No it does not count. As listed per the link, Server 2003 was the first to receive x64 on 5th September 2003.
XP Pro x64 is nothing else than a fork of 2003 SP1, which further proves my point that Server 2003 SP1 was the first proper x64 release.
"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-15, 12:10:Yes people tried to run it on systems that were not powerful enough for it and had a bad experience with it. If you were to list […]
Yes people tried to run it on systems that were not powerful enough for it and had a bad experience with it.
If you were to listen to the word on the street most people say it wasnt very good, which means to me most people had it on computers that werent powerful enough for it.
Just because a company sells you a computer with a sticker saying its Vista ready that doesnt mean it is, and when you find it isnt it isnt the fault of the OS.
The OS was what it was, which the hardware can change.
Yup, but I think you have to look at it in context. This is the tail end of a period where most people have bought 3-4 home computers in the past 10-15 years because, well, your $2500 computer was basically obsolete in 3-4 years in that era. (And that's not counting additional computers for kids going off to university or just because one computer in the household wasn't enough anymore) XP is... a breath of fresh air... compared to 98SE or classic Mac OS or anything other than Win2000. By the time 2005-6 rolls around, XP has probably had more bugs fixed than any other MS OS. It's reached an unprecedented degree of driver maturity - every piece of hardware on the market in 2006 has solid XP driver support. So people are looking at these XP machines that run great with great software/hardware compatibility and Microsoft comes along with this thing that's slower and less compatible and just different.
And as I've gotten older, I get it - for people my parents' age, 3-4 years goes by a lot quicker than for kids/teens, and having to spend all this money for something that barely lasts a year before the house starts to be filled with whispers that there's a lot better out there is quite traumatic. XP with 2006-era software/hardware was Good Enough for everything that they did that they could just say "computer industry, you've taken $15K adjusted for inflation from this family in the past decade and a bit, WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH. Not spending another $2K+ for a new set of bugs and compatibility issues."
Microsoft thought Vista would supercharge a new round of expensive hardware purchases, but non-enthusiasts just didn't want to anymore.
PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-15, 12:40:No it does not count. As listed per the link, Server 2003 was the first to receive x64 on 5th September 2003.
XP Pro x64 is nothing else than a fork of 2003 SP1, which further proves my point that Server 2003 SP1 was the first proper x64 release.
XP 64 was a separate SKU of the same thing, so it was also released on the same day!
XP 64 identifies itself as 2003 SP1 as you have already said.
How can you not see that?
There was a 64bit version of Windows 2000. It was the first Microsoft OS to offer 64 bit computing.
At the time the Itanium processors were 64 bit, it wasnt until later AMD came up with AMD64. aka x86-64. Which is what we call 64 bit today, and people like you only count that as being 64 bit?
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-15, 22:09:Yup, but I think you have to look at it in context. This is the tail end of a period where most people have bought 3-4 home comp […]
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-15, 12:10:Yes people tried to run it on systems that were not powerful enough for it and had a bad experience with it. If you were to list […]
Yes people tried to run it on systems that were not powerful enough for it and had a bad experience with it.
If you were to listen to the word on the street most people say it wasnt very good, which means to me most people had it on computers that werent powerful enough for it.
Just because a company sells you a computer with a sticker saying its Vista ready that doesnt mean it is, and when you find it isnt it isnt the fault of the OS.
The OS was what it was, which the hardware can change.Yup, but I think you have to look at it in context. This is the tail end of a period where most people have bought 3-4 home computers in the past 10-15 years because, well, your $2500 computer was basically obsolete in 3-4 years in that era. (And that's not counting additional computers for kids going off to university or just because one computer in the household wasn't enough anymore) XP is... a breath of fresh air... compared to 98SE or classic Mac OS or anything other than Win2000. By the time 2005-6 rolls around, XP has probably had more bugs fixed than any other MS OS. It's reached an unprecedented degree of driver maturity - every piece of hardware on the market in 2006 has solid XP driver support. So people are looking at these XP machines that run great with great software/hardware compatibility and Microsoft comes along with this thing that's slower and less compatible and just different.
And as I've gotten older, I get it - for people my parents' age, 3-4 years goes by a lot quicker than for kids/teens, and having to spend all this money for something that barely lasts a year before the house starts to be filled with whispers that there's a lot better out there is quite traumatic. XP with 2006-era software/hardware was Good Enough for everything that they did that they could just say "computer industry, you've taken $15K adjusted for inflation from this family in the past decade and a bit, WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH. Not spending another $2K+ for a new set of bugs and compatibility issues."
Microsoft thought Vista would supercharge a new round of expensive hardware purchases, but non-enthusiasts just didn't want to anymore.
Yeah you would think so but the performance was such that it wasnt really totally outclassed until the 2nd gen i7 series CPUs.
an i5 2400 outperforms a single X5365 but not two of them.
Your idea about the life cycle of a computer back then isnt wrong for the type of computer most people have, but it is possible to buy a computer back then that did last a lot longer than you would think.
a £1000 computer was obsolete in 3-4 years yes I would agree with you on that.
Your idea about M$ wanting people to spend money is in part true, but at the same time not at all.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/microsofts-r … y-product-line/
Microsofts revenue has always had a similar breakdown, they have always made most of their money from their Office product line, and others, Windows makes money but its by no means their biggest product. Getting people to spend their money on new hardware is such a stupid idea as an argument there is literally no way to answer it.
Its like saying Porsche made their latest car so the owners would have to go and buy a new set of Bridgestone tyres and Mobil 1 oil.
XP matured, and the support with drivers happened over several years, it didnt appear over night, or even over a year or two. Now looking back its support is vast, but it wasnt the case at the time.
This seems pretty much already derailed so will continue to go somewhat off topic.
Re the whole Windows Vista / 2008 thing, I never really thought about it till now but while Vista was universally hated, Server 2008 on the other had was pretty popular.
Server 2012 (basically Windows 😎 was pretty bad more so as the free 8.1 upgrade didn't apply to servers, instead having to do a full on upgrade to to 2012 R2
Don't conflate x64 to mean 64bit. X64 is a common term to describe the AMD64 and x86-64 architecture. Itanium was always referenced as IA64.
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-16, 00:18:Yeah you would think so but the performance was such that it wasnt really totally outclassed until the 2nd gen i7 series CPUs. a […]
Yeah you would think so but the performance was such that it wasnt really totally outclassed until the 2nd gen i7 series CPUs.
an i5 2400 outperforms a single X5365 but not two of them.Your idea about the life cycle of a computer back then isnt wrong for the type of computer most people have, but it is possible to buy a computer back then that did last a lot longer than you would think.
a £1000 computer was obsolete in 3-4 years yes I would agree with you on that.
Sure, but "most people" are who sank Vista, not enthusiasts with new hardware with plenty of RAM, good GPUs, and memories of how bad pre-SP1 XP was. Those enthusiasts are sitting on vintage computing forums 17 years later talking about their fond memories of Vista 😀
"Most people" just somehow knew Vista was bad. Whether that was caused by friends who got lousy low-end Vista systems, Apple advertising, or other things, who knows.
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-16, 00:18:Your idea about M$ wanting people to spend money is in part true, but at the same time not at all. https://www.visualcapitalist. […]
Your idea about M$ wanting people to spend money is in part true, but at the same time not at all.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/microsofts-r … y-product-line/
Microsofts revenue has always had a similar breakdown, they have always made most of their money from their Office product line, and others, Windows makes money but its by no means their biggest product. Getting people to spend their money on new hardware is such a stupid idea as an argument there is literally no way to answer it.Its like saying Porsche made their latest car so the owners would have to go and buy a new set of Bridgestone tyres and Mobil 1 oil.
It was widely reported in the media at the time that this was the strategy. They also had a huge advertising campaign with that weird "The wow starts now" slogan.
They wanted to recreate the 'magic' of the Win95 launch - the mass media coverage, the midnight sales, the massive growth in PC sales, the matching Office software, etc. The "most people" going and getting their first home computers and just knowing they wanted Win95. Etc. And even... I remember going back to school in September 1995, and the first or second question a 50-something-year-old, totally-non-tech-savvy teacher asked me about my summer on the first day of school was "did you get Windows 95?" That's how huge the Win95 launch was.
Keep in mind that Microsoft is not just looking at the licensing revenue from OEM licences (and any retail upgrades), but they're also looking at the health of the platform. The enthusiasm of OEMs to make new exciting Windows systems. How new/high-performing the installed base of Windows machine is, which may dictate whether third parties develop new exciting software for the Windows platform, which itself drives the sale of hardware and OEM licences, etc.
Go and read Steven Sinofsky's Hardcore Software book/web site. One point he makes that never occurred to me is that one reason hardware requirements for software went up dramatically in the second half of the 1990s (whereas, say, software developers in the late 1980s or early 1990s made serious efforts to support older systems) is that the PC market grew dramatically and they were selling that software to those new systems. Put another way, who cares if Office 97 doesn't run nicely on your 486DX2/66 if there are 10X more 133+MHz Pentiums than 486DX2/66s out there when Office 97 is released, and if you know another gazillion Pentium 233s and Pentium IIs will be sold in the subsequent two years? They don't need the 486DX2/66 person's money, and if the 486DX2/66 person needs their software, they can go buy a Pentium system too. If WordPerfect 5.1 had required a 386 in 1989, meanwhile, WordPerfect Corp. would probably have gone bust because they needed XT/AT/etc owners to buy their software to have a viable business.
I think Microsoft dreamed of another such cycle. Lots of people get fancy Vista machines, they get new fancy software, now other people want the fancy software, so they need to get the fancy Vista machines themselves, etc. And instead they had the opposite - backlash, stagnation, etc.
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-16, 00:18:XP matured, and the support with drivers happened over several years, it didnt appear over night, or even over a year or two. Now looking back its support is vast, but it wasnt the case at the time.
I'm talking about the state of XP the day Vista shipped. XP RTM, pre-SP1 was a piece of junk. Gamers stuck to 98SE; many others stuck to Win2000. I remember how people were horrified by rumours of XP's hardware requirements in summer 2001. But after over 5 years, it was a different story.
Ever since Windows 95, Microsoft wants that same level of hype and excitement for every new release. XP was certainly hated early on, the driver situation took awhile to catch up. Beyond XP there hasn't been a killer Windows feature to drive immediate upgrades. Many just waited until either it was time for a new PC, or the version that they were running was losing support.
chinny22 wrote on 2024-08-16, 00:27:This seems pretty much already derailed so will continue to go somewhat off topic.
Re the whole Windows Vista / 2008 thing, I never really thought about it till now but while Vista was universally hated, Server 2008 on the other had was pretty popular.
Server 2012 (basically Windows 😎 was pretty bad more so as the free 8.1 upgrade didn't apply to servers, instead having to do a full on upgrade to to 2012 R2
Server 2008 was pretty good, the R2 release made it even more stable. I was still using it up until only recently really... past couple of years.
I tried 2012 and didnt like it at all.
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 01:30:Don't conflate x64 to mean 64bit. X64 is a common term to describe the AMD64 and x86-64 architecture. Itanium was always referenced as IA64.
I would take issue with that.
To me x64 is mostly used as a common term for a 64bit chip and or OS. Usually on a PC.
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 02:20:Ever since Windows 95, Microsoft wants that same level of hype and excitement for every new release. XP was certainly hated early on, the driver situation took awhile to catch up. Beyond XP there hasn't been a killer Windows feature to drive immediate upgrades. Many just waited until either it was time for a new PC, or the version that they were running was losing support.
Yeah I think youre right there. They like the hype to be with the launch, as is common with most product releases but it seems Microsoft more so. I remember the hype that went with Win95... It was full on. Windows 2000 not so much as it was aimed at business but it was still hyped up.
I also remember the problems we had with XP drivers in the early days.
TV and capture cards not working, sound too. There were a lot of drivers baked in, more than you could expect from Windows 98SE of course, but there were a lot of devices that didnt have XP drivers in the box.
There everywhere now, but it wasnt like that at the start. It was one of the main problems for those who got hold of and used the "Devils0wn" release, which was all over IRC. I would say that was the most downloaded file over DCC.
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-16, 01:38:Go and read Steven Sinofsky's Hardcore Software book/web site. One point he makes that never occurred to me is that one reason hardware requirements for software went up dramatically in the second half of the 1990s (whereas, say, software developers in the late 1980s or early 1990s made serious efforts to support older systems) is that the PC market grew dramatically and they were selling that software to those new systems. Put another way, who cares if Office 97 doesn't run nicely on your 486DX2/66 if there are 10X more 133+MHz Pentiums than 486DX2/66s out there when Office 97 is released, and if you know another gazillion Pentium 233s and Pentium IIs will be sold in the subsequent two years? They don't need the 486DX2/66 person's money, and if the 486DX2/66 person needs their software, they can go buy a Pentium system too. If WordPerfect 5.1 had required a 386 in 1989, meanwhile, WordPerfect Corp. would probably have gone bust because they needed XT/AT/etc owners to buy their software to have a viable business.
Just as a data point, try comparing just the spread of CPU frequencies supported in a single socket, without overclocking included.
"What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?"
Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?
While Socket 3, and Socket 7 are more impressive, Slot 1 of the late 90s is also an honorable mention. There probably hasn't been a comparable time to the mid-90s, where all you needed to do to upgrade, is just buy a CPU and maybe memory, and keep everything the same, and the performance change could be quite impressive. So mid-90s 1995 was probably the peak of this rate of change, so anything after it likely could have had dramatically higher system requirements than just a year or two prior.
Yes, I suppose that Vista was a partial failure for trying to rely on the same kind of market that had existed before then. Win95 again was during the peak of rapid change.
For me when talking about the failure of Windows Vista due to the lack of horsepower a PC had then Windows 98 and Windows XP were bigger problems.
There were so many people wanting to upgrade to Win98 on hardware that was in many ways struggling to run Win95.
Im talking the Pentium and Pentium 133, Pentium II 266.
They run Win98 ok but as time marched on people wanted to do so much more such as multi media and the PCs just werent ready for it and the OS struggled.
The same went for XP.
I remember a friend running XP on a K6 2 500.
Every OS has had more than its fair share of running on potato powered PCs.
People latched on to Vista over the years mostly because those records have survived because it was at a point in time when the internet was starting to really gain traction and the records have been kept.
Intel's code-name for the 80386 instruction set was called IA-32.
When the Itanium was being designed, Intel genuinely thought they were going to be able to transition away from their x86 architecture. This wouldn't even be Intel's first attempt to do so, the iAPX 432 is good example. Intel was so sure they named their instruction set for the Itanium IA-64. Intel unfortunately incorrectly assumed that optimizing compilers would hide the complexity of Itanium's instruction set from the programmer.
Along comes AMD with their 64bit extension to the x86 architecture called AMD64. It proved to be both faster for old x86 software, and easier to write 64bit software for. Eventually Intel caved and implemented AMD64 in their own processors. Intel would name their implementation of the same AMD64 instruction set EMT64T instead. Much arguing online ensued on the correct name of this instruction set. Microsoft used x64 and eventually x86_64.
I'll concede quite a lot of people started calling any 64bit CPU x64. However it was mostly out of ignorance, not knowing 64bit CPUs existed long before either the Itanium or Opteron/Athlon 64.
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:31:Intel's code-name for the 80386 instruction set was called IA-32. When the Itanium was being designed, Intel genuinely thought t […]
Intel's code-name for the 80386 instruction set was called IA-32.
When the Itanium was being designed, Intel genuinely thought they were going to be able to transition away from their x86 architecture. This wouldn't even be Intel's first attempt to do so, the iAPX 432 is good example. Intel was so sure they named their instruction set for the Itanium IA-64. Intel unfortunately incorrectly assumed that optimizing compilers would hide the complexity of Itanium's instruction set from the programmer.Along comes AMD with their 64bit extension to the x86 architecture called AMD64. It proved to be both faster for old x86 software, and easier to write 64bit software for. Eventually Intel caved and implemented AMD64 in their own processors. Intel would name their implementation of the same AMD64 instruction set EMT64T instead. Much arguing online ensued on the correct name of this instruction set. Microsoft used x64 and eventually x86_64.
I'll concede quite a lot of people started calling any 64bit CPU x64. However it was mostly out of ignorance, not knowing 64bit CPUs existed long before either the Itanium or Opteron/Athlon 64.
Yes I know exactly what happened. I lived through it too.
x64 is a generic term for 64 bit computing now. It might not be technically correct but its what we call it.
Its all along the same lines as the flip chip Pentium 3s. Very few know them as that now maybe but it was a name that was used then. Not now maybe.
EM64T not EMT64T but I know what you mean.
I misremembered it was indeed EM64T not EMT64T.
So what is this a conversation about exactly?
There was a 64 bit version of Windows 2000
It did pre date Windows XP64 and Win2k3SP1 64 bit
Win2k AS LE is considered a 64 bit version of Windows because at the time thats all there was. AMD64 simply didnt exist and we didnt know, at least most people didnt know AMD64 was a thing and was going to be a (thee) thing.
Or are we talking about pedantry here, as to not being able to call Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition "x64" because in your mind x64 is exclusive to mean AMD64, EM64T, x86-64?
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:04:For me when talking about the failure of Windows Vista due to the lack of horsepower a PC had then Windows 98 and Windows XP wer […]
For me when talking about the failure of Windows Vista due to the lack of horsepower a PC had then Windows 98 and Windows XP were bigger problems.
There were so many people wanting to upgrade to Win98 on hardware that was in many ways struggling to run Win95.
Im talking the Pentium and Pentium 133, Pentium II 266.
They run Win98 ok but as time marched on people wanted to do so much more such as multi media and the PCs just werent ready for it and the OS struggled.
The same went for XP.
I remember a friend running XP on a K6 2 500.Every OS has had more than its fair share of running on potato powered PCs.
People latched on to Vista over the years mostly because those records have survived because it was at a point in time when the internet was starting to really gain traction and the records have been kept.
Sure, but XP was the first OS (in the consumer line) that was actually good. Looking back with 20+ years of hindsight, 3.1, 95, 98, etc were junk (and just in case anybody thinks I'm dissing Microsoft unfairly, let's be clear - the classic Mac OS with MultiFinder and whatnot was even more junk below the nice GUI and the cool little engineering). Running out of system resources. Frequent reboots. Lousy UI (in the case of 3.1). Plug and pray hardware expansion. Etc. So no matter how the new OS didn't run great on your hardware, there was pent up demand for a new OS as soon as it came out because the existing one was just so bad.
XP in late 2006 was good (especially if you were coming from 98SE/Me rather than the wonderful 2000). Great driver support. All the bugs fixed in SP1/SP2. Hardware requirements were laughable by 2006's standards. Stability that could be measured in months between reboots instead of hours between reboots. Etc.
And I think that's why normal users said no to Vista. No, we're not putting up with new bugs/driver issues/etc. No, we're not throwing out our 2-year-old XP PCs that can't run Vista. If you had, say, an i915 laptop with a Dothan CPU and, I dunno, 512 megs of RAM, XP would scream on that hardware, while Vista would be a disaster.
(Interestingly, normal users accepted Vista's hardware requirements just fine 3 years later when 7 shipped with similar hardware requirements. But by that point, my mid-2005 Dothan laptop, at least, was on its way to the e-waste pile as the soldered-on power connector was failing...)
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:31:Microsoft used x64 and eventually x86_64.
Microsoft uses amd64, no? Unless I'm remembering wrongly, all the 64-bit NT 6.x DVDs have an 'amd64' folder...
(FreeBSD uses amd64 too. Linux, or at least the Ubuntu VMs I have access to, seem to call it x86_64)
I could/should probably google this, but I thought AMD had named it something more neutral in the beginning, maybe x86-64. Then Intel called it EM64T. And Microsoft that already had an ia64 (Itanium) called it amd64.
And isn't there a story somewhere about how Intel wanted to do another incompatible 64-bit x86 extension in response to the AMD one, but someone senior at Microsoft told them they wouldn't support a third architecture, which forced Intel to adopt the AMD one?
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-17, 00:27:Microsoft uses amd64, no? Unless I'm remembering wrongly, all the 64-bit NT 6.x DVDs have an 'amd64' folder... […]
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:31:Microsoft used x64 and eventually x86_64.
Microsoft uses amd64, no? Unless I'm remembering wrongly, all the 64-bit NT 6.x DVDs have an 'amd64' folder...
(FreeBSD uses amd64 too. Linux, or at least the Ubuntu VMs I have access to, seem to call it x86_64)
I could/should probably google this, but I thought AMD had named it something more neutral in the beginning, maybe x86-64. Then Intel called it EM64T. And Microsoft that already had an ia64 (Itanium) called it amd64.
And isn't there a story somewhere about how Intel wanted to do another incompatible 64-bit x86 extension in response to the AMD one, but someone senior at Microsoft told them they wouldn't support a third architecture, which forced Intel to adopt the AMD one?
You are correct, many Windows install discs had an AMD64 folder. So far all of the versions I know of are labeled "x64 edition" on the disc though.
I remember the rumors about Intel initially having their own incompatible 64bit x86 extensions as well. I don't know if they were true.
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-17, 00:22:And I think that's why normal users said no to Vista. No, we're not putting up with new bugs/driver issues/etc. No, we're not throwing out our 2-year-old XP PCs that can't run Vista. If you had, say, an i915 laptop with a Dothan CPU and, I dunno, 512 megs of RAM, XP would scream on that hardware, while Vista would be a disaster.
Microsoft certainly wasn't expecting the amount of apathy Windows Vista would receive from the public. I'm sure many here remember the Windows Mojave ad campaign.
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-17, 04:19:Microsoft certainly wasn't expecting the amount of apathy Windows Vista would receive from the public.
Then their market research team should have spoken with people like my parents. I think there was just a lot of pent-up frustration at how much money people had spent on computers that were obsolete in 3-4 years in the previous ~12 years or so.
Microsoft either missed that, or was confident that 'the wow' in Vista would be enough to drive another cycle of spending by grumpy consumers. And got it badly wrong.
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-17, 00:22:Sure, but XP was the first OS (in the consumer line) that was actually good. Looking back with 20+ years of hindsight, 3.1, 95, […]
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:04:For me when talking about the failure of Windows Vista due to the lack of horsepower a PC had then Windows 98 and Windows XP wer […]
For me when talking about the failure of Windows Vista due to the lack of horsepower a PC had then Windows 98 and Windows XP were bigger problems.
There were so many people wanting to upgrade to Win98 on hardware that was in many ways struggling to run Win95.
Im talking the Pentium and Pentium 133, Pentium II 266.
They run Win98 ok but as time marched on people wanted to do so much more such as multi media and the PCs just werent ready for it and the OS struggled.
The same went for XP.
I remember a friend running XP on a K6 2 500.Every OS has had more than its fair share of running on potato powered PCs.
People latched on to Vista over the years mostly because those records have survived because it was at a point in time when the internet was starting to really gain traction and the records have been kept.Sure, but XP was the first OS (in the consumer line) that was actually good. Looking back with 20+ years of hindsight, 3.1, 95, 98, etc were junk (and just in case anybody thinks I'm dissing Microsoft unfairly, let's be clear - the classic Mac OS with MultiFinder and whatnot was even more junk below the nice GUI and the cool little engineering). Running out of system resources. Frequent reboots. Lousy UI (in the case of 3.1). Plug and pray hardware expansion. Etc. So no matter how the new OS didn't run great on your hardware, there was pent up demand for a new OS as soon as it came out because the existing one was just so bad.
XP in late 2006 was good (especially if you were coming from 98SE/Me rather than the wonderful 2000). Great driver support. All the bugs fixed in SP1/SP2. Hardware requirements were laughable by 2006's standards. Stability that could be measured in months between reboots instead of hours between reboots. Etc.
And I think that's why normal users said no to Vista. No, we're not putting up with new bugs/driver issues/etc. No, we're not throwing out our 2-year-old XP PCs that can't run Vista. If you had, say, an i915 laptop with a Dothan CPU and, I dunno, 512 megs of RAM, XP would scream on that hardware, while Vista would be a disaster.
(Interestingly, normal users accepted Vista's hardware requirements just fine 3 years later when 7 shipped with similar hardware requirements. But by that point, my mid-2005 Dothan laptop, at least, was on its way to the e-waste pile as the soldered-on power connector was failing...)
It became good over time yeah I would agree with that. But it didnt start good, and there were a fair few problems along the way, such as lack of drivers and "viruses" like the RPC bug.
When you take OSs in hidesight then XP was the first OS they managed to take by the scruff of the neck and make work. But then they had so long to do it its no surprise.
When you take Win95 it was a great OS compared to what came before. Win98 built on that success by adding PnP and many more drivers.
XP is probably, even today, one of my favourite OSs MS has ever came up with but it shouldnt be looked at like it was some kind of super OS. Even you said that it took 4 years for it to become good.
Problem is I remember the years in between, I remember using it at the time. I remember the transition from Win2k to XP and it not being all that smooth.
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-17, 04:19:You are correct, many Windows install discs had an AMD64 folder. So far all of the versions I know of are labeled "x64 edition" […]
VivienM wrote on 2024-08-17, 00:27:Microsoft uses amd64, no? Unless I'm remembering wrongly, all the 64-bit NT 6.x DVDs have an 'amd64' folder... […]
akimmet wrote on 2024-08-16, 16:31:Microsoft used x64 and eventually x86_64.
Microsoft uses amd64, no? Unless I'm remembering wrongly, all the 64-bit NT 6.x DVDs have an 'amd64' folder...
(FreeBSD uses amd64 too. Linux, or at least the Ubuntu VMs I have access to, seem to call it x86_64)
I could/should probably google this, but I thought AMD had named it something more neutral in the beginning, maybe x86-64. Then Intel called it EM64T. And Microsoft that already had an ia64 (Itanium) called it amd64.
And isn't there a story somewhere about how Intel wanted to do another incompatible 64-bit x86 extension in response to the AMD one, but someone senior at Microsoft told them they wouldn't support a third architecture, which forced Intel to adopt the AMD one?
You are correct, many Windows install discs had an AMD64 folder. So far all of the versions I know of are labeled "x64 edition" on the disc though.
I remember the rumors about Intel initially having their own incompatible 64bit x86 extensions as well. I don't know if they were true.VivienM wrote on 2024-08-17, 00:22:And I think that's why normal users said no to Vista. No, we're not putting up with new bugs/driver issues/etc. No, we're not throwing out our 2-year-old XP PCs that can't run Vista. If you had, say, an i915 laptop with a Dothan CPU and, I dunno, 512 megs of RAM, XP would scream on that hardware, while Vista would be a disaster.
Microsoft certainly wasn't expecting the amount of apathy Windows Vista would receive from the public. I'm sure many here remember the Windows Mojave ad campaign.
The main pushback on Vista was its 64bit nature.
Remember having to run the inferior x32 version because you didnt have an x64 PC?
A lot of that apathy came from people who had only recently bought PCs that were rather decent XP machines and poor Vista machines.
Because who likes to think that?
