[99semaj]

On the eve before Microsoft tries to redeem itself after years of disappointments, CNN reports on the stunning failures leading up to this day.

From Windows 98, to Windows Me, to Media Centre Edition to the colossal sinkhole called Vista, this retrospective reminds us not to expect too much from this latest rehash.

 

[MarcP]

But the latest "rehash" is pretty good. I've been running it since July when I got from MSDN. Windows Explorer has something annoying to it, but otherwise it's a good OS.

 

[99semaj]

I think the next couple of days will be interesting when XP users learn that there is no upgrade option other than just saving your document files.

Of course, maybe I'm just feeling extra sarcastic because IE8 has suddenly today started locking up my work notebook everytime I launch it.

 

[MarcP]

Being unable to upgrade from XP is a different topic than "not to expect too much from this latest rehash".

 

[phaeton]

"...colossal sinkhole called Vista..."?

I like vista, but that's just me I guess.

I think the biggest joke was Windows ME.

 

[DSgamby]

I like Vista as well

 

[hugh]

I like Vista too. I even remember when everyone hated XP because they wanted to stay with Windows 98 or W2K.

 

[nursedude]

Win ME

I remember the c***fest that was Windows ME. Should just have been an add-on to 98. Lots of people had problems with that, I was one of the few people in my circle who had a stable install that worked for a few years until XP came out. As Hugh states above, alot criticism was directed at XP from disgruntled 95-98 users when it came out. I'm looking fwd to recieving my free upgrade to Win 7 to play with it although I'm pretty happy with Vista 64.

 

[sharpnfuzzy]

I had ME and didn't think it was THAT bad. It was a fresh install on a new system so maybe that helped it stay little more stable, but I agree that there was pretty much no difference between it and Windows 98.

 

[MarcP]

No difference between Win98 and WinME? System Restore was a big one. Win98 didn't have ICS (Win98SE did, though).

But I also didn't like WinME. Jumped straight to Win2k workstation.

 

[barcham]

The majority of problems with Vista were related to third party companies who were extremely late with their drivers. I've never had any problems at all with Vista and it's lightyears beyond XP in stability and security. ME was a different story and it seemed to be very stable on brand name systems but a mess on white box systems. It wasn't around long enough to be more than a blip on the radar anyways.

XP is well past it's prime and is probably the biggest reason for virus and malware problems that exist today. I've installed 7 on everything from a 4 yr old Sempron 1.8Ghz laptop to a new i7 box and it runs fine on all of them. Of course it's just incredible on the i7 but runs better than XP on the old Sempron laptop. No Aero though.

But no matter what you say about XP, it's probably been run by more people than any other OS in history. There's an entire generation of computer users who have never known anything else and it's certainly served it's purpose and earned it's place in the history of computing.

 

[99semaj]

Looks like Apple's response to the Windows 7 launch is to provoke the "if you have to nuke your whole whole hardrive anyways, why not start fresh with us" sentiment.

 

[sharpnfuzzy]

No difference between Win98 and WinME? System Restore was a big one.

Wasn't really a feature that a regular user would use on a daily basis, and could surely have been added as another edition and didn't need a complete re-branding.

 

[MarcP]

Was still a feature. You said there were no differences. If you want to look at a useless release, look at Win98SE. WinME was still unnecessary, though.

 

[cyclo]

Looks like Apple's response to the Windows 7 launch is to provoke the "if you have to nuke your whole whole hardrive anyways, why not start fresh with us" sentiment.

I would rather use an OS that did not cleanout my hard drive if somebody logged on as guest

Seriously, Mac ads are getting old, they should refocus on touting the good features that OS/X has... Checkout the Windows 7 commercials on the page linked to below:

Windows 7 Ad Campaign Kicks Off, Focuses on Features

I thought the ads were well done as they focused on Win 7 features rather than just criticizing the competitors product.

 

[BGY11]

Hmm, $129 to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, or $1000 to get a Mac.... tough call!

....now if Apple let us (legitimately) install OSX on our computers, then things might be different.

 

[99semaj]

Seriously, Mac ads are getting old, they should refocus on touting the good features that OS/X has... Checkout the Windows 7 commercials on the page linked to below:

Windows 7 Ad Campaign Kicks Off, Focuses on Features

I thought the ads were well done as they focused on Win 7 features rather than just criticizing the competitors product.

I thought the Win7 ads were pretty good too. They must have gotten a new ad firm, 'cause they're certainly better than the garbage they have been spewing for the past two years.

And yes, the getamac ad campaign from Apple is getting dreadfully old. They probably appeal to the Apple owners, but I doubt they are doing much to get new people in the door.

 

[99semaj]

Hmm, $129 to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, or $1000 to get a Mac.... tough call!

But that's the key point...Apple's ad targets XP users, and you can't really upgrade from XP or use pre-Vista hardware. With upwards of 3/4 of Windows desktops still running XP, that $129 option doesn't apply to most.

If you're considering upgrading from XP to Win 7 on the same machine, Microsoft doesn't directly support this, and recommends that a fresh installation be made on new hardware. Any attempt to upgrade will move the directory structure known as Documents and Settings into the new, Unix-like 'user' directory structure, and registry settings for Win 7 will break many applications.

 

[heypeterman]

With upwards of 3/4 of Windows desktops still running XP, that $129 option doesn't apply to most.

XP users can buy the upgrade software, they just can't do an in-place upgrade, they need to do a clean install with the upgrade software.

 

[sharpnfuzzy]

Was still a feature. You said there were no differences.

If you want to get really nit picky I said that there was "pretty much no difference", and from a user's day to day experience, I'm right.