Microsoft VISTA

[Suicide Junkie]

Thermodyne said:
As to the post speaking to Win2K and Office 97, why replace something that does what you need it to do.

...

Now….don’t take this personal or feel insulted. But if you are running 9x you need to spend a few bucks and buy XP.

I'm sorry, but you've got mixed messages there.
As you mentioned in the middle bit, if you don't pimp your PC to all the viruses worms and trojans on the internet, it will work quite nicely. And in that case, win9x is perfectly fine too.

Thermy:
I wish some of you could sit in on our help desk calls, you would come away with a whole new outlook on the state of the average joe/jane user.
---
-= True story =-
Customer: ...Blah Blah Blah... Internet won't work!
Tech: I don't see your modem in my list, so try restarting it. Unplug the modem, wait 30 seconds and then plug it back in.
Customer: ...I don't think that's safe...
Tech: ... Um, ... why would you say that?
Customer: Well, the basement is flooded and the plug is under water.

[Combat Wombat]

Thermo is completely right. If your not dumb when your using the computer you shouldn't have problems. The only Microsoft OS I have ever had problems with is Windows ME but I blame HPs slow destruction of Compaqs computer quality for that...

[Atrocities]

I have Office 97 and 2000. I paid good money for both.

I also have, albeit I cannot find it, full version of win 98 2nd Edition, Win2k, and XP Pro.

I can only use the XP Pro on ONE machine so I am saving it.
I use Win2k on only one machine but I can use it on more... but I do not.

[Puke]

Thermo has it spot-on, but I dont expect anyone to agree with him. If you're happy hateing Microsoft, then keep on keeping on.

as with most things, each iteration of the windows operating system (with a couple of short-lived exceptions) has been better than the last. more stable, robust, secure. sure its sometimes a good idea to wait until SP1 comes out, but thats true for ANY developer's software.

And if you have been keeping up with Longhorn development news, you'd already know that the portents for this release are pretty good. If you've only been keeping up with the hype, then you can keep on hating Microsoft and think they're copy cats that have stolen the Mac desktop theme. Ignore that Mac stole it from Gnome / KDE, which are both efforts to copy / improve on windows.

The GUI wars go back to Xerox PARC; who cares where the first good idea came from, I'll take practical useability over originality any day of the week.

[Kamog]

Well, I didn't notice much improvement from Windows 95 to 98 to ME, but Windows XP is definitely more stable and crashes much less often. I use XP at work and sometimes a month goes by without any problems.

[parabolize]

Puke said:
If you've only been keeping up with the hype, then you can keep on hating Microsoft and think they're copy cats that have stolen the Mac desktop theme. Ignore that Mac stole it from Gnome / KDE, which are both efforts to copy / improve on windows.

The GUI wars go back to Xerox PARC; who cares where the first good idea came from, I'll take practical useability over originality any day of the week.

Hay! What about Enlightenment and Solaris?

[Puke]

anyone going to the expense of running solaris shouldnt really be slowing it down with a gui. but, whatever.

I count ME as a short lived exception. it filled a tiny gap between 98se and XP for a short period of time, and never really needed to exist.

and pretty much any "home" version of anything - which are basically stripped down versions of the real version, with more wizards and irritating assumptions made for you. and more packaged software... dont forget the preinstalled garbage.

which is another reason alot of home users dont think windows works. it comes with all sorts of crazy junk from manufacturers and advertising partners that is likely to screw up your PC. I think its a testament to window's stability that it runs AT ALL with that garbage on there, and that its possible to write such diverse and unregulated trash in the first place.

[NullAshton]

Windows is the only operating system that runs my games. That's all I need.