What I don't understand is... why? I understand keeping alive software for the sake of hardware compatibility, but browsing the web and running Discord? Is it all really just to save a few hundred dollars over... 24 years?
Perhaps because the level of respect that Windows has for its users has dropped with each successive version?
Not to mention bloat: I have a keyboard with a dedicated calculator button. On a machine with Core i5 something or other and SSD it takes about 2 seconds for the calculator to appear the first time I push that button. On the Core 2 Duo machine that preceded it, running XP from spinning rust, the calculator would appear instantly - certainly before I can release the button.
But also WinXP was the OS a lot of people used during their formative years - don't underestimate the power of nostalgia.
Also, for some people the very fact that Microsoft don't want you to would be reason enough!
Personally if I were into preserving old Windows versions I'd be putting my effort into Win2k SP4, since it's the last version that doesn't need activating.
(I did have to activate a Vista install recently - just a VM used to keep alive some legacy software whose own activation servers are but a distant memory. It's still possible, but you can't do it over the phone any more, and I couldn't find any way to do it without registering a Microsoft account.)
“On the Core 2 Duo machine that preceded it, running XP from spinning rust, the calculator would appear instantly - certainly before I can release the button.”
This reminds me that there’s an NBA rule that disallows any basket made after a clock stoppage with 300ms or less in the clock - i.e. if player A managed to pass to player B who then attempted a shot, it’s impossible for all that to occur before 300 ms has elapsed.
Meaning, I’m sure you remember it fully launched, 100% certainly before the key came back up from your press, but that is impossible.
Your comment reminds me of that rule from baseball that says something about batters and hats, or maybe it was about helmets or something, it doesn't really matter though because the only point of this sports ball rambling is to distract you from noticing that my "nuh uh" has no substance. Did it work?
This is more than a bit out of place on HN in my experience, please, try to engage politely.
I’m not sure what I can say that will qualify as more than “nuh uh” to you, shy of getting a Core 2 Duo running with XP and the same keyboard as OP. That isn’t possible at the moment, is there anything else I could do?
300 ms is a long time on a computer, definitely. Just, the autistic side of me has to speak up when it’s wildly unrealistic glorification of the past.
Keypress duration is likely much less than 300 ms, top Google result claims 77 ms on average. And that’s down and up.
I see it being in cache already as sort of game playing, i.e. we can say anything is instant if we throw a cache in front of it. Am I missing something about caching that makes it reasonable? (I’m 37, so only 18 around that time and wouldn’t have had the technical chops to understand it was normal for things to be in disk cache after a cold boot)
Tl;dr reaction time, 300 ms is the golden rule for reaction speed, and apparently there was actually a sports medicine study that came to that #. I was surprised to see that, 300 ms comes up a lot in UX as “threshold of perceptible delay” but it was still surprising to see.
I'm not a part of the Windows XP community, but I've gotten close. I love that I can make it look just like Windows 2000 and that I know where all the little knobs and dials are. I can get a Windows XP installation configured to be exactly as I want it to be very quickly and I know it won't suddenly change on me.
I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with money and plenty to do with the same reasons as people who preserve Commodore 64s, Amigas and DOS and Win9x PCs.
The high point is a toss up between XP and 7 for me, but imo Windows UX peaked then (although the 98 visual style is peak for nostalgia) and has either stayed the same or gotten worse ever since. Personally I just switched to using Linux full time as soon as gaming compatibility became basically the same as Windows but I totally understand why you'd want to maintain the ability to use older Windows versions.
I found out the other day you can use modern clang-cl with the MSVC6 headers and it just works. you can download them from here https://github.com/itsmattkc/MSVC600 or just copy it from an install if you have one handy.
What applications are base on this? I mean it sounds super charming and nostalgic to drop a line or two which runs on WinXP, but is this actually useful?
[0] https://www.mypal-browser.org/ [1] https://github.com/DiscordMessenger/dm
Not to mention bloat: I have a keyboard with a dedicated calculator button. On a machine with Core i5 something or other and SSD it takes about 2 seconds for the calculator to appear the first time I push that button. On the Core 2 Duo machine that preceded it, running XP from spinning rust, the calculator would appear instantly - certainly before I can release the button.
But also WinXP was the OS a lot of people used during their formative years - don't underestimate the power of nostalgia.
Also, for some people the very fact that Microsoft don't want you to would be reason enough!
Personally if I were into preserving old Windows versions I'd be putting my effort into Win2k SP4, since it's the last version that doesn't need activating. (I did have to activate a Vista install recently - just a VM used to keep alive some legacy software whose own activation servers are but a distant memory. It's still possible, but you can't do it over the phone any more, and I couldn't find any way to do it without registering a Microsoft account.)
This reminds me that there’s an NBA rule that disallows any basket made after a clock stoppage with 300ms or less in the clock - i.e. if player A managed to pass to player B who then attempted a shot, it’s impossible for all that to occur before 300 ms has elapsed.
Meaning, I’m sure you remember it fully launched, 100% certainly before the key came back up from your press, but that is impossible.
I’m not sure what I can say that will qualify as more than “nuh uh” to you, shy of getting a Core 2 Duo running with XP and the same keyboard as OP. That isn’t possible at the moment, is there anything else I could do?
Keypress duration is likely much less than 300 ms, top Google result claims 77 ms on average. And that’s down and up.
I see it being in cache already as sort of game playing, i.e. we can say anything is instant if we throw a cache in front of it. Am I missing something about caching that makes it reasonable? (I’m 37, so only 18 around that time and wouldn’t have had the technical chops to understand it was normal for things to be in disk cache after a cold boot)
I'm not a part of the Windows XP community, but I've gotten close. I love that I can make it look just like Windows 2000 and that I know where all the little knobs and dials are. I can get a Windows XP installation configured to be exactly as I want it to be very quickly and I know it won't suddenly change on me.
[1] https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit
then run (something like) this:
I don't know if it's any better or worse than MinGW practically but it is definitely cursed.https://github.com/kalnod/Win32Dotnet10Starter
This was interesting!