I don't really think even XP is very retro considering GOG makes everything playable on it, so nah, Vista is very much as contemporary as it ever was.. IMO that is.

candle_86 wrote:

Vista is also the last to have Quick Launch without cumbersome registry edits

I'm actively using Quick Launch on Windows 10 (Creators Update) and I didn't do any registry edits.
Just a few clicks.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

To me it is 😀

For me its `retro`when its older than 10 years.

They way I define "retro" is being nostalgia for something and that is going to be different from one person to another with different taste so yes Vista is retro especially with there being so few people using it. Vista and Win7 have one advantage over Win10 is running XP era games where there is some form of DRM that is invasive to the OS and Win10 bricks with some of these games. Going to continue using Win7 until support for it drops altogether.

I doubt it'll ever have much of a following, due to the fact that XP basically overlaps it for use until 7 came out. Like, most people when given the choice would take XP over it until 2009. Especially for retro usage, unless you want to use a DX10 video card and for some reason don't want to use 7- that's about the only possible use case.

I did like and use it at the time, but with 7 a thing there's no point.

I think crap like Vista actually becomes "retro" faster than popular platforms. People will have good excuses for running Windows 7 on modern systems for some time to come, but Vista is rather tied to a brief period in time.

There are a number of features dropped in 7, most notably the Removable Storage Manager. However, whilst there are a few features that are Vista only, I don't think most people would care about them - easier to run XP or 7 onwards. Can't think of any gaming reasons off the top of my head unless you count the removal of Texas Hold'em in 7.

Same reason there's little point to 95 - 98 did everything it did, but better. XP can run hardware EAX. 8.1 and below can run unpatched Securom/Safedisc games if KB3086255 isn't installed. Aren't there a few full screen graphics changes they made recently in 10? Anyway, the only essentials are probably DOS, XP, 8.1, 10 (for latest DirectX), and possibly 98 for a few old games that weren't as stable under NT.

ynari wrote:

There are a number of features dropped in 7, most notably the Removable Storage Manager. However, whilst there are a few features that are Vista only, I don't think most people would care about them - easier to run XP or 7 onwards. Can't think of any gaming reasons off the top of my head unless you count the removal of Texas Hold'em in 7.

Same reason there's little point to 95 - 98 did everything it did, but better. XP can run hardware EAX. 8.1 and below can run unpatched Securom/Safedisc games if KB3086255 isn't installed. Aren't there a few full screen graphics changes they made recently in 10? Anyway, the only essentials are probably DOS, XP, 8.1, 10 (for latest DirectX), and possibly 98 for a few old games that weren't as stable under NT.

Eh, looking at it the other way around is also possible, i.e. what does Me have that 98 does not, what does XP bring to the table that 2K doesn't have, and what does 10 or 8.1 offer that 7 won't? Essentially all you need are 98, 2K and 7.

appiah4 wrote:

Eh, looking at it the other way around is also possible, i.e. what does Me have that 98 does not, what does XP bring to the table that 2K doesn't have, and what does 10 or 8.1 offer that 7 won't?

Except Me does have things that 98 does not have, XP does have things that 2K does not have and 8.1/10 also have things that 7 does not have.

dr_st wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Eh, looking at it the other way around is also possible, i.e. what does Me have that 98 does not, what does XP bring to the table that 2K doesn't have, and what does 10 or 8.1 offer that 7 won't?

Except Me does have things that 98 does not have, XP does have things that 2K does not have and 8.1/10 also have things that 7 does not have.

Like, what?

Me has USB mass storage support which can be added to Win 98 with NUSB. It also has mixed VxD and WDM driver model support which fucks systems up to beyond repair levels more often than not so no thanks.
Win XP has.. really, what over Win 2K? They both have up to DX9 and Win2K has everything WinXP does, so I don't see what the point here is?
As for Win8 over Win7, yeah, it has the SUCK added which there is no way to install on Win7 but I think we can pass on that.

Like a lot of things. You can find detailed Wikipedia articles on new features in each version of Windows.

I'm not interested in getting into this discussion with you. I've seen way too many arguments of the type "I don't need/like/understand any of the new features, thus I conclude that they are useless/non-existent. No thanks. 😀

System Restore. Absent in 98 and 2K, introduced in Me and then XP.

7 has home groups, vista does not, so 7 made home networking and file sharing easier 🤣

candle_86 wrote:

7 has home groups, vista does not, so 7 made home networking and file sharing easier 🤣

Until you want to share with older OSes, or do anything non-standard. I found homegroups more trouble than their worth...

To me, out of support = retro. 😀

Time really flies, I can't believe Vista is 10 years old. I don't consider it retro as it is probably still a very functional OS (I don't own it, though, so I may be very wrong). Outdated, yes, retro, no. When 3rd party software and drivers stop support, then I'll consider it retro.

RichPimp wrote:

When 3rd party software and drivers stop support, then I'll consider it retro.

That happened a while ago for Vista.
Some examples I encountered:
No more driver updates for my GeForce 970
No more updates for Paint.NET
No more updates for Google Chrome

No Nvidia driver support?! Damn, I guess that's what non-existent market share gets you.

RichPimp wrote:

No Nvidia driver support?! Damn, I guess that's what non-existent market share gets you.

Precisely. It's not just nVidia. Basically almost all major vendors dropped support a while ago. For major vendors, every OS SKU to target is extra support overhead, even if the software is 100% identical. It's simply not an effective allocation of resources given the low number of users who would benefit from it.

Firefox still supports it, but more companies moved on shortly after XP ended, vista did as well.