It is a vague remark from me, I cannot really define such a thing. Also spend too few hours of my life with windows Vista/7/8 to be the judge.

but I will try a little:
- Powerful and consistent file management, based on the original user interface research done for Windows 95. Windows Classic Interface actually working. Keyboard control + shortcuts for most actions.
- Conservative use of resources such as memory and disk space, because of minimal amount of graphics.
- The NT, 2K, XP OS lineup, and the applications for it, allowed unsurpassed productive use for the office, developers and admins. (Unfortunately, before the XP service packs and Firefox, it was all too vulnerable to internet attacks and virussus)

This guy does a better job then me, in laying it out: XP was my idea

The original UI research was quite interesting. I remember when I 1st installed Win95 took me a couple of hrs till I got my head around. Start Menu= Windows, My Computer = Dos. It was a little tricky as Desktop icons, look very much like the old Program Manager icons in Win3.x but after that everything fell into place.

The whole make everything big for touchscreens is what's really killing me with the current MS software. Office 2013 on a Win7 PC just looses so much space with the oversized menus and who the hell thought the metro interface was a good idea for Server 2012. We live in a age where servers are mostly virtual machines and even physical servers are mare likely to be remoted onto.... sorry rant over.

gerwin wrote:

... the original user interface research done for Windows 95 ...

... users had to learn two ways of interacting with the computer, which was confusing ... ... tested them with users of all exp […]
Show full quote

... users had to learn two ways of interacting with the computer, which was confusing ...

... tested them with users of all experience levels, not just beginners, because we knew that the design solution would need to work well for users of varying experience levels ...

... the main problem was windows not being visible at all times, so users couldn't see what they had open or access tasks quickly. This realization led us fairly quickly to the task bar design ...

... The results were very encouraging-users finished the tasks in about half the time it took them in Windows 3.1 and they were more satisfied with Windows 95 in 20 of the 21 categories surveyed ...

... user testing the product holistically was key to polishing the fit between the pieces ...

Compare this intelligent, user ergonomics focused approach to UI design they displayed in 1995, with the joke they tried to force down the throats in 2012.

Microsoft is trying to be Apple and remove features they feel you don't need anymore because they think they have come up with something better. Usually, this has the effect of making older hardware incompatible with the new OS, just like Mac OS X drops support for a bunch of older hardware with each new version. The goal is simple, to keep you on the hardware/software upgrade cycle forever and not allow you to keep running new software on old hardware or with old operating systems.

XP Was My Idea are excellent critical articles. Thank you for sharing.

The classic Windows UI was indeed consistent, easy to "feel", and fast at that. Modern GTK applications are worse in all these aspects. And what remains of the classic interface in NT6, when it is enabled by killing the new window manager, is ugly, lacking 3D or with overly bumpy buttons.

I never thought of Windows file management as powerful. An advanced file manager with a better "copy conflict" dialog (Total Commander, TeraCopy) was always needed, and yet another to copy from damaged optical disks. But I grant that it was consistent across all Explorer dialogs. Why on earth did they need to re-invent the file replace dialog, when other software already had it implemented in a way familiar to part of the user base!? It's confusing, potentially leading to data loss.

The need to perform updates on Windows is overrated, and part of the forced culture of following the upgrade cycle. I am still using XP SP1 behind NAT, and it's not getting hacked or becoming unstable. It can run more games, and possibly use more RAM than later versions. If I run 3rd party malicious programs that connect to the Internet, it's hardly a Windows fault. New software compiled with recent MSVC does not run, as a result of MS planned obsolescence, but that's fixed with SP2 or SP3.

j7n wrote:

... XP SP1 ... possibly use more RAM than later versions ...

That's right, they only started limiting the max physical address from XP SP2 onwards.

I have replaced all XP machines with 7 machines (@ my house and my parents' house). It will save me a lot of time and aggravation. Just a thought.

On one XP PC the MS Security Essentials package is now nagging with a popup at every boot. It is on the bottom right. And I cannot disable it other then reinstalling MSE october 2013. How did that update get installed anyways? Not nice.

screenshots here
Update ID: KB2949787

I don't mean the general Windows XP messagebox with a warning, which can easily be prevent from showing, by checking that option or adding this entry to the registry:

1Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
2[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion]
3"DisableEOSNotification"=dword:00000001

TELVM wrote:

j7n wrote:

... XP SP1 ... possibly use more RAM than later versions ...

That's right, they only started limiting the max physical address from XP SP2 onwards.

SP2 will run with PAE when NX is available (it has to do it for DEP), but they limited it to 4GB because of third-party software having/creating problems. I think it's along the same lines as 2000 DCE only being officially available on validated platforms (where it will happily blow right past the 4GB limit, despite being a 32-bit OS). More here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/ar … 21/3092070.aspx (scroll down to client systems).

Gerwin: I'm kind of curious what it will change to telling you on April 9... 🤣 (but in all seriousness you'd probably be best off switching to something like the freebie version of AVG)

Honestly I can't say I blame them for trying to get folks to upgrade - call planned obsolescence if you want, but Windows XP is a dinosaur; they gave it better than a decade of support (that doesn't look like planned obsolescence to me), and are at least being very up-front with customers that it's time to move on versus silently cutting it off.

obobskivich wrote:

Honestly I can't say I blame them for trying to get folks to upgrade - call planned obsolescence if you want, but Windows XP is a dinosaur; they gave it better than a decade of support (that doesn't look like planned obsolescence to me), and are at least being very up-front with customers that it's time to move on versus silently cutting it off.

I don't blame MS for notifying the user, but I do find it very intrusive that they don't give an option to disable this message. No 'normal' user is gonna feel comfortable with this warning at every boot, no matter what the computer is used for. Surely this message sparks a peak in the sales of new computer systems and/or operating systems.

gerwin wrote:

I don't blame MS for notifying the user, but I do find it very intrusive that they don't give an option to disable this message. No 'normal' user is gonna feel comfortable with this warning at every boot, no matter what the computer is used for. Surely this message sparks a peak in the sales of new computer systems and/or operating systems.

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you that it's intrusive and should be disable-able (my spell-check thinks that's an okay word, so I'm going with it). You can always remove MSE though, right?

yes, like I said, removed it and reinstalled MSE october 2013. With up to date signatures that is.

My belief was that they were going to continue to allow activation - otherwise I am screwed - was going to build an XP box. Have already got the motherboard, was looking at copies of XP on Ebay

obobskivich wrote:

... it will happily blow right past the 4GB limit, despite being a 32-bit OS ...

Indeed. More here about RAM-unlimited XP SP3: http://www.overclock.net/t/77229/windows-xp-r … 0#post_21918101

"blow right past" is a bit of a misleading exaggeration. There are various constraints on how RAM >4GB can be used in the 32-bit setting.

For example, executable data can't be stored there, because in protected mode the EAX register can't go past (2^33)-1.

SquallStrife wrote:

"blow right past" is a bit of a misleading exaggeration. There are various constraints on how RAM >4GB can be used in the 32-bit setting.

For example, executable data can't be stored there, because in protected mode the EAX register can't go past (2^33)-1.

Note that I wasn't talking about "hacking" XP (defeating licencing limits) - I was talking about specific server/enterprise builds of Windows 2000 and 2003 that are often deployed on machines with significantly more than 4GB of memory to support certain applications. For home users, Russonovitch is right on the money: just get a 64-bit OS and leave it be.

I know what you said. It doesn't matter what edition you have, what artificial limits are in place, or even what OS you're using, there are fundamental limits on what can be achieved when the CPU is in its 32-bit mode.

SquallStrife wrote:

I know what you said. It doesn't matter what edition you have, what artificial limits are in place, or even what OS you're using, there are fundamental limits on what can be achieved when the CPU is in its 32-bit mode.

And I'm not disagreeing with/challenging that at all; honestly I think too much has been made out of WindowsXP enforcing a 3-4GB upper cap on memory for home users (I can understand the feeling of being "cheated" when the 32-bit editions of Windows 2000 and 2003 will gladly handle greater than 4GB, but as you've pointed out it isn't that straight-forward in practice) - 2GB is enough for most in my experience/view, and if your requirements really need that much (>4GB) memory, you're better off with a 64-bit CPU, operating system, and application.

SquallStrife wrote:

EAX register can't go past (2^33)-1.

You mean EIP code selector register can't go past 2^32.

It is still a shame that PAE is broken in XP SP3, I would have liked to experiment with it. Maybe I still will.
It is not as if x64 is such a simple approach, I noticed the OS disk footprint multiplied with the addition of x64 support.

gerwin wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

EAX register can't go past (2^33)-1.

You mean EIP code selector register can't go past 2^32.

32 bits that are all set to 1 is (2^33)-1. But yes, EIP. I always get them mixed up. 😖