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Windows is 40 years old

maflynn said:
The bones are good, as they say, it's just what MS has prioritized.

I also think MS (in eating their own dog food), has laid off a lot of engineers, and developers, and they relied on AI to write the code. The quality of the updates has largely fallen off the cliff.
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Again, I have said this for years. Actually since windows 10 and the "insiders" I mean unpaid testers. Since that time, Windows has been on a downward trajectory. Mr. Cloud made the shareholders boat loads of money considering the mass layoffs multiple times over the years.

However, the cows are coming home to roost now. Crappy experiences, broken updates constantly, Ads and Ai shoved down your throat at every turn. The sheer amount money MS is hemorrhaging to prove Satya right with Ai (which he's not), is mind boggling. The shares took, not a nose dive but an actual fall off a cliff to almost half a billion dollars in one day is not a good look for him and Ai. It's time to replace him as CEO.

It's all fine by me, I am moving to apple for my computing to see what the other side is like. I can't sell this laptop im on as it's not a reliable system. Could sell it for parts for a couple of hundred to get my son some more ram for his system.

I can sell my XPS for a decent dollar because of the upgrades I have made. That will pay for a refurbed 14 inch pro for me. I will get the wife a refurbed air and she will be happy considering her current laptop has a 4405y gold processor and is slow as poop.

See how it goes. Good thing is Mac values stay higher so I can re sell if we don't like it. But, there are no 14 inch systems with what I want on windows.
 
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The one I really grew up with was Windows 98. I still get nostalgic hearing the launch tune, it meant that I could shortly play NHL 98 or Toca 2 Touring Cars. Good times!
 
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Yep, played both of those ALOT. I remember MS-DOS. All command line until you entered the software being used. My first pc was a tandy TRS-80 white edition. Then a few commodores then a 8086 IBM compatable off brand. continue until today. Only one of my friends had an apple Power PC 4. Everyone else had Windows based PCs.
 
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Steve Adams said:
Yep, played both of those ALOT. I remember MS-DOS. All command line until you entered the software being used. My first pc was a tandy TRS-80 white edition. Then a few commodores then a 8086 IBM compatable off brand. continue until today. Only one of my friends had an apple Power PC 4. Everyone else had Windows based PCs.
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Loved my C-64! That was such a great system! I used to code in the programs in the back of the magazines.
 
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Steve Adams said:
Windows 11 itself is not a turd. It's all the forced crap and ai being pushed into every nook and cranny of it. I have all of it off and it's useable and fast. My issue is with hardware and hardwar pricing now. I can get a mac that can out perform a similarly priced Windows system. Then the build quality of said windows system is sewage.
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I can´t even put the taskbar on top like I've always done since windows 2000... it's a turd.
 
b0fh666 said:
I can´t even put the taskbar on top like I've always done since windows 2000... it's a turd.
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If that's the reason it's a turd, in the words of the great Ted Mosby..."Come'ON"

Oh, I just ate an awesome sandwich just then too! ha ha.

fb58876c78f5328de6118b6968259b1f.jpg
 
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I only want the OS to perform and all the baggage optional. Until then I'll continue to block updates I don't want and strip out what I don't need... Microsoft needs to wake up as even their corporate customers are complaining. Some markets Linux is now an option by multiple hardware providers. Likely as they are also sick & tired of Microsoft, well being Microslop.

Apple's Neo is going to shake a lot of things up being priced right and performative enough for many, potentially taken up by Edu & companies. If wasn't a gamer would have dropped Microsoft years back. Right now, W11 works for me however there should be no need to jump through hoops to do so...

Q-6
 
Cape Dave said:
Same here. I worked at Egghead. We sold a SERIOUS amount of Win 3.1.
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3.11 for Workgroups with the MS Hearts game running across the network was a massive way to waste time! 😀 And ridiculously fun.

I run Windows 11 Pro for Workstations on one of my Mac Pros here, it is really solid. Never experienced any crashes with it.

Some nostalgia, from Windows 3.1:


IMG_5247 Large.jpeg


IMG_5248 Large.jpeg


Remember when you got printed user manuals?

My Windows 3.1 ran in 386 Enhanced Mode!! 😱😀
 
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avro707 said:
3.11 for Workgroups with the MS Hearts game running across the network was a massive way to waste time! 😀 And ridiculously fun.

I run Windows 11 Pro for Workstations on one of my Mac Pros here, it is really solid. Never experienced any crashes with it.

Some nostalgia, from Windows 3.1:


View attachment 2615857

View attachment 2615858

Remember when you got printed user manuals?

My Windows 3.1 ran in 386 Enhanced Mode!! 😱😀
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I read those for MS-DOS and WfW 3.11 even before I had a PC 🙂

Later I had a 386DX33 which supported enhanced/protected mode, but I remember that I installed Windows 95A on a 286 Laptop (with a sepia screen) once – in "standard mode". It could be invoked by running win.com with the "/s"-argument.
 
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avro707 said:
Remember when you got printed user manuals?
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Along with well written books about how to use the software. One of my favorites was a book on using stylesheets in MS-WORD for DOS, going through step-by-step on how to create and extend stylesheets with details on the how and why. The templates in most modern word processors is, IMO, a step backwards, as one can simply attach another stylesheet to change the formatting.
 
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IvyKing said:
Along with well written books about how to use the software. One of my favorites was a book on using stylesheets in MS-WORD for DOS, going through step-by-step on how to create and extend stylesheets with details on the how and why. The templates in most modern word processors is, IMO, a step backwards, as one can simply attach another stylesheet to change the formatting.
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Those were the days. Now it's here use this. We don't know either.
 
Windows peaked with Windows 2000 and it has been a downhill slide from there.

And I'm not kidding with that - Windows NT in general laid the foundations for today's Windows, and 2000 was the first one to include a performant graphics UI, unicode support, etc.

From there? Just layers of bloat, artificial dependencies for new versions of directX, etc.

If you spin up a copy of say, Office 2000 on Windows 2000 and maybe SQL2000 on Server 2000 and compare what you could do back then to today, you'll find there's not a lot different, except Windows 2000 task manager measures memory in KB and current Windows task manager measures memory consumption in MB - and the numbers are about the same. i.e., 1000x larger.
 
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genexx said:
My first encounter with Windows was when Windows NT 3.1 was released.

My first PC was an Apricot, then a Mac 128k, and an Amiga 2000. I worked on SGI (Indigo) IRIX 1990 before my first „Contact“ with Windows. It was just, some customers wanted it, so I had to deal with it…

Unix was always "the Thing" for me and i love the change to BSD under the Hood in MacOS till this Day because i can Manage Server and have all the Mac features as well.

I feel no Pain using Windows since it runs mostly stable these Days and to be honest, also Mac´s had Problems in the Past with stability but to Use MacOS with the Unix under the Hood is un Beatable.

My Daughters are Using Windows because of the Games......and subsequently now as 3D Artist as they are used to it but hey there is no Mac with the Grafik Power a PC can have now...

Full Parallel Timeline 1985–2005
YearAmiga (Commodore)Macintosh (Apple)Windows (Microsoft)SGI (Silicon Graphics)
1984Original Macintosh 128KSGI founded (1982), IRIS 4D workstations
1985Amiga 1000 (July)Windows 1.0 (Nov)IRIS 3130 – first with Geometry Engine
1987Amiga 500 & 2000Mac II (first color Mac)Windows 2.0
1990Amiga 3000 + Video ToasterWindows 3.0 (huge success)Indigo (R4000), first “pizza box”
1991System 7Indy announced (your first SGI!)
1992Amiga 600 & 1200Windows 3.1Indy released (1993) – built-in camera, Cosmo Compress, $5k 3D powerhouse
1993Windows NT 3.1Onyx released – 250 MHz R4400, RealityEngine² graphics (used in Jurassic Park)
1994Commodore bankruptcyPower Macintosh (first PowerPC)Windows 3.11Indy + Indigo² dominate video/TV/FX houses
1995Amiga dead in mainstreamWindows 95Onyx² & InfiniteReality (1996) – 4K textures, 1990s Hollywood standard
1996Windows NT 4.0IRIX 6.2 + OpenGL dominance
1997Mac OS 8O2 released – successor to Indy, single R10000/R12000 CPU, unified memory
1998iMac G3Windows 98Visual Workstation 320/540 (Windows NT version of O2)
1999Windows 2000SGI financial crisis begins
2000AmigaOne / OS4 (niche)Mac OS 9 (last classic)Last high-end Onyx (Obsidian)
2001Mac OS X 10.0Windows XP
2006AmigaOS 4 continuesmacOS continuesWindows Vista → 7 → 10 → 11SGI bankrupt (2006), assets sold; IRIX dead
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Saying "AmigaOS continues" - you may as well include RiscOS... at leas there's current hardware on sale that runs it (Pi).

I mean I love the Amiga too, but it hasn't been relevant to the market for about 30 years now.
 
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avro707 said:
Do those disk drives even exist still, can they even be purchased?! 😀
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I'm pretty sure that the disk drives are no longer being made as manufacture of floppy disks ended years ago. I bought a USB 3.5" floppy drive 15 to 20 years ago that is still working - have it plugged into one of the USB-A ports on the back of my Thunderbolt display. Said display is driven by an M4 Pro Mini.
 
Amazingly , they can still be purchased on eBay . At least as of last year . I needed one to attempt recovery of some very old files and it bailed me out , mostly .Looked new , but don't know if the mechanism inside the case was new , NOS , or recycled , though.
 
I still have my 486 pc I had since way back for playing my old games on. running 3.11. Pre internet days. Might be a 386 actually. I had this little fishing game installed on it and would play that for hours and hours. Add sk8 or die to the equation and I was hooked on PC.
 
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