Buying New PC

[Softus]

I got the impression Me was hurriedly introduced as a stop gap before the introduction of the 32 bit, NT based platform of XP.

Your impression of this nuance matches the reality. I suppose you had to get lucky at some point.

I remember it as being decidedly flaky, far too many blue screens & I abandoned it in favour of 2000 until I started using XP Pro almost as it hit the street.

I see. So, on the one hand you imply criticism of Microsoft for confining (I presume that you meant consigning) WMe "to the garbage can", whereas it was you decided to abandon it in favour of an NT-based OS.

The fact is that WMe was noticeably more reliable than W98SE (it's predecessor). Both were flaky, in exactly the way that you'd expect something that cost so little would be flaky.

Given that Microsoft continued to support WMe until July 2006, it seems hypocritical, and nonsensical, of you to level criticism at the evolution strategy that resulted in a much better and more stable product.

If you had stayed with WMe, it's likely that you would have found the same as the majority of its users, which is that subsequent Internet updates gave it a stability that led to its continued use for many years. System Restore gave users the ability to unf*ckup things on their own, and if you were word processing and Internet-using with simple demands, then it was better than very acceptable.

That isn't to say that XP isn't MUCH better. It is. However, I challenge you to give a cogent explanation for the existence of Windows Vista that doesn't involve the clandestine exchange of huge amounts of money between business conglomerates with big stakes in multimedia distribution.

 

[2scoops0406]

The only thing about vista is its user interface, that no one likes, oh, and that it's so slow. Vista is still based on the NT kernel (VMS OS/2 hybrid) Windows 7 is due out in Q4 2009 (?), but I haven't seen too many details about it yet.

 

[Richard C]

I got the impression Me was hurriedly introduced as a stop gap before the introduction of the 32 bit, NT based platform of XP.

Your impression of this nuance matches the reality. I suppose you had to get lucky at some point.

I remember it as being decidedly flaky, far too many blue screens & I abandoned it in favour of 2000 until I started using XP Pro almost as it hit the street.

I see. So, on the one hand you imply criticism of Microsoft for confining (I presume that you meant consigning) WMe "to the garbage can", whereas it was you decided to abandon it in favour of an NT-based OS.

The fact is that WMe was noticeably more reliable than W98SE (it's predecessor). Both were flaky, in exactly the way that you'd expect something that cost so little would be flaky.

Given that Microsoft continued to support WMe until July 2006, it seems hypocritical, and nonsensical, of you to level criticism at the evolution strategy that resulted in a much better and more stable product.

If you had stayed with WMe, it's likely that you would have found the same as the majority of its users, which is that subsequent Internet updates gave it a stability that led to its continued use for many years. System Restore gave users the ability to unf*ckup things on their own, and if you were word processing and Internet-using with simple demands, then it was better than very acceptable.

That isn't to say that XP isn't MUCH better. It is. However, I challenge you to give a cogent explanation for the existence of Windows Vista that doesn't involve the clandestine exchange of huge amounts of money between business conglomerates with big stakes in multimedia distribution.

Christ Softus, don’t go all serious & corrective on me; I’m not after a fight, I've got better things to do!

 

[Softus]

Christ Softus, don’t go all serious & corrective on me.

FYI, I dropped the "Christ" prefix when the begging for miracles started to eat into my weekends.

I’m not after a fight, I've got better things to do!

Should I infer that you don't have a cogent explanation for the existence of Windows Vista?

 

[Richard C]

FYO, I dropped the "Christ" prefix when the begging for miracles started to eat into my weekends.

Should I infer that you don't have a cogent explanation for the existence of Windows Vista?

I don’t disagree with your view but that’s progress & appears to be what the next generation wants.

 

[Softus]

I don’t disagree with your view but that’s progress & appears to be what the next generation wants.

As I implied earlier, I suspect a more sinister motive than that of delivering teenage customer satisfaction, i.e. that of being persauded by the lure of a share of the vast quantities of commission to be potentially gained in controlling (by encoding) the distribution of multi-media files.

However, I think their strategy is flawed, and already Vista has shown that it's never going to get onto the majority of the world's client PCs.