The benefits of old OS-ses

In response to what StevieO said I don't get why Microsoft hasn't come up with the idea of a 'Services' setting called, something like, Business & Home and when you pick one then services for a Home user would all be disabled and that there would also be options easy for a newbie to see and read with descriptions to turn off other things like printers, fax, time, etc...

I agree there is no reason Home users need to have all this crap running and pigging out the sytem to a crawl and killing the performance.

Does anyone know where we can contact MS to send them some feedback on this and maybe we'll see them do something like this in Win7.

THANKS

P.S. I made a post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/09/10/the-windows-feedback-program.aspx

 

2K has worked pretty well for me. Except for a shutdown issue that I've never been able to fix, it's been good.

I have Puppy Linux installed and working, but I rarely use it. "On paper" it should be a near perfect fit to my needs, but I haven't enjoyed using it. It feels like I have to unlearn everything I know and start over, especially with the command line. After spending years with DOS, Linux command line is like learning a different language. I haven't begun to learn the basics yet. Right now, I'm very uncomfortable with it, and there's only certain times I feel up to dealing with it. Most of the time, I just boot to 98, especially if I have work to do.

 

That Win7 isn't much different than Vista I agree, it is lighter in terms of resources compared to Vista. As a matter of fact this is probably the most controversial issue between Vista and Win7, the latter being more as SP3 for Vista (by inference the upgrade price from Vista Ultimate to Win7 Ultimate is too expensive IMO).

Vista compared to XP is a totally different argument, they are different in everything whether one likes or not. Vista is a lot better looking than XP, it is more stable (I had 1 may be 2 BSODs in a year, with XP I've lost count) safer, this is the new key word for modern Windows OSs which will probably incorporate a full Windows security suite free with Win7 (Firewall, UAC, Windows Defender, MS Security Essentials, IE8 scanning for malware).

My Vista Ultimate starts in 45 seconds, and shuts down in 16 seconds. XP is perhaps a tad faster, but that's all it's got. I really can't see any benefits with old OSs except some kind of human attachment that we often feel for a bygone era, and a perfect match for old machines that cannot function properly with modern OSs.

 

That is what is keeping me from taking advantage of the upgrade offer they have going right now. I wish I had the link, I remember reading about someone from MS saying, that Vista with sp2 and Win 7 were a lot alike with Win 7 having a few of the latest innovations. Part of me wants to take advantage of the deal but part of me says nah, it probably isn't that much of an upgrade. Besides I'll probably be able to get a cheap student/teacher edition of Win7 Pro next spring anyways. Hopefully it will come with the 32 & 64 bit disks like they have with their current upgrades that they are offering.

 

I have just installed my Vista again today, only this time I put on the x32 version, since both x32 and x64 are on the disk. Strangely enough, all of the little glitches and oddities I saw with x64 Vista are gone in x32. And it seems pretty snappy and responsive in general, although still, some things are slower than in XP no doubt. I think I may keep this. The thing that annoyed me most about Vista x64 were the little glitches I encountered, most of which were gone in Win 7. x32 Vista seems pretty good here....

 

I've also gone back to Vista32 (I have several images with 32 and 64) because I really like Shadow Defender (it only works on the 32 version), and was pleasantly surprised how everything is working perfectly and fast especially after SP2 (shut down was 35 seconds on 64, it is now 12 seconds on 32!).

MSE wouldn't update automatically on 64, it's working perfectly with 32. My machine can handle the 64 bit version (although it was originally meant for a 32 bit OS), but like you said there are still little glitches here and there which are fastidious to deal with.

 

Yep, working great for me so far, I am surprised. And it does seem pretty snappy and quick, in some ways faster than XP. XP is lighter for sure, and probably quicker in file copy and some things, but Vista x32 really is pretty nice. I think I will be hesitant to move to 7 so long as I have something that works well already. The only loss with Vista x32 is a bit of ram, I have 4 gigs and x32 only sees 3.3 or so, but I don't care about that, I never ever use anywhere near 4 anyway. And you're right, more apps work on x32. x32 is actually faster as there is no emulation for 32 bit apps as in x64.

 

As I said previously, Vista (and '7') are sure a lot prettier than XP, but for my use (internet browsing, email, office apps and photo editing) XP does everything I need and everything runs very responsively on my laptop (1.8GHz Pent M and 1GB RAM). As a matter of fact, the only time I ever notice RAM consumption way over 400MB is when I'm using Adobe PSE7).

I guess Vista/Win7 may make sense on a newer PC with multi-core CPU and 2+ GB RAM, but for those of us with the same PC they were using a few years ago, XP remains the OS of choice - at least for my money.

 

Yep, I'd never put Vista on an older PC. 7 might work though....

 

Yeah, but even if Win7 would perform better than Vista on an older PC, it's not likely that PC's video card would meet the requirements to properly support Win7.

 

I'm sure 7 would support any of the older video cards. The problem is when the hardware is too new and the system doesn't recognize it yet, or there are no drivers for it yet. I'd not worry bout that..... If there is a Vista driver for you video card, then it'll work with 7. And 7 might just support it out of the box anyhow.

 

all video cards that work on vista will work on 7. if using windows vista drivers you wont get the wddm 1.1 benefits thou.

I can see everyone's point of the benefits of using an older os but i wouldnt like to use an older version of windows now. im so used to the "proper way" of doing things now. in xp i would have to change accounts to do any sort of admin task. in vista i just get a uac prompt and type in my password.

 

Win 7 is 95% Vista.

 

MS did not think the process through when they devised that setup in XP. If their version of a limited or user mode were properly designed, a lot more people might have used it. That's one of the reasons I prefer to use SSM to create separate administrative and user modes instead of creating limited "accounts", easy, fast switching. A double click on the tray icon and enter the password. Just that quick, even on 98. Without the password, the system runs in restricted, default-deny mode. When it's entered, full administrative access to anything. When it's that easy to call up the administrator mode as needed, running in a restricted is much easier. Being able to "tune" that limited user mode to match the users needs also makes a big difference. There's been more than a few occasions when I forgot that I was in user mode, like unzipping a new application and finding it can't start. IMO, that's how a limited or user mode should be. During normal usage, the user shouldn't even be aware of it.