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Windows 7 Retro?

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First post, by FFXIhealer

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So now that it's a year past End of Life/Support, how long do we have to wait before Windows 7 is considered retro gaming? 🤣

Windows Vista?

Isn't Windows XP considered retro gaming at this point?

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Reply 1 of 129, by Namrok

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I would consider WinXP retro just on the basis of it having the baggage of being retro. Like the fact that legitimately activating it is somewhere between difficult to impossible. And if it's not impossible yet, you can see it from here.

Thinking about when Vista came out, I'm not sure there is anyone old enough to be nostalgic for it. At least not in that midlife crisis kind of way which seems to define retro.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 2 of 129, by chrismeyer6

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Weird about being difficult to activate XP. I just did it last week over the phone for a friend of mines work computer. The best part of when I was in my A+ class in 05 was the school all gave us a copy of XP Pro with a volume license key so there's no activation.

Reply 5 of 129, by Caluser2000

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Hezus wrote on 2021-06-05, 07:40:
Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-05, 01:07:

Don't you think it is a little futile to try to divide all things into "retro" and "not retro" as time goes on?

NO, THERE SHALL BE ORDER!

Where, pray tell?

Isn't Chaos the order of the day on Vogons? 😉

Last edited by Stiletto on 2021-06-08, 01:05. Edited 1 time in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 7 of 129, by chinny22

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Warlord wrote on 2021-06-06, 03:37:

I wouldn't even consider XP as retro, it gets a pass becasue it has good backwards software and hardware compatibility support for most retro hardware and in most cases its the latest OS you can run on such hardware and have a reasonable experience.

This is how I think but is that because I'm getting older and time goes by faster? some of "kids" at work have no memory of XP. Quite possible if the family got a Vista PC while you were about 5 or 6
I cant remember when we got our Apple IIe, just that we had it.

But yeh new drivers, programs even online based programs like Steam still support Windows 7.
Personally I think its crossing over into the obsolete category and way to early to call retro.

Reply 8 of 129, by FFXIhealer

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But then that, like, begs the question of how do we define "retro". If we use the dictionary, then really old PC computers aren't actually RETRO, they're VINTAGE. Retro, by the strict definition, is when you intentionally design something to look like something old. Like, you have to intentionally design it that way - like Mega Man 9 and 10 when they were released were intentionally made to look exactly like Mega Man 2 from the old NES. And Cuphead (available on Steam) was intentionally designed to look like a 1940s black and white cartoon, using those same animation styles.

Obsolete is fairly easy to define. It's pretty much when Microsoft decided to give all of us the big middle finger and say "Nope, F-U bruh! Get our new tracking software we call Windows 10 or else..." And I say this with full knowledge that I'm using a 2015 Gaming PC with Windows 10 right now. Thank God for Spybot Anti-Beacon.

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Reply 9 of 129, by gerry

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vintage is a better word than retro i'd agree, and obsolete better describes things like windows xp or vista - not supported by vendor but still able to get partial support from 3rd parties. windows 7 is strictly in that camp too

for PCs there isnt a reliable dividing line, i used to think of 15 years as being a good start - but then think of the differences between a PC from 1980 and 1995, and one from 2006 and 2021 - the earlier jump is the greater one (in terms of its continued capacity to do current things). for instance you'd struggle to get online with the excitement of the WWW with a 1980 PC in 1995, but with some careful choices in terms of OS you can still do so with a 2006 64 machine today

for me, in PC terms, 32 bits is vintage/retro and 64 bits isn't, with a fuzzy line of demarcation for the earlier 64 bit machines

Reply 10 of 129, by Caluser2000

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This 3.2Ghz P4 system gets online very easily with Firefox ESR. Current up to date 32-bit OS that updates frequently. I must be doing something wrong..........

But apparently 32-bits is dead and no likes P4s.

Last edited by Caluser2000 on 2021-06-07, 18:18. Edited 1 time in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 11 of 129, by creepingnet

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I don't see Windows 7 as vintage yet. Going by the yardstick of old vehicles - Windows 7 is like that 2008 model that still runs and drives around town just fine, but does not have a backup camera or heated seats. I just put it in the "old" category right now. And just like anything else old, the safety element is a matter of common sense moreso than some modern antivirus whatzit protecting you.

XP is just starting it's climb into "Vintage-hood".

To me, Vintage Windows would be the 9x series and 2000 Profesisonal on back. XP is still sort of a "welfare" O/S that's a good cheap solution with a lot of problems that still works but can be a bit of a pain for current-day use.

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Reply 12 of 129, by Caluser2000

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creepingnet wrote on 2021-06-07, 18:05:

I don't see Windows 7 as vintage yet. Going by the yardstick of old vehicles - Windows 7 is like that 2008 model that still runs and drives around town just fine, but does not have a backup camera or heated seats. I just put it in the "old" category right now. And just like anything else old, the safety element is a matter of common sense moreso than some modern antivirus whatzit protecting you.

XP is just starting it's climb into "Vintage-hood".

To me, Vintage Windows would be the 9x series and 2000 Profesisonal on back. XP is still sort of a "welfare" O/S that's a good cheap solution with a lot of problems that still works but can be a bit of a pain for current-day use.

I like that description very much. Do you mind if I steal it?

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 13 of 129, by Namrok

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I think a lot of what muddles the waters of WInXP's "vintage"ness is the fact that it was used for so very long. I checked an article about Steams 2010 hardware survey, and about 1/3 of it's users still had WinXP 32-bit. I primarily have fond memories of WinXP from my highschool lan party days circa 2000-2002 (and even then only the back half since it released in 2001). But there could be people who were young teens in the 2010's, in their 20's now, not yet ripe for that midlife crisis that really makes "vintage" or "retro" that soothing comfort blanket it is to many people.

My own deep yearning for authentic retro/vintage experiences didn't arise until after marriage & family responsibilities kicked in, in the back half of my 30's. A few friends teased me about having a midlife crisis, but they weren't wrong. Maybe once more zoomers or millennials or whatever the generation of kids that were young teens in the 2010's start having mortgages and 529's, WinXP will "officially" become retro.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 14 of 129, by Jo22

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You guys and gals are a bit too late.. Ten years ago, people already did philosophize about XP's retro-ness. 😀
Luckliy, I was around at the time and captured that awesome article for you.
Happy reading! 😀

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Reply 15 of 129, by Caluser2000

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Was that 32-bit or 64-bit XP?

Like the addition to my sig.

I hope you feel better soon. I find an afternoon nap helps....

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 16 of 129, by Jo22

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Oh, it's you, sir. Nice to see you again.
Yes, I think it was normal Windows XP for x86.

And belive it or not, in the mid-late 2000s, I had got a P4 (Prescott) based PC that I really liked.
Maybe it was as noisy as a room filled with Tribbles, but the single core performance was decent. 😎

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 17 of 129, by Caluser2000

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I didn't think there was a normal XP and it came in quite a few iterations. Home, Professional, Enterprise Edition, PE as well as a ton of OEM setups. I remember running MSs virtual machine software on a P4 2.4GHz Dell desktop thingy I was given with 512megs of ram. It ran OS/2 v4, RedHat 6.2 and some other thing that I can't remember at he moment without missing a beat. First thing I did was change that theme to Classic. It ran much better using that.

Anyone tried this? LINK REMOVED

Last edited by DosFreak on 2021-06-25, 21:42. Edited 1 time in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 18 of 129, by FFXIhealer

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My journey through PC gaming actually had me skip the Pentium 4. It went something like this:

1990 (childhood) - 486 (unknown speed) - MS-DOS 6.? and Windows 3.1
1996 (high school) - Pentium (100 MHz) - Windows 95
1999 (college) - Pentium 2 (350 MHz) - Windows 98 First Edition
2002 (post college) - Athlon XP 1500+ (1.3 GHz) - Windows XP
2005 (Military service) - Pentium M (2.1 GHz) - Windows XP
2008 (parents use) - Core 2 Duo (2.4 GHz) - Windows Vista
2010 (post-deployment) - Core i7-860 (2.8 GHz) - Windows 7
2015 (civilian life) - Core i7-6700K (4.0 GHz) - Windows 10

So yeah, I never used Rambus, never had a Pentium 3 or 4 though I'm sure the Athlon XP was effectively a more efficient P4 anyway. And as you can also see, I've never run Windows XP on anything other than a single-core processor, so I never got to try out whether dual-core helped or not. And I kept most of those systems. I very rarely get rid of components or parts, they just end up taking space in the attic or a closet. So I got to rebuild everything a few years back when I had the itch from hanging around this forum at the time.

The ONLY reason I retired my old Windows Vista system was because all of the web browsers started bitching about being out-of-date and out-of-service, etc. That system got rebuilt into my home media server with a Xeon E5450 using the LGA771-775 mod. Works great, though I'd like to stick a P2000 graphics card into it to use for PLEX decoding. It would be a lot more power efficient that way.

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