outdated security system on 1 building alone 3 months ago.

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There was never hate but always love!

 

Windows Whilster was a good and stable replacement throughout its builds.

 

PS.. during those days Neowin was like the wild wild west :D

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In all honesty I never found it any more unstable than 98 was

 

Seriously?    Strange, yuou must have not installed many programs or hardware.    Win98SE was solid for me, and after upgrading to WinME I managed to see so many crashes and slowdowns, that I had to remove it, I just could not keep using it.

Maybe you were luckier with the hardware...

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Seriously?    Strange, yuou must have not installed many programs or hardware.    Win98SE was solid for me, and after upgrading to WinME I managed to see so many crashes and slowdowns, that I had to remove it, I just could not keep using it.

Maybe you were luckier with the hardware...

 

I had a former room mate who loved XP and refused to upgrade. His computer crashed all the time with the stock Win 7 build. I asked him when he bought the computer. He said the first month Windows 7 came out.

 

Turns out Dell did not update its drivers and got him an XP laptop with a Windows 7 sticker and image slapped on it. sigh

 

When Windows 9 comes out is right around when I plan to upgrade. I will be very careful where I get my hardware or stick with Windows 7 for a little bit. The hardware made for Windows 7 wont have the QA and testing for Windows 9 until 6 months after it is out. Same with apps. Windows 7 slowed down a few apps if you read early benchmarks. Things like audicity and Adobe products worked but exhibited slowness due to bugs that needed to be fixed in later updates.

 

The same probably happend with your ME machine. With XP I bought a genuine intel motherboard and brand name parts. I updated the bios and drivers before I installed it and lucked out. I remember people with XP having issues if you did not own a Dell. Dell's were the ones known to work best until SP 1 came out 9 months later. They were a much better company then and did the QA properly unlike HP.

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I upgraded from 98SE on the day of release and have used, enjoyed, and liked XP from the get go. I still use it today at work as the craft terminal we use only works on XP.

 

I never once had a problem with it that, I or a crappy program, didn't cause.

 

Most people, that are not tech savvy, don't care. Most of the haters just jump on the bandwagon slagging it off as it's the cool thing to do. Same with Windows 8.

However, there IS the fact that it was 98SE that you upgraded from - why NOT either 2000 Pro (where I went after 98SE) or ME (98SE's direct successor)?

 

Why that stall in the middle?

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However, there IS the fact that it was 98SE that you upgraded from - why NOT either 2000 Pro (where I went after 98SE) or ME (98SE's direct successor)?

 

Why that stall in the middle?

 

probably because the 2000 was NOT a consumer OS (so if you are a gamer, you did not want it)  and ME was just more bloat and did not add anything people really wanted, while slowing down the system and potentially adding more issues...  The issues that did not exist on the highly polished Win98 Second Edition, which had plenty of time to iron out all the serious bugs?

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However, there IS the fact that it was 98SE that you upgraded from - why NOT either 2000 Pro (where I went after 98SE) or ME (98SE's direct successor)?

 

Why that stall in the middle?

 

Lack of money.

 

Also 2000 was a business OS

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I had Windows 2000.

 

It was pirated. I decided not to pirate anymore and wanted the newest thing. So my Windows 2000 system got Windows XP on it the day it came out.

 

Really it was no different other than a longer install time and more ram requirements because it had stuff like UPNP and other consumer related stuff and IE 6. DirectX was another reason as I saw what MS did and left NT 4 behind with directX3 being the last. 

 

Those who railed against were small and prefered win2000 because of the GUI. To me I just disabled it. DONE. The rest were happy with Win98se as there expensive now aged PentiumPRO's would reak running XP and even win2000. They were smaller as Win98 was out much shorter than XP. MS is obsessing over updates now to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Unfortunately 8.1 has a bad name of being flakely with update 1 not even installing right on millions of systems and MS wants to cancel support next month??! WTH. 

 

XP was nice because it was old and stale and never changed for many many years so problems like above were minimized.

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I had Windows 2000.

 

It was pirated. I decided not to pirate anymore and wanted the newest thing. So my Windows 2000 system got Windows XP on it the day it came out.

 

Really it was no different other than a longer install time and more ram requirements because it had stuff like UPNP and other consumer related stuff and IE 6. DirectX was another reason as I saw what MS did and left NT 4 behind with directX3 being the last. 

 

Those who railed against were small and prefered win2000 because of the GUI. To me I just disabled it. DONE. The rest were happy with Win98se as there expensive now aged PentiumPRO's would reak running XP and even win2000. They were smaller as Win98 was out much shorter than XP. MS is obsessing over updates now to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Unfortunately 8.1 has a bad name of being flakely with update 1 not even installing right on millions of systems and MS wants to cancel support next month??! WTH. 

 

XP was nice because it was old and stale and never changed for many many years so problems like above were minimized.

Support for Windows 8.1 is only ending if you haven't installed the big update. Otherwise, the OS is supported until 2023.

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Support for Windows 8.1 is only ending if you haven't installed the big update. Otherwise, the OS is supported until 2023.

 

But the fact is many computers can't be updated to update 1. If it is corrupt forget it. Hell, millions can't be upgraded off Windows 8.0 either due to similar problems even if they know about it in the Windows Store. It was rushed way too quick. 

 

This is a big deal.

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I'll be brutally honest, never really cared for XP, matter of fact was in the Linux camp for a good chink of the XP lifspan because I disliked it so much, came back to Windows with Vista and stayed for the games 

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But the fact is many computers can't be updated to update 1. If it is corrupt forget it. Hell, millions can't be upgraded off Windows 8.0 either due to similar problems even if they know about it in the Windows Store. It was rushed way too quick. 

 

This is a big deal.

It wasn't rushed at all. Microsoft dropped support for a few older processors by choice. If you have up to date hardware, then you're fine. And Microsoft has resolved the issues with Update 1.  

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probably because the 2000 was NOT a consumer OS (so if you are a gamer, you did not want it)  and ME was just more bloat and did not add anything people really wanted, while slowing down the system and potentially adding more issues...  The issues that did not exist on the highly polished Win98 Second Edition, which had plenty of time to iron out all the serious bugs?

I thought so, too - until I tried it.  (Chris123NT then was running a site called NTCompatible.com - the entire reason for being was finding ordinary applications and games which were quite compatible with the *corporate* NT flavoring.  Said site got a BIG boost with Windows 2000 - originally NT 5 - adding support for DirectX via the Hardware Emulation Layer (HEL) - as long as your game didn't have a 16-bit installer, you were good.)  Also, there WAS a consumer-targeted companion to Windows 2000 in the plans called Microsoft Neptune; in fact, it was supposed to be the original successor to 98SE.  (Neptune wound up stalling at build 5111 - an archived copy of this build can be found at collector sites.)  The insistance on ME came from IHVs and OEMs that, by and large, felt that consumers were not ready for an NT-based consumer OS - those of us with access to MSDN vehemently disagreed; we saw how poor the security was, merely compared to 98SE, and most of us avoided it on our daily-use PCs, and refused to recommend it. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)  When I had the opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of Windows 2000 Professional, I didn't JUST use productivity applications; I used a rather large number of games (including the original Unreal Tournament), and I couldn't have used UT if it weren't for the DirectX support.

 

And those CPUs that got dropped were ALL older than Core 2 - which is itself a ten year old CPU; except for the oldest LGA775 chipsets, all of those support Windows 8.1 update 1 today.  (Only those LGA775 chips of G31 vintage or older don't support Windows 8.1, and in the case of G31 (Bear Lake) it's the onboard GPU that is the bugbear; amusingly, the similar G33 IS supported due to it using a different driver which has been updated for Windows 8+ duties.  In other words, blame Intel, not Microsoft.)

 

Windows 2000 Professional - as NT 5 - wrecked quite a few preconceptions about NT-based operating systems, while killing one CPU along the way.  (Remember how NT 4 killed off the 80386?  2000 Professional whacked Intel's - and AMD's - 80486-class CPUs.  Pentiums of every sort were fine; however, the 80486-class CPUs were screwed - Cyrix had to come up with a special patch to save THEIR CPUs from the axe, as Windows 2000 would not install on them by default, either.)

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If memory servers, consumers loved XP and it's candy colored themes and plus packs. Technical types, like the folks that hang out on Neowin, hated it's overly simplistic, fisher price like UI.

 

But the hate was short-lived and XP was clearly better than what came before after one got past aesthetics. Plug n Play kind of mature and not only equaled but surpassed that of the Mac platform in the opinion and experience of many.

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If memory servers, consumers loved XP and it's candy colored themes and plus packs. Technical types, like the folks that hang out on Neowin, hated it's overly simplistic, fisher price like UI.

 

But the hate was short-lived and XP was clearly better than what came before after one got past aesthetics. Plug n Play kind of mature and not only equaled but surpassed that of the Mac platform in the opinion and experience of many.

 

Today it is the opposite with some technical folks still prefering XP. Mostly older ones opposed to change.

 

Consumers prefer Xp because they remember the bad days and XP works well and the garbage of Vista and having Windows 7 looking like it scared them. The technical ones were excited finally for an update, while a few saw the bloat and thought it was not worth it and didn't like the GUI in 7. The explorer was better in XP and they are set in their ways and saw no reason to change. That angers some like Dot Matrix :-)

 

But I am glad to see XP go but man it is a pain in the a*** to upgrade at work and do these changes and waste so much money.

 

It seems overtime it becomes harder and harder to upgrade. Not easier. Whole freaking active directory had to be split into 2 OUs/domains due to the incompatible GPO's being applied to workstations across the enterprise. What a horrible mess. 

 

This was supposed to simplify things. Not make it harder just like IE 6 was supposed to simplify upgrading desktop apps right? Oops standards changed and now the internet itself is tied to a specific version of Windows UGH. There needs to be an easier way to upgrade both consumers and corporations if you expect them to upgrade more. 

 

With tens of millions and many preferring to pay for XP support you know you have a problem. 

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Think about it. I doubt there is one business entity today that hasn't completed or started their Windows 7 upgrades. Marketshare for Windows 7 supports this claim. If they haven't like Sintheo appears to claim, then 1) shame on them, and 2) they're literally up the creek right now. I would hate to be that IT director who has to tell management that their network is flapping in the wind.

 

95% of ATM's are still known to be running XP (Source). I've also noted that almost all self serve tills in major supermarkets are still running XP as well .

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Yeah, I remember all the hate XP had, mostly down to drivers, same issue Vista had, took a year or two to get Windows XP to work as it should, memory was a big issue too.

 

I remember when the Taskbar changed in one of the Pre-Windows 7 builds, there was a lot of anger over the Superbar but now I love it.

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