Windows 10 - How things have progressed

I upgraded my Win 7 install to Win 10 Home a few weeks ago. Absolutely hated it for 24 hours, then, as I slowly got to grips with the changes, began to fall in love with it. Had a few glitches at first, but now, thanks to some help from the good folk here, it all runs smoothly and I'm loving my "new" pc.

I've been playing around with a full screen start menu and, much as I love it, I have to confess I had the strange feeling that I was covering old ground. I spent a good while putting tiles into groups according to program type, and thought "where have I seen this before?" Then I realised: programs collected into groups, with a nice wallpaper in the background - that'll be Windows 3.11 ! LOL (yup, I'm that old). Still love Win 10 though, and Win 3.11 never had anything like Cortana of course.

In a similar vein, I was clearing out some cupboards today, and came across a folder containing cuttings from old PC magazines I collected some years back as I though they would prove useful in the future. One such cutting was from "PC Advisor" in 1996 and gave a step by step guide to upgrading to Windows '95. It suggested that, when considering the upgrade, you allowed at least 50 MB of free space for the new OS and if necessary, upgrade system RAM to 8MB!! Despite the obvious differences though, most of the advice still held true in principle:- check for drivers; make a backup first; etc, etc.

Bit of a rambling post, there you go, just wanted to share some thoughts. :)

Cliff

sn00ker said:

I think people in general hate changes at first and some like it. Most get frustrated with new changes . This is why with a new operating system its best not to put it on your main system . People should use their main system to what they're familiar with . When you install a new operating system and put it on a second PC take your time to learn all the ins and outs, this way people wouldn't get so frustrated, but we live in a world were we need it now and want it all which causes people to overreact when it doesn't live up to the hype ... Take your time folks and allow yourself to like not dislike ... just my 2 cents

Few people hate changes that are for the better, and it is irrational to like a change that is for the worse. Added steps to complete the same task, and reduced functionality (in exchange for ... nothing) are both changes for the worse.

Teflon said:

One such cutting was from "PC Advisor" in 1996 and gave a step by step guide to upgrading to Windows '95. It suggested that, when considering the upgrade, you allowed at least 50 MB of free space for the new OS and if necessary, upgrade system RAM to 8MB!!

RAM was about $30/MB in 1995, and 4 MB was about the average amount that a then-new PC had (which usually had a 486 CPU), and that was about a $1,500 or $1,600 deal for a complete setup (including monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers). Here's a 75 MHz Pentium machine with 8 MB of RAM from 1995 for $2,000. For $2,800 you could make it a 133 MHz Pentium. Running Windows 95 comfortably in 1995 wasn't cheap. The funny thing is, those CPUs and RAM amounts became obsolete very quickly back then. That $2,800 machine from 1995 would be an absolute dog trying to run Windows XP from just 6 years later. I don't even think XP will attempt to install with only 8 MB of RAM, and even if it did, it would run like cold molasses; to the point of being effectively unusable:

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are:

• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive

So just 6 years later, that $2,800 machine only has half the CPU clock rate, 1/8 the RAM, and 1/3 the hard drive space of a machine that could just barely run XP (XP on a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM is quite the dog itself).

Today, even a relatively low-end desktop PC from 6 years ago will run Windows 10 alright, and a high-end machine from 2009 (e.g., Core i7, 8 GB of RAM or more) is in the "way overkill" category for running Windows 10.

And what can we do today with all this whiz-bang processor power we weren't doing with Windows 98 or 2000...

BReeves said:

And what can we do today with all this whiz-bang processor power we weren't doing with Windows 98 or 2000...

Processor and other hardware power/capabilities has gotten much better since the late '90s / early '00s, which allows us to e.g., watch HD movies (and encode them in a reasonable amount of time), play video games which are almost photorealistic, and other hardware-intensive tasks.

As for the OS, Windows 2000 was a vast improvement compared to Windows 98; it was about on par with XP, which I consider to be the best version of Windows. Vista, 7, 8, and 10 weren't needed for desktop PCs; XP could have been updated indefinitely, especially the 64-bit version of XP. But even the 32-bit version could have been updated to somewhat overcome its main limitation, i.e., its 4 GB of RAM limitation, which really isn't that big of a limitation just yet, considering Microsoft still makes 32-bit versions of Windows with the 4 GB RAM limit, including Windows 10. It is an arbitrary limitation anyway, given that CPUs have supported PAE since the Pentium Pro from 20 years ago, which allows the system to address up to 64 GB of RAM.

Business users have no need for movies or games, we need an OS that is just that. Hope MS will wake up and give us a way to remove all the entertainment crap we don't use, need or want.

BReeves said:

Business users have no need for movies or games, we need an OS that is just that. Hope MS will wake up and give us a way to remove all the entertainment crap we don't use, need or want.

The modern hardware (not the modern OS) is what allows for HD video playback and encoding, video games with ~photorealistic graphics, and other hardware-intensive tasks. You don't need to use modern hardware for such things, but the capability is there regardless.

As I said before, I consider XP to be the best version of Windows, and there's no reason why Microsoft couldn't have updated it ~indefinitely. If all that's needed is a business machine, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on a Pentium II machine with 64 MB of RAM and Microsoft Office 97 would do just fine for most people, unless they need WWW access, in which case, there are no modern web browsers which are compatible with NT 4.0 (though the two major third-party ones, Firefox and Chrome, are still compatible with XP). I don't even think a truly light web browser which supports all current web standards could be written now. Well, maybe the browser could be light, but its job would still be too intensive for a Pentium II, 64 MB RAM machine, considering how bloated, CSS'd, HTML5'd, etc., most websites are these days.

I remember upgrading my Packard Bell (yes, they once sold in the US) from 1mb of vido ram to 2mb ($50?) and converting the OS from 16bit to 32bit by running a program. The 2GB hard drive seemed enormous compared to my first 10mb hard drive back in early 80s. Now just my nVidia video driver is a 350mb download. I also remember when the manager at my local bank spent a princely sum to upgrade from a 10mb hard drive to 20mb right after Lotus 1-2-3 came out so he could manage the customer files with it.