Stojke wrote:

Any one thinking the system is unusable because of UI has brain damage.

By definition, the user interface is the interface between the system and the user. A bad UI definitely affects usability.

Just because it is possible to "use" it doesn't mean it couldn't be better. Nor does it mean it can really be considered "usable" from a practicality standpoint. Technically you can "use" a 386 on the internet. But it would still be largely considered "unusable"

Of course, I am not talking about user interfaces in general, I am talking about Windows 8.

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

It's kind of hard to take anything you say seriously, when you make such blanket statements, obviously exaggerated to the point of being completely wrong.

smeezekitty wrote:

It was a completely regressive and unnecessary change.

It was an attempt to move towards unification of traditional PC and tablet/phone environments. IMO too, a poor and unnecessary one. But there was some logic behind it.

smeezekitty wrote:

Why should I use something that is worse if I can still use the older system which was better?

Indeed you should not. But Win8 does have advantages over Win7, and if you negate the bad part of the interface with a shell extension, it is not clear that the old one is still better.

Imho Windows 8.1 + classic shell perform a lot better than Seven. The thing I hate the most about Win8.x is its crappy modern ui redesign. Some bright mind at Microsoft thought it was a nice idea to have BLACK TEXT on dark colours for windows title properties. 🤣

smeezekitty wrote:

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

There's uxtheme patchers for Win8. It'll take you all of five minutes to replace those title bars with something else.

I consider it a necessity in XP and 7 as the default themes there are garbage. I don't mind 8's though. It might not be pretty, but functionally it's better than XP's and a lot better than 7's.

I'd just like to point out, apparently 7 and 8 are better and easier to use than xP, because office productivity has soared in most places as they drop XP. So if the average office worker finds 7 easier to use, why can't a bunch of geeks.

candle_86 wrote:

apparently 7 and 8 are better and easier to use than xP, because office productivity has soared in most places as they drop XP

It would be interesting to read more about such surveys. Do you have some links?

dr_st wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

apparently 7 and 8 are better and easier to use than xP, because office productivity has soared in most places as they drop XP

It would be interesting to read more about such surveys. Do you have some links?

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2505025/ … -windows-7.html

Benefits were also striking for Windows 7 users' productivity compared to XP. Windows 7 users wasted 94% less time rebooting their computers and lost 90% less time due to malware attacks.

Office productivity? For us (design/CAD world) Win7 was a nice evolutionary bump up from XP, just as XP had been from W2k, W9x and DOS before. But Win8 has been adopted by so few other business I know of that to attribute productivity gains to Win8 would be impossible for me. Win8 seems to stand between (office) users and software in a way many find uncomfortable - or unnecessary (and that's it's main weakness - the struggles with it feel gratuitous and unnecessary). I suspect Win10 will pickup where W7 left off in terms of market share and getting back to an OS that just gets the job done without fanfare.

tincup wrote:

Office productivity? For us (design/CAD world) Win7 was a nice evolutionary bump up from XP, just as XP had been from W2k, W9x and DOS before. But Win8 has been adopted by so few other business I know of that to attribute productivity gains to Win8 would be impossible for me. Win8 seems to stand between (office) users and software in a way many find uncomfortable - or unnecessary (and that's it's main weakness - the struggles with it feel gratuitous and unnecessary). I suspect Win10 will pickup where W7 left off in terms of market share and getting back to an OS that just gets the job done without fanfare.

8 is iffy, I've seen it deployed in the enterprise but with a start menu replacement installed and then its just like 7.

smeezekitty wrote:

Technically XP SP1 specs 64MB minimum. I have never seen an OEM XP machine with 64MB of RAM though. Good thing too

MS also specs a 233mhz processor as the minimum to run XP, but have you ever tried running it at that speed?

sliderider wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

Technically XP SP1 specs 64MB minimum. I have never seen an OEM XP machine with 64MB of RAM though. Good thing too

MS also specs a 233mhz processor as the minimum to run XP, but have you ever tried running it at that speed?

Processor speed isn't all that important for an OS really (it might be for the applications you intend to run, but that's a different story.
I have run XP on a PII 350, and it works fine. Memory is the biggest problem really. Don't try running it with 256MB or less 😀
A fast hdd also helps a lot.

I saw a Compaq OEM box from late 2001 with XP on it. Intel Celeron 433, 64mb PC66, 810 Motherboard. It was a compaq COA sticker on the box, so I'm forced to belive its legit.

As for CPU, for XP Gold and SP1, yea a Pentium II is fine with 256mb of ram, the changes done in SP2 really push it to 1gb of ram and at least 800mhz cpu. And these days I wouldn't run XP on anything under 2ghz with at least 2gb of ram if your using it with all updates and patches, its simply to bogged down with junk now.

I run XP SP3 fully patched on a classic 1.66 GHz Atom based netbook with 2GB RAM and a small 32GB Onyx SSD: I have no complaints, except the CPU is rather weak for Emulation of any kind. No$GBA for example, is the only GBA emulator that manages to run smooth there. The system should be comparable to a Desktop Celeron 900MHz.