The Windows 98 OP Is All You Need



  • Found a discussion on WSJ.com (wall street journal) today where someone asked whether or not they should upgrade their small business' pcs from xp to 7. One person's reply evoked a chuckle from me so I thought I would share:

    What type of company is it that you are involved with? No more than Windows 98 is really needed nor desired for non-media driven business. Everything in the Computer world seems to be merging, such as evidence by Apple's Safari browser. Changing OP's all the time is costly.


  •  @bullrider718 said:

    No more than Windows 98 is really needed nor desired for non-media driven business.

     What's not to like about a crappy, obsolete OS that looks like it's built from gray legos?  I have to wonder if that poster works in a financial institution.  What does Safari have to do with the retaining of Win98 being a good or bad idea?  I recall reading a post somewhere on TDWTF which mentioned giving some asshat a full-body floss with rusty barbed wire.  Sounds like a good idea here too.



  • @Smitty said:

    What's not to like about a crappy, obsolete OS that looks like it's built from gray legos?

    You wouldn't happen to be the lead developer of GNOME, would you?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You wouldn't happen to be the lead developer of IceWM, would you?

    FTFY



  •  Nope.  I wasn't even familiar with GNOME until you said that.  I take it GNOME devs have a reputation for Windows bashing?  I didn't mean to take a shot at Microsoft, just at Win98 in particular.



  • @Smitty said:

    I take it GNOME devs have a reputation for Windows bashing?

    Quite the opposite. The lead-dev Miguiel Ducassa (sp?) has an ongoing reputation for wanting GNOME to have every Microsoft technology possible. Example: gconf is pretty much the Windows registry, and Mono is their version of .NET (he's on that team AFAIK).



  • This reminds me of an old MAD commic from I think when windows 98 just came out:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.



  • @Lingerance said:

    @Smitty said:
    I take it GNOME devs have a reputation for Windows bashing?

    Quite the opposite. The lead-dev Miguiel Ducassa (sp?) has an ongoing reputation for wanting GNOME to have every Microsoft technology possible. Example: gconf is pretty much the Windows registry, and Mono is their version of .NET (he's on that team AFAIK).

    I heard Miguel De Icaza give a talk back around '98 or '99 at some linux event where he was talking about how gnumeric was going be the best spreadsheet ever and be 100% Excel compatible - bugs and all. I came away thinking that he he might be a talented programmer but he was an idiot to think that some FLOSS project could ever hope to be 100% compatible with a closed source commercial product. At best you could only hope to be compatible to that product where it stood at some point in time in the past. Hell, I doubt an independent team in Microsoft could produce an Excel clone that was 100% compatible with the commercial product.



  • @Lingerance said:

    @Smitty said:
    I take it GNOME devs have a reputation for Windows bashing?
    Quite the opposite. The lead-dev Miguiel Ducassa (sp?) has an ongoing reputation for wanting GNOME to have every Microsoft technology possible. Example: gconf is pretty much the Windows registry, and Mono is their version of .NET (he's on that team AFAIK).

    It was more a reference to the fact that GNOME is ugly as shit.  It looks mid-way between Win 3.11 and 95.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It was more a reference to the fact that GNOME is ugly as shit.  It looks mid-way between Win 3.11 and 95.

     

    Be fair.  It's almost on par with Windows ME.



  • @Aaron said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    It was more a reference to the fact that GNOME is ugly as shit.  It looks mid-way between Win 3.11 and 95.

     

    Be fair.  It's almost on par with Windows ME.

    I'm not sure whether or not that's supposed to be a compliment - does that only include the user interface, or the overall quality of everything else as well?


  • Garbage Person

    @astonerbum said:

    This reminds me of an old MAD commic from I think when windows 98 just came out:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.

    No, actually, this has not held true, because Windows 2000 was in no way, shape or form a followon to Windows 98 - it was a followon to Windows NT 4. Windows XP was the followon to both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 because Me fell on its face and further development of the 9x line was felt to be a waste of resources. It was a cute joke, and it sure is funny to joke about (and you can say this about any software released more than once) but it doesn't match the reality of the situation.


  •  @Weng said:

    @astonerbum said:

    This reminds me of an old MAD commic from I think when windows 98 just came out:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.

    No, actually, this has not held true, because Windows 2000 was in no way, shape or form a followon to Windows 98 - it was a followon to Windows NT 4. Windows XP was the followon to both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 because Me fell on its face and further development of the 9x line was felt to be a waste of resources. It was a cute joke, and it sure is funny to joke about (and you can say this about any software released more than once) but it doesn't match the reality of the situation.

    Wow, you must be a blast at parties.


  • Garbage Person

     I get tired of people dragging out the same old hackneyed crap.



  • @blakeyrat said:

     @Weng said:

    @astonerbum said:

    This reminds me of an old MAD commic from I think when windows 98 just came out:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.

    No, actually, this has not held true, because Windows 2000 was in no way, shape or form a followon to Windows 98 - it was a followon to Windows NT 4. Windows XP was the followon to both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 because Me fell on its face and further development of the 9x line was felt to be a waste of resources. It was a cute joke, and it sure is funny to joke about (and you can say this about any software released more than once) but it doesn't match the reality of the situation.

    Wow, you must be a blast at parties.

    He was a blast here too.  He blew the joke into smithereens.



  • @Weng said:

    @astonerbum said:

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.

    No, actually, this has not held true, because Windows 2000 was in no way, shape or form a followon to Windows 98 - it was a followon to Windows NT 4. Windows XP was the followon to both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 because Me fell on its face and further development of the 9x line was felt to be a waste of resources. It was a cute joke, and it sure is funny to joke about (and you can say this about any software released more than once) but it doesn't match the reality of the situation.

    Weng, reread the quote.  It never said anything about what would be derived from what.  It merely indicated that "we expect windows 2000 will be what windows 98 was suposed(sic) to be".  I would agree that they *should have* released an NT-based OS for end users and companies alike in 1998, with similar capabilities to what windows 2000 had.

    Note: I would have personally preferred that they either did better or worse than what they did with, well, all of their OSes.  If they did sufficiently better (at least, better IMO), then I wouldn't feel the need for a free OS.  If they did sufficiently worse, then we'd all have a free OS.

    And, yes, Blakeyrat, I'm a blast at parties, too, just like Weng. ;>



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It was more a reference to the fact that GNOME is ugly as shit.  It looks mid-way between Win 3.11 and 95.
     

    GNOME as it appears in Ubuntu 9 looks quite nice. Less colourful nonsense. It compares favourably to OSX's current style.

    Nothing compares to the Moulin Rouge implementation that is Aero, though, for better or worse. It's almost as bad as XP's Luna Blue, but somehow manages to stay just below the annoyance threshold. It's quite a feat.

    PROTIP WINDOWS CLASSIC SHELL: if you make it a plain grey (not the brown tint), and slightly brighter than it is by default, it looks a lot better.



  •  You are forgetting that you can get new themes for Gnome to customize it to your liking. For Windows you can not do this out of the box (although you can with hacks or third party programs... I used an uxtheme.dll hack for Windows XP so I could have the "Watercolor" look -- too bad I can't do that on Windows 7 :().



  • @pbean said:

    although you can with hacks or third party programs... I used an uxtheme.dll hack for Windows XP

    Which is the real WTF. Why do (did?) they have a theming library with full capatibility of multiple skins, but have it locked to the default one? Sure, they did ship other skins for other Windows versions, e.g. MCE 2005, and probably planned to sell Plus! packs with additional skins. But still, what the hell man?



  • @tgape said:

    I would agree that they *should have* released an NT-based OS for end users and companies alike in 1998, with similar capabilities to what windows 2000 had.

    Maybe, but it would have been quite a challenge.  NT4 was majorly imcompatible with a lot of consumer apps of the day.  2000 was better, but you still would have heard a lot of bitching about hardware and software not working.  I think they made the right choice of waiting until XP to unleash NT on consumers.  Hell, XP was such a damn good product that it's still solid after 9 years.

     

    Damn, that makes me feel old.  I was running pre-release builds of Whistler from '99 up until XP was out.  I can't believe that was over a decade ago...



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Hell, XP was such a damn good product that it's still solid after 9 years.

    I sometimes hear people bash on XP, but I find it a highly functional and similarly stable* OS. I never receive proper explanations for their exasperated responses when I say I think XP is quite good.

     

    *) If your [XP] machine crashes frequently, let me just say with utter conviction and backed by what I believe is truth: you fucked it up yourself.



  • @dhromed said:

    *) If your [XP] machine crashes frequently, let me just say with utter conviction and backed by what I believe is truth: you fucked it up yourself.
     

    The Devil's Advocate would argue that if the OS allows its user to fuck it up, it's flawed.

    Besides, usually from my experience, unstable Windows XP is caused by flakey POS hardware, like that $3 USB expansion card you got from Taiwan with unapproved drivers.



  • @astonerbum said:

    This reminds me of an old MAD commic from I think when windows 98 just came out:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    So far it has held true, except XP was something MS was proud off, and so is 7.

    Win 7 really is what Vista was supposed to be though.  It's so transparent that Vista was a half-finished version they shipped a couple of years early to start booking revenue against an overdue project, the old "Let's get the customers to pay for finishing the development after we sell and ship them the product" trick.  Someone should try making a consumer rights case demanding that 7 be released for free to existing customers as a Vista SP, since that's what it really is.



  • @DaveK said:

    Someone should try making a consumer rights case demanding that 7 be released for free to existing customers as a Vista SP, since that's what it really is.

    I thought it would have been a classy move for Microsoft to give away a full Ultimate copy of Windows 7 as their last Vista Ultimate Extras program. Or at least give a copy of *something* worthwhile-- that program turned out to be such a joke, they could have given us, say, a Expression Suite 3 license or a copy of Halo Wars or anything more than that shitty little robot game. Ugh.

    Unlike you, though, I don't immediately think of rushing to a lawyer to force the issue. Microsoft fulfilled all their contractual agreements with Vista, and it's not like Vista was a *bad* OS (it was just mediocre), so you really have no grounds.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Unlike you, though, I don't immediately think of rushing to a lawyer to force the issue. Microsoft fulfilled all their contractual agreements with Vista, and it's not like Vista was a *bad* OS (it was just mediocre), so you really have no grounds.

    Agreed.  I don't even think it was mediocre, really, so much as underwhelming.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @tgape said:

    I would agree that they *should have* released an NT-based OS for end users and companies alike in 1998, with similar capabilities to what windows 2000 had.

    Maybe, but it would have been quite a challenge.  NT4 was majorly imcompatible with a lot of consumer apps of the day.  2000 was better, but you still would have heard a lot of bitching about hardware and software not working.  I think they made the right choice of waiting until XP to unleash NT on consumers.  Hell, XP was such a damn good product that it's still solid after 9 years.

     

    Damn, that makes me feel old.  I was running pre-release builds of Whistler from '99 up until XP was out.  I can't believe that was over a decade ago...

    I got that beat.  I was teaching pre-release support classes (IT Admin stuff, not end user) for Windows 95 in early 1995.  We all knew that the whole 95 product line was designed as a way to introduce support for 32-bit apps and driver architectures while people gradually grew out of their old stuff.  No one could jump ship to a true 32 bit OS until [i]all[/i] of their hardware and software were 32-bit compatible.  It didn't help that Microsoft went through three different 32-bit driver models along the way.



  • @tgape said:

    I would agree that they should have released an NT-based OS for end users and companies alike in 1998, with similar capabilities to what windows 2000 had.

    Windows 2000 was the OS that was released for end users and companies alike. NT 4 was the one before that.

    Microsoft always wanted everyone to run NT. The only time the 95 product line had better usability than the NT line was in the 11 months between the releases of Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. The main factors keeping people from running NT were the cost of hardware capable of running it well and the fact that a lot of hardware and software were not compatible. Neither of those were Microsoft's fault or their intention.

    No one was more upset than Microsoft when Windows 98 was released and vendors kept putting it on 95% of their systems, even those capable of running NT. It was also stupid that a lot of hardware that came out in the late 90's only had drivers for 95 or 98. The main reason for both of these was that the people who write device drivers were good at writing the old style of drivers and took a long time to become proficient at writing NT device drivers. The only reason it ended was that Microsoft finally dropped the bomb with XP by telling them there would never be another Microsoft OS released with 16-bit driver support.



  • @Jaime said:

    @tgape said:
    I would agree that they *should have* released an NT-based OS for end users and companies alike in 1998, with similar capabilities to what windows 2000 had.

    Windows 2000 was the OS that was released for end users and companies alike. NT 4 was the one before that.

    Microsoft always wanted everyone to run NT. The only time the 95 product line had better usability than the NT line was in the 11 months between the releases of Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. The main factors keeping people from running NT were the cost of hardware capable of running it well and the fact that a lot of hardware and software were not compatible. Neither of those were Microsoft's fault or their intention.

    No one was more upset than Microsoft when Windows 98 was released and vendors kept putting it on 95% of their systems, even those capable of running NT. It was also stupid that a lot of hardware that came out in the late 90's only had drivers for 95 or 98. The main reason for both of these was that the people who write device drivers were good at writing the old style of drivers and took a long time to become proficient at writing NT device drivers. The only reason it ended was that Microsoft finally dropped the bomb with XP by telling them there would never be another Microsoft OS released with 16-bit driver support.

    Actually, NT4 was crap for home users.  NT4 had limited DirectX support and was therefore unsuitable for home users who liked to play games (Most home users prefer entertainment versus productivity).  Windows 2000 was never targeted for home users (even though it was perfectly capable of it).  Windows XP was the first NT-core Windows OS that was targeted for home users as well as for the corporate environment.


  • @astonerbum said:

     On Bill Gates talking about windows 98.

    "Windows 98 is what windows 95 was supposed to be at release. In 2 years we expect windows 2000 to be what windows 98 was suposed to be, and then windows 2002 will be what windows 2000 was supposed to be in 2000, but in 2002."

     

    I lol'led a little.

    Frankly, I don't bother with "THIS OS IS THA BEST LOLOLO!" crap anymore. Even though I am only 20, I already see history repeating itself over and over again:

    - Can't say a lot about NT & 95, I'm too youngh for that

    - Windows 95 was the first OS to fully support a new architecture (x86-32) while retaining backwards compatibility (x86-16)
    - Windows 95 was a major graphical and architectural (driver-wise and security-wise) but was bashed

    - Windows 98 was wat Windows 95 was supposed to be
    - Windows 98 is 95 with some minor (and a few less-then-minor improvements) and was hailed as the new messiah

    - Windows NT4 and 2000 were revolutionary but was ignored by everyone except large business and server users because of incompatibility with 98

    - Windows ME introduced new features but had problems and was bashed into the ground

    - Windows XP was a graphical improvement from 2000 and was based on it, while being made more desktop-friendly by (a little more) compatibility and taking features of 98 and ME (System recovery e.g., which had never worked on 9x. Yes yes, it still doesn't)
    - Windows XP was ignored and bashed because of incompatiblity, "useless" graphical upgrades, high hardware requirements (64MB at minimal officially, but really at least 128MB, could you imagine that amount wasted!!!)
    - Windows XP was being bashed because of uselessness ("The graphical features are useless!", "Desktops don't need that kind of stability and security at the expense of hardware!", "Windows 98 is all we will need!", "Games don't play or play very slow on XP!", "There are no drivers for XP! There will never be drivers!", "Security is annoying!")
    - Windows XP SP1 & SP2 were both what Windows XP was supposed to be (especially SP2)

    - Windows Vista was the first OS to really support a new architecture (x86-64). (Okay, technically there's XP x64 but it is so exotic and unsupported I don't count it)
    - Windows Vista was a major graphical and architectural (driver-wise and security-wise) but was bashed because of incompatibility, high hardware requirements (256MB at minimum officially, but really at least 512MB, could you imagine that amount wasted!!!) and introduced interesting new features
    - Windows Vista was (and is) bashed into the ground because of incompatiblity and uselessness ("The graphical features are useless!", "Desktops don't need that kind of stability and security at the expense of hardware!", "Windows 98 is all we will need!", "Games don't play or play very slow on XP!", "There are no drivers for XP! There will never be drivers!", "Security is annoying!")
    - Windows Vista SP1 & SP2 were both wath Windows Vista was supposed to be (heck, SP2 replaced the entire kernel for the first time in MS OS history)

    - Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be
    - Windows 7 is Vista with some minor (and a few less-then-minor improvements) and is hailed as the new messiah

    See where I'm going with this?



  • @dtech said:

    See where I'm going with this?
     

    Dullsville.



  • @dtech said:

    - Windows Vista was the first OS to really support a new architecture (x86-64). (Okay, technically there's XP x64 but it is so exotic and unsupported I don't count it)
    - Windows Vista was a major graphical and architectural (driver-wise and security-wise) but was bashed because of incompatibility, high hardware requirements (256MB at minimum officially, but really at least 512MB, could you imagine that amount wasted!!!) and introduced interesting new features
    - Windows Vista was (and is) bashed into the ground because of incompatiblity and uselessness ("The graphical features are useless!", "Desktops don't need that kind of stability and security at the expense
    of hardware!", "Windows XP is all we will need!", "Games don't play or
    play very slow on Vista!", "There are no drivers for Vista! There will never
    be drivers!", "Security is annoying!")
    - Windows Vista SP1 & SP2 were both what Windows Vista was supposed to be (heck, SP2 replaced the entire kernel for the first time in MS OS history)

    FTFY.
    Blindly copying and pasting never ends well.



  • @Quietust said:

    FTFY.
    Blindly copying and pasting never ends well.

    It worked for SSDS!


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