ODwilly wrote:

I have an emachines that shipped with 128mb of DDR 266 and a 1.8ghz Celeron. Intel Extreme graphics running XP was literally painful. It took like 10 minutes to get to the desktop and like 2 to open Word!

Yes... especially when there is a bunch of extra crap on the HDD, i.e, Yahoo "instant messenger" and all this HP bloatware. I tried adding more ram (pc133 256mb stick) but it does not show any OEM logo's or anything. Methinks a bad stick of ram is the culprit. Anyway, I'll probably A:Install a lightweight linux distro or B: throw it in le garbage. I have similar machines and thus have 0 reasons to keep it other than maybe a parts computer.

ahendricks18 wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

I have an emachines that shipped with 128mb of DDR 266 and a 1.8ghz Celeron. Intel Extreme graphics running XP was literally painful. It took like 10 minutes to get to the desktop and like 2 to open Word!

Yes... especially when there is a bunch of extra crap on the HDD, i.e, Yahoo "instant messenger" and all this HP bloatware. I tried adding more ram (pc133 256mb stick) but it does not show any OEM logo's or anything. Methinks a bad stick of ram is the culprit. Anyway, I'll probably A:Install a lightweight linux distro or B: throw it in le garbage. I have similar machines and thus have 0 reasons to keep it other than maybe a parts computer.

If it is an older pc133 machine make sure that you use double sided ram. I have a whole bunch of single sided pieces of pc133 that refuses to work in like 80% of retro computers.

As for the original linked test: I didn't listen to the video and only skipped through it, but I didn't find anything about the video chip. The T60 should have either GMA 950, ATI X1300 or X1400. I don't know about the GMA, but the ATI chips are DirectX 9 chips so I assume proper drivers will exist. On XP this won't help as much as on later OSes. With an older video chip XP is the better choice, this is why I didn't try to run 7 on an older laptop with Radeon 9000 even though it has 2GB RAM.
Time for installation: Nice, but how often do you do that?
Booting: Hibernation works quite well with XP, too. I only fully booted XP when necessary.
Load web page in IE: That's IE8. The comparison is invalid, and nobody would use IE8 today anyway unless forced to.
Still I'm impressed, although you probably can't go much older and still having Windows 8 coming out on top, especially not with less RAM.

I personally quite liked Windows 7, especially after tweaking Aero. The only thing I still hate about it is the search feature. Actually I already switched the search in XP back to the classic W2k behavior.

Scali wrote:

I'd like to add that Windows 8.x is actually quite nice for simpler systems. I have this old Core2 Duo 1.5 GHz laptop with 2 GB […]
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I'd like to add that Windows 8.x is actually quite nice for simpler systems.
I have this old Core2 Duo 1.5 GHz laptop with 2 GB (from 2007). It originally came with Vista, but I upgraded it to Windows 7 x64. It was getting rather slow, and the drive got full.
So I figured I'd try Windows 8.1 x64 on it. Not only is the system much faster now, but I also have tons of free space on my system partition now. It also boots really quickly, because a shutdown is some kind of hybrid hibernate now, rather than a full boot.
Microsoft really cut the OS down significantly to make it run on tablets and such.

Actually with 2 GB I'd use Win7 x86. Did you remove old backup files for service packs and updates? (No insult intended, I know that you know Windows quite well.)

idspispopd wrote:

Actually with 2 GB I'd use Win7 x86.

The x86 I get (the preinstalled Vista copy is also x86, and is more memory-friendly than Win7 x64).
The Win7 I do not. I would think Win8.1 x86 would be the best option for low memory.

However, I need the x64, because I use it to develop and test my software, which has a 64-bit version as well.

Scali wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

Actually with 2 GB I'd use Win7 x86.

The x86 I get (the preinstalled Vista copy is also x86, and is more memory-friendly than Win7 x64).
The Win7 I do not. I would think Win8.1 x86 would be the best option for low memory.

I just meant as opposed to the Win7 x64 you are currently using.

Scali wrote:

However, I need the x64, because I use it to develop and test my software, which has a 64-bit version as well.

That's a valid reason of course.

One reason for opting for Win7 over Win8 is if you have a low end GPU. Win8 has some lost backwards compatibility that's mostly restored using DXGL (requires OpenGL 2.0) and dgVooodoo2 (requires DirectX 11).

On anything modern I would install Win8 of course and if I had need of legacy software that wouldn't run on it I would set up a legacy computer for that purpose. I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software.

ZellSF wrote:

One reason for opting for Win7 over Win8 is if you have a low end GPU. Win8 has some lost backwards compatibility that's mostly restored using DXGL (requires OpenGL 2.0) and dgVooodoo2 (requires DirectX 11).

On anything modern I would install Win8 of course and if I had need of legacy software that wouldn't run on it I would set up a legacy computer for that purpose. I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software.

Windows 7 more difficult than 8? Pfft
I have found the reverse to be true 10 times over.

smeezekitty wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

One reason for opting for Win7 over Win8 is if you have a low end GPU. Win8 has some lost backwards compatibility that's mostly restored using DXGL (requires OpenGL 2.0) and dgVooodoo2 (requires DirectX 11).

On anything modern I would install Win8 of course and if I had need of legacy software that wouldn't run on it I would set up a legacy computer for that purpose. I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software.

Windows 7 more difficult than 8? Pfft
I have found the reverse to be true 10 times over.

I think you failed a bit on reading comprehension there.

ZellSF wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

One reason for opting for Win7 over Win8 is if you have a low end GPU. Win8 has some lost backwards compatibility that's mostly restored using DXGL (requires OpenGL 2.0) and dgVooodoo2 (requires DirectX 11).

On anything modern I would install Win8 of course and if I had need of legacy software that wouldn't run on it I would set up a legacy computer for that purpose. I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software.

Windows 7 more difficult than 8? Pfft
I have found the reverse to be true 10 times over.

I think you failed a bit on reading comprehension there.

Then what are you saying other than you would install Windows 8 instead of 7 because "I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software"

smeezekitty wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

Windows 7 more difficult than 8? Pfft
I have found the reverse to be true 10 times over.

I think you failed a bit on reading comprehension there.

Then what are you saying other than you would install Windows 8 instead of 7 because "I'm not really into making my main computer more difficult to use for the sake of legacy software"

That is what I wrote, either it doesn't mean what you think it means or you replied to it and didn't write that you think you wrote:

Windows 7 more difficult than 8? Pfft
I have found the reverse to be true 10 times over.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, everything.

But 8 definitively requires more than the 130MB of RAM that XP uses on my old rig.

I'm glad that MS is optimizing their operating systems nowadays. Upgrade frequency has certainly slowed since 2008 or so.

Still, XP is not the rage-inducing experience that Win8/8.1 is. The code may be optimized, but its UI is certainly not.

Vista and Win7 are pretty bad too, but can be made tolerable.

KT7AGuy wrote:

I'm glad that MS is optimizing their operating systems nowadays. Upgrade frequency has certainly slowed since 2008 or so.

Still, XP is not the rage-inducing experience that Win8/8.1 is. The code may be optimized, but its UI is certainly not.

Vista and Win7 are pretty bad too, but can be made tolerable.

Uh the only change in UI functionality in 8 can be reverted with Classic Shell 😕

Which I would recommend for Win7 anyway, because removing the classic start menu, now that was evil.

Even with classic shell, the UI still LOOKS awful. The window title bars are horrid. Worse than XP or even 9X

ZellSF wrote:

Uh the only change in UI functionality in 8 can be reverted with Classic Shell 😕

Which I would recommend for Win7 anyway, because removing the classic start menu, now that was evil.

Yah, I used to run Classic Shell with Win7 too, until I realized I could accomplish the same tweaks through other means. Don't get me wrong - Classic Shell is a lifesaver and I don't hesitate to recommend it. I just stopped using it myself because I found other ways to do the same thing via registry hacks, etc. Funny thing, though: I've actually grown to like the Win7-style start menu. I hate how subdirectories are listed at the bottom of menus, but I can live with it. (If anybody knows a fix for that, please share).

I just hate Win8. It's not an enjoyable experience even with Classic Shell. It's beyond ugly and simply frustrating. It is also a big fat FU and raised middle finger from the devs at Microsoft. They are contemptuous of their users and unafraid to make sure we know it. I refused to pay for it even when Ballmer was peddling that crap for $30.

Just because I've been able to turn Win7 into a tolerable experience doesn't mean it became an enjoyable one. It still frustrates the crap out of me and I often find myself saying, "I should just make the switch to goddam Linux already". Of course, I've been saying that since about 2002 and I've never done much more than goof around with it. With the Win10 subscription model looming, I may find myself finally forced to commit to Linux as my primary OS.

I said it before when Win8 came out and I'll say it again with this Win10 subscription foolishness: Microsoft is creating an opportunity for a serious competitor to emerge.

KT7AGuy wrote:

It still frustrates the crap out of me and I often find myself saying, "I should just make the switch to goddam Linux already". Of course, I've been saying that since about 2002 and I've never done much more than goof around with it. With the Win10 subscription model looming, I may find myself finally forced to commit to Linux as my primary OS

Linux is a helpless disaster, a vile thing that needs to die the death and disappear from the face of this planet, and any major distribution remotely resembling a modern Windows environment, is probably going to be even more frustrating than Windows itself.

If you're shooting for a complete change, something fresh, clean and sturdy, go with a real Unix staple OS like OpenBSD, or even FreeBSD if multimedia's still that important to you as a Windows user making the switch.

Whats so hard to use about any newer OS, I mean honestly the functions are still the same on them, they work the same, 8 can be solved with a start menu for free, or get a nice one for 5 bucks from stardock. Honestly I think some of yall simply hate any change at all.

As for preformance, XP with modern systems doesn't handle it quite right.

XP was never really optimized for HyperThreading, Multi GPU, Multi Monitor, and has zero real support for SSD, without even support to send a trim command your SSD lifespan decreases and preforms worse the longer its used. Vista also lacks good SSD support. XP also doesn't handle AMD FX processors properly because of how it understands CPU logic. Honestly anything with a dual core and more than 1gb of ram will preform better than XP for general useage and will respond faster.

Lo Wang wrote:

KT7AGuy wrote:

It still frustrates the crap out of me and I often find myself saying, "I should just make the switch to goddam Linux already". Of course, I've been saying that since about 2002 and I've never done much more than goof around with it. With the Win10 subscription model looming, I may find myself finally forced to commit to Linux as my primary OS

Linux is a helpless disaster, a vile thing that needs to die the death and disappear from the face of this planet, and any major distribution remotely resembling a modern Windows environment, is probably going to be even more frustrating than Windows itself.

L O L
What do you think most web servers are running? Windows?

Whats so hard to use about any newer OS, I mean honestly the functions are still the same on them, they work the same, 8 can be solved with a start menu for free, or get a nice one for 5 bucks from stardock. Honestly I think some of yall simply hate any change at all.

It was a completely regressive and unnecessary change. Why should I use something that is worse if I can still use the older system which was better? And yes aesthetics is a justifiable reason.

Lo Wang wrote:

Linux is a helpless disaster, a vile thing that needs to die the death and disappear from the face of this planet

Ballmer would be proud of you. 🤣

I've never been a fan of XP, I've always preferred Windows 2000 and 2003 (180-day trial 😁). I like Windows 8.1 more than Vista & 7. Well, except Modern UI, but there's Classic Shell. 😉

The only downside with the UI is that you could not configure it more freely. Any one thinking the system is unusable because of UI has brain damage.