Win 8 and what's happening at MS 6

[strongm]

>the point or purpose of Windows ME

It was supposed to be an interim step towards the wondrous world of NT, removing the ability (in theory) to use real-mode DOS (and adopting all the spiffy shell enhancements that has been introduced for W2K, and one or two others that had been considered for the project that eventually led to XP. Hang on, just need to google ... yes, project Neptune)

 

[1DMF]

It was supposed to be an interim step towards

Again what was the point?

It didn't work and made anyone who hadn't used Win 98 think that Win 98 sucked! That was clever M$!

On top of which in my opinion ME hindered the initial uptake of XP, I know, I went to the travelling XP porter cabin when M$ did the initial big advertising push, and it was a year later before I decided to give it a go. I then wished I had got XP to replace 98SE instead of ME. Without ME, I would have jumped straight on XP and sent love letters to M$!

I would rather wait an additional year for a new version of an OS that is better than the previous versions than keep suffering this horrendous in-between versioning fiasco that sucks and puts you off using Windows!

That's why for me Win8/8.1 was the last straw that broke the Camel's back (especially after ME & Vista) and has me using Linux at home and desperately struggling to get it working at work also!

I'm fed up of these sucky, half baked, in-between versions, aren't we all?


"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

2000 (ME) - Sucky

Implied to me, well.....never mind, we are all on the same team here, for the most part.....

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[1DMF]

perhaps I should have used a slash instead of parentheses?

2000 / ME ;-)

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

>Without ME, I would have jumped straight on XP and sent love letters to M$!

Possibly not. People seem to forget, thanks to the position it now holds, that the release of XP was not particularly auspicious or welcome, and it was far from perfect. Here's what people were saying nearly 3 years after it's release (you might notice certain similarities to present criticisms of Windows 8/8.x)

>It didn't work

I don't think they deliberately intended that, you know ...

 

[dilettante]

People also forget that Windows XP was actually two versions of Windows.

XP SP2 was a fairly big rewrite, and was originally intended to be sold as a new version of Windows.

 

[ChrisHirst]

Funnily enough I found Win2k to be superbly stable, I was IT manager of a 120 user network running NT4 servers with a mix of NT4ws, 95 and 98 on the desktops. Did a rollout of 2k on to 20 machines, the ones that had most "It's not working" calls, and the problems just went away, with these machines on 9x they had been stripped, rebuilt, reinstalled, changed video cards, memory, NiCs etc. etc. to little avail. 2k on the same hardware, under the same desk with the same user, same applications just worked.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[1DMF]

Perhaps Win 2000 didn't play well with Server 2000?

XP SP2 was a fairly big rewrite, and was originally intended to be sold as a new version of Windows.

Agreed, and it threw a spanner in the works of popups, file downloads and alike, causing major web app rewrites, but for a good reason, Win XP OS was awesome, but vulnerable!

At least they had the decency to call them Service Packs in the end, even Vista was fixed by a Service Pack, the fact they try to distance themselves from Windows 8 by calling it, 8.1 (a version) instead of Service Pack 1, is to me farcical.

But then again, I'm cynical like that!

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

>the fact they try to distance themselves from Windows 8 by calling it, 8.1

Not quite sure how a minor point upgrade counts as distancing, but perhaps that is just me.

 

[xwb]

I have used both Windows 1 and 2.11. 2.11 is quite big : it can just fit on a 3.5" floppy.

Part of the GUI for PTAT-1 (transatlantic cable system that is no longer in use) was done with Windows 2.11 on IBM PS2. Those were the days when you had to play with 64K addressing spaces: really messy.

 

[1DMF]

Not quite sure how a minor point upgrade counts as distancing, but perhaps that is just me.

Well there are lots of articles about 8.1, talking about it being a major update vs a service pack and bias opinions either way, makes no odds to me at the end of the day, I won't be getting it

"In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you."

"If a shortcut was meant to be easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it would be the way!"
Free Electronic Dance Music

 

[strongm]

Ah, my point about a minor point upgrade wasn't a reference to any technical changes, it was a comment in your assertion that Microsoft tried to distance themselves from Windows 8 by cunningly renaming the product ... Windows 8.1. I don't think this counts as distancing


(and no matter how people want to argue about a service pack versus an upgrade as a method of delivery the fact remains that the kernel build changed from 6.2 to 6.3, which makes it a minor version upgrade (and it might be worth pointing out that previous minor point upgrades from kernel 6.0 to kernel 6.1 and from 6.1 to 6.2 both involved a complete name change ...)

 

[dilettante]

But there has been a change in philosphy at Microsoft about release frequency in general. It isn't hard to imagine some high placed non-technical (marketing, administration) person sticking his fingers into the peanut butter that users, techs, and software developers have to eat.

So the NT "point release" numbers don't necesarily mean what they used to. But sure, these numbers are changing.

I suspect that what it really means is that software can rely on these version numbers even less than in the past. As it is MSDN Library articles have stated for a decade that the NT version numbers are not reliable indicators, so the presence of specific features should be "sniffed" by looking at the internal version numbers of applicable system DLLs instead.