technology Windows XP...how will you remember it?

[BrilliantVenture 334]

wow! This topic really blew up!

 

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that has feelings for it.

 

I really do hope we end up with something just as special in the future...it'd be nice if they just

 

made interchangeable start menus/explorers/layouts that would mimic old OS. I mean gosh, even Vista could do that!

 

Microsoft's missing out on a huge opportunity to have just the same success as XP all over again. I really hope they wise up.

 

But anyway, cheers to all you guys and laying back remembering the old days! Guess I'm not the only nostalgic one after all

[CharmingStallion 63]

I will remember it as the Windows that fixed my headache of having to run Windows ME :'(. Still like it better than the newer Windows by a longshot although I use Linux 100% of the time at home so it's more of a "Meh" to me now.

[Tigerpop198 696]

Damn, I really miss Windows XP, really, really miss it. Right now I'm stuck on Linux. Why Microsoft why?

[CharmingStallion 63]

Damn, I really miss Windows XP, really, really miss it. Right now I'm stuck on Linux. Why Microsoft why?

What do you mean stuck on Linux? You mean blessed with the fact that Linux is there for you? ;-)

[SilverStarApple 849]

I'll remember it fondly. It was my first. And after all, it's way better than Windows Vista!

[Tigerpop198 696]

 

 

You mean blessed with the fact that Linux is there for you? ;-)

Well, it was free, so I'll give you that.

[Shimmer Down 668]

The last good Windows OS I used before MS started unnecessarily copying Apple. Win7 will be the last good Windows OS before MS went full ham on the touch screen thing.

[CharmingStallion 63]

The last good Windows OS I used before MS started unnecessarily copying Apple. Win7 will be the last good Windows OS before MS went full ham on the touch screen thing.

 

Not to beat a dead horse [that just sounds terrible on an MLP forum] but most of the newer elements Windows has incorporated into their interface (Windows Vista and beyond) were in the KDE desktop manager for Linux long before. Mac and Windows have a history of taking from the opensource world where they want but not giving much if anything back. 

[ChoroChii 284]

I've only ever used Windows xp on school computers, so It reminds me of my school. 

 

I'd say that's a good thing, since I loved my school. 

[Shimmer Down 668]

Not to beat a dead horse [that just sounds terrible on an MLP forum] but most of the newer elements Windows has incorporated into their interface (Windows Vista and beyond) were in the KDE desktop manager for Linux long before. Mac and Windows have a history of taking from the opensource world where they want but not giving much if anything back.

I apologize for being so uninformed. I was merely functioning off of aesthetic value and basic user functionality. I will be the first to say that I don't have the deepest knowledge of Mac OS or Linux.

 

I do stand by my statement of Win7 to Win8. I'm not a fan of this touchscreen/tablet direction.

[Red Diamond 549]

I remember Windows XP by having 25 genuine ISOs ranging from Starter to Media Center Edition 2005, to beta builds. When I listen to the music XP has, I always tear up, because of me missing the days on my first computer. I'm actually listening to the XP Tour Music, and I am tearing up as I speak. It's so sad to see it go.

 

I actually became a geek because of my first computer. About 3 weeks after I got my first computer(some 2006 HP desktop), I got into technology.

 

I used XP from 2003 - 2013, and my parents bought a family computer which had XP the same year I used XP for the first time.

 

I'll miss you XP, you'll have a special place in my heart. <3

Edited April 16, 2014 by Red Diamond

[Guest]

I will remember it by visiting the local hospital, since our government struck a deal with Microsoft to pro-long their support for XP, at least here.

[Cash In 22,232]

I remember Windows XP from back in the day, as it was a relatively stress free period of my life.  Of course it did have its fair share of problems, which were only fixed by the subsequent versions.

Edited September 29, 2019 by Cash In

[CypherHoof 26,482]

"Like Windows 2000, but in crayon"

[The Historian 516]

Not with fond remembrance. XP was an absolute pile of garbage, even during its time. I spent more time cleaning malware infections off XP machines than any other reason when I did repairs. It had the security of a wet paper bag.

[MangoFoalix 24,944]

XP was pretty great. Still a lot better than Vista.

[Jon the VGNerd 885]

Windows XP may have been a great OS in the past, but, it's time to let it go. There are newer programs and PC games that don't support older OS, XP included.

[Lucky Bolt 35,062]

I never used it so how will I remember it? Well...I won't. 

[The Kaeya Simp 13,988]

I'll remember it as my childhood!
And I had to use a VM using XP on my old laptop for internet most of the time (as it was actually faster)

[Splashee 28,563]

Ah, my 500th post goes into my interest for Windows! I planned this!

Microsoft Windows XP. I hated it from the day it arrived, that summer of 2001. It was rushed, and almost nothing of your old programs did what they were told to. Not only that, but the new piracy protection kept making it hard to install on new computers, with popups for 30 days showing up all the time, or just popups in general. Who likes popups? No one! And if you moved the clock forward, you lost days that you could never get back.

It was not only rushed, but it was version 5.10 of Windows NT, and was pasted together to finally take over the user base from old Windows 98 Second Edition. It did succeed in doing that, but long after Service Pack 2 came out years later.

And then we had the viruses. The big ones! Blaster and Sasser. They spread through Microsoft's own Windows Update system, so as soon as you installed Windows XP without Service Pack 2, and was connected to the Internet, those virus made it into the computer immediately, and with that kind of wide spread nuisance, kept the threat alive for many years after Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 was applied by default.

 

But why was Windows XP so successful that even Windows 7 had problems replacing it? We have to go back into the past to find the answers:

In the early 1980's, Microsoft had started working on their "Windows". Even the first version that no one has ever worked with (it's not available) is still defining how we use Windows today (make that when this thread was made, in 2013, not that tile shit that Windows 8 does). There were difficulties with patents back then to make windowses overlap other windowses on the so called desktop, that the first Windows failed (it was dull).
Not only was the design of Windows a bunch of quick solutions for getting things working, but it was also developed under stress. It was not meant to be an operating system, but an environment for applications like spreadsheets and word documents, and keeping schedules. We are not talking about games, because the PC at the time was way too slow to do interactive graphics.
But IBM, the partner of Microsoft and the creator of the PC we know today, wanted an operating system and asked Microsoft to help them build it. It was called OS/2 because IBM was not good at names. Microsoft took their failed Windows, gave it to a joint team of IBM and Microsoft to develop a better designed Windows that would actually be easier and do the work right. And guess what, they did! They even found a way around the patent to get overlapping windows on the desktop! OS/2 was a huge project and it was expensive to acquire and take part of, even for testing and development of programs, that it began to fade away in the promotion of other new things (like faster PC or popular programs). At that time, Microsoft was still finishing up Windows (why give up when the money keep arriving?), and with some fixes from the OS/2 side of things, Windows 2.0 also had the overlapping windows. IBM was not thrilled, but was assured that Windows was just a tool for lower end people, I mean PC, and wouldn't interfere with OS/2.
A few years went by, and the powerful PC with i386 CPU arrived. While OS/2 was still developed for the older CPU, and couldn't update in time, Windows which was slightly smaller could in fact be updated. The size was not the issue, but the team that worked on it, was too caught up in internal battles, not seeing the same outcome, etc.
Not many people know this, but there were two key people at Microsoft who met during one of their campus parties, that happened to share information that solved a problem to make Windows truly worth the operating system status. We are talking about making that stupid little failed Windows running programs just as well as the big OS/2, mostly because of the new CPU that OS/2 couldn't use at the time. That resulted in Windows 3.10, and also the blue screen you are all familiar with even today. It completely ruined Microsoft's and IBM's friendship forever, and left OS/2 to rotten in the hands of IBM. Even today when I look at OS/2's design documents (mostly designed by Microsoft), I see really good solutions where Windows failed, and still does fail, Windows uses the old bad designed stuff from the early 80's. OS/2 had design visions and fixes to Windows that were never returned to Windows.

But the story doesn't end here. We haven't talked about Windows NT yet. The thing that led to Windows XP.
At the very end of OS/2, while Microsoft was still working on it, that is, Bill Gates had managed to hire a very famous programmer, by simply telling him he could do whatever he wanted. Knowing the programmer wanted to make a perfect operating system, this could only end well!
The operating system was not Windows, not OS/2. It was simply just called NT (New Technology). It was supposed to take care of all the problems of the past, and fix the main issues with the operating systems of that era, mostly reliability and security.
The NT team began programming everything from scratch, even the tools. meaning for months they were depressed and had to wait for others to finish, see their stuff fail after the wait, and a lot of drama that followed. There is a book about it with the name "Showstopper!" which has been available for free as a pdf somewhere on the Internet.
While an operating system is the core that runs everything, Windows is still a graphics user interface, which is a part of the whole system, but it isn't the operating system (unless you brand it that way, clever Microsoft).

In the beginning, NT was more or less one guy's (that programmer's) dream. But Microsoft wanted it to be shipped as OS/2 (Ha! Nice try). They even had told IBM that NT was just the next OS/2 to make them not worry about their secret weapon. After all, NT was a new thing, not even comparable to OS/2 or Windows at that time. The project was first aimed to be named OS/2 NT, but as soon as Windows 3.10 came out and IBM and Microsoft broke their relationship for good, it was quickly renamed into Windows NT.

 

It took about 5 years or so to get Windows NT ready. It was ready in 1993, 2 years after Windows 3.10 was released, and it was slow and buggy. Buggy wasn't really the word, as Windows 3.10 was buggy as well. It was more of a problem to get existing programs to run without crashing. Windows NT didn't crash that much, especially not the core, but it was slow. Around this time IBM also released their version of OS/2, which they had already caught up to Windows 3.10 is performance and support for the newer CPU i386 (good for them, I guess? It didn't look as attractive because IBM can't do pretty things).

 

So to sum things up, we had three choices around 1993:
- Microsoft Windows 3.10 which ran everything you wanted and needed, was cheap, and available everywhere!
- IBM OS/2 which ran a few business applications, required a faster and more expensive PC to run, and had a built in Microsoft Windows 3.10 inside it to run all Windows applications (because they were pissed at Microsoft, and they had Microsoft's Windows source code at this point, as it was part of building OS/2, code was shared when they were friends)!
-Microsoft Windows NT 3.10 which looked like Windows, but was slower, couldn't run even Windows programs without serious rewriting of the programs, but it was reliable and secure.

It was an easy victory once again for Windows. In all those choices, Windows was all over the place! And the first option was still that cheap Windows everyone used, even when it showed a blue screen at least once a day. It was so cheap to just reboot the computer and start your work over, rather than upgrade to a new expensive computer, with OS/2 and run Windows on that instead.

Next up, in 1995, Microsoft released the big one: Microsoft Windows 4.0 "Microsoft Windows 95". It took ideas like the recycle bin from IBM's OS/2, it supported all the old programs from Windows 3.10, but also supported almost everything that was exclusive to Windows NT, but in that process also ran faster. It was still the same amount of blue screens each day, but it had everything, including a nice cloudy sky background!

In 1996, Windows NT finally caught up with Windows 95, with Windows NT 4.0. it was pretty successful, and it had managed to not only gotten the same new user interface, but the speed was there as well (it was usable if you had a fast business computer)! And all the new Windows 95 programs that were originally Windows NT programs, where now also running almost as fast on Windows NT.

Windows 98 happened in 1998. it was still blue screen land. Not much to say, other than it is still my favorite operating system, and I still have a computer running it.

In 1999, 8 years after NT was born, they finally accepted their product as being able to take over the reins from Windows 98, and they called their Windows NT 5.0 "Windows 2000". It didn't run all the programs from Windows 98, but at this time, everyone accepted that those programs were bad programs to begin with.

Under all this time, OS/2 with its superior design could easily run Windows programs, but Windows couldn't run OS/2 programs because so much new stuff was needed to make it work. Microsoft didn't care though, because most programs that were released to OS/2 already existed for Windows, so why bother?

 

Windows 2000 was good except is was slightly slower at games (compared to Windows 98), and its boot time (the start up time) was more than double that of Windows 98, or the newer Windows Me which booted really fast - mostly into blue screens though!

 

Windows XP fixed those two issues. While it was being developed from Windows 2000, one team worked on the new pastel look, which in my opinion sucked, and added a complicated layer on top of the already good looking Windows 2000, while the other team with the star programmer worked on the speed. The boot time was much much faster, especially when the operating system was newly installed without any drivers applied to it yet (like before you add a printer or network adapter). And games were now fully fast. Maybe it was the PC at the time who could finally run Windows NT at full speed, or it was a lot of hard work from the NT team. Not really sure. Around 2001, computers were so fast by default.

Windows XP was very successful as an operating system. It was supposed to be replaced by Windows Vista, but Vista was and still is fix to security problems, to gain respect back from big companies that lost so much money because of the XP specific visuses Blaster and Sasser.

Windows 7 did to Vista what Windows XP did to Windows 2000, speed up and fix the previous issues. Or make it more complete. Similar can be said about what Windows 10 did to Windows 8. But this topic is about Windows XP!

 

To get an understanding of how fast Windows XP is compared to Windows 98, one must first think about the computers that were available at the time. Then how the two operating systems worked to do the same thing, but in different ways:
-Windows 98 was old code written as small and fast as possible, to run cheap programs on cheap computers. It was updated to run newer stuff, and hardware, and that included a lot of memory issues that brought the blue screen up a lot. It was a hack on a hack on a hack. But it was running on so many shitty computers out there that it was impossible to do anything to fix it. There was almost no security, and the trust between programs didn't exist. If a program wanted full access, it destroyed everything in order to get it. And the blame was shifted to Microsoft when that happened.
-Windows XP had a reliable and secure core, coming from NT. If anything happened, the core was still there protecting the computer and the information that could be saved, in order to fix the problem. It had the updated hardware support from Windows 2000, but was faster at starting the hardware at boot time. It had the speed hacks applied in Windows NT 4.0, to gain almost the same speed as Windows 95 and Windows 98 at Windows operations. It had a nice new look because of a layer on top of everything, with pastel colors (yay!). If a program wanted access to the system or other programs, it was fooled into thinking it could, while the NT core was still in control, keeping the program alive as long as possible to not upset the customer.

In speed, Windows 98 won. But in reliability and durability, Windows XP won. And as time went by, many programs were forced to only start on XP by Microsoft own initiative, forcing a slow death of Windows 98.

Many people finally left Windows 98 and started using Windows XP for real! Before that it was rather leaving Windows 98 for a temporary time while trying out Windows 2000, just to realize the game didn't run, or ran slowly, or they got tired of the added security stuff that Windows 2000 forced on the user.

Windows XP did a simple fix, to make it more Windows 98 compatible. Just give the default user the Administrator account. Give away all the permissions and power to the "stupid" user, and let that user run wild. Chances are they will crash their own work, but not Windows. In Windows 98, there is no security, and crashing your own work would immediately bring down most of Windows also (which made Microsoft look bad).
Giving away permissions to a system that was built to be secure, was a stupid idea, and it didn't take long until Blaster and Sasser (and other malware) took advantage of the situation.

So in short, Windows XP, I will remember you! RIP!

But I will remember other Windows and OS/2 versions more than Windows XP.

[Phosphor 11,528]

XP was a wonderful operating system for older scientific instruments. Parallel port security dongles aren't compatible with Vista and newer systems. I think it was because the legacy addresses were removed in the newer OS's. Some of the instrument computers at my work still use Windows XP, but are kept off the network for obvious reasons. 

Personally, I liked XP a lot, but Windows 7 eventually became my favorite. 

[Splashee 28,563]

13 minutes ago, Phosphor said:

XP was a wonderful operating system for older scientific instruments. Parallel port security dongles aren't compatible with Vista and newer systems. I think it was because the legacy addresses were removed in the newer OS's. Some of the instrument computers at my work still use Windows XP, but are kept off the network for obvious reasons. 

Personally, I liked XP a lot, but Windows 7 eventually became my favorite. 

Windows 7 still having the 32 bit editions, does the drivers work on that? I understand completely that the 64 bit versions of Windows won't make anything old work that runs in kernel mode.

I made a choice to use Windows 7 64 bit, even when I have just below 4 GB RAM, still I am suffering very little from not getting older things to work as I have older computers to do those tasks.

[Phosphor 11,528]

3 minutes ago, Splashee said:

Windows 7 still having the 32 bit editions, does the drivers work on that? I understand completely that the 64 bit versions of Windows won't make anything old work that runs in kernel mode.

I made a choice to use Windows 7 64 bit, even when I have just below 4 GB RAM, still I am suffering very little from not getting older things to work as I have older computers to do those tasks.

Some of the software for these older instruments will install just fine on Vista or newer OS's. The problem arises when a program utilizes a parallel port security dongle (license). The legacy addresses for parallel port communications aren't present in Vista or newer OS's. Essentially, the security dongle may be plugged in, but because the old addresses are gone, the software can't communicate with it and won't function.