tlw

Well, large parts of the UK's government and civil service still use XP on workstations/laptops. So do many private sector companies. 

In a production environment, stability and user familiarity with the interface are very, very important, and there may be thousands of computers to manage.

Indeed.  The local govt organisation that I used to work for were still using W98SE as late as 2004.

Lol...I look after computers for an embroidery firm that still run Wins98SE.

The owner doesn't like any of the upgrades for the embroidery software that he uses and the version he has won't run on anything newer.

I built him a few machines several years ago that are all set up with Win98SE and his emroidery software installed. They are mothballed and bought into service as his current machines die. I'm pretty sure he'll still be on Win98 several years after Windows 8 support finishes.

He is by his own admission "a bit of a dinosaur" Very successful rich dinosaur though.

daveny5

I'd rather use Vista (on a machine designed to run it) than XP!

Not me. Vista was the worst piece of junk that ever came out of Remond, WA. 

Actually, that would be Windows ME. :)

No more XP?
 
I see this alot. Some people update and buy the latest program every year but they haven't the sense to upgrade the computer and OS the last 10 years? Some even continue to add a lot of RAM and then later they go and install XP x32 or Windows 7 x32 OS like that has any benefits? 
Buy a Christmas present to yourself this year. Buy a new computer with Windows 7 x64 or Windows 8 x64 and you are all set.
 
 
 
Merry Christmas!

nah, buy yourself a copy of win8 it blows 7 out of the water!!!!

example using the same machine

render of 3D image using Cinema4D (what I do for a living)

Windows 7 - over 10 hours
Windows 8 - just under 6.5 hours

John


Aka very nice post. You need to post more often. 


I think you have this subject well in hand. And thank you for that.

:)

I post when I have the time :) Real life tends to get in the way

tlw


Interesting that "Win95/98/ME get a mention in this thread, but the best MS operating systems of that period, NT4 and 2000, don't.

NT4 was very good in its day - the Win95 style interface but with security, decent multi-tasking and reasonable crash-resistance. NT4 was the foundation for XP onwards far more than the Win9x series was.

but NT4 was never intended for home users - that's why I ignored it :)

NT 4 was a business OS only without even the barest driver support. Totally useless for a DAW user. For business it was a fine OS. 

John


NT 4 was a business OS only without even the barest driver support. Totally useless for a DAW user. For business it was a fine OS. 

that's right John, and as I remember Direct X could not run on NT 4. It was meant to compete with apache I think. mainly server stuff. The combination of SE and windows 2000 produced Windows XP. The partitions changed from the Fat 32 format. Which is one reason XP was more stable then it's ME predecessor.


I have windows 7 ultimate and I can still run windows XP in virtual mode if I needed to. I have not found a need to yet as all my older software has been replaced.  

Win2000 was far better than any previous Microsoft operating system. It was extremely reliable. I converted about 100 machines from NT4 and Win 9x to 2000, and support calls dropped by about 90 percent in 3 months. The only people who didn't like it were games players or people who had issues with hardware compatibility (ie unable to read spec sheets).