2007 Windows Vista

woodbutcherbower

woodbutcherbower

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After purchasing my tried-and-trusted HP PC and running it on Vista since 2007, I bit the bullet today and bought a new laptop running Windows 11.

Have you ever wondered how a 1900’s time traveller would feel, jumping out of his Stanley Steamer straight into a 2022 Tesla?

That’s me right now. I’m posting this from my phone because six hours in - I still can’t work it.
 
Oh man, please tell me you haven't been using Vista on the internet for the past decade?

 
Guilty as charged. It had been getting slower and slower though, stuff kept crashing and there were hardware issues because the clock was losing time and the fan kept coming on. I’d already gotten nervous and backed all my data up on an external HD, and I realised that it’s time was up. I was always diligent when it came to protection, and I went through various incarnations of AVG, McAfee and Norton over the years, along with other stuff such as the Kaspersky rootkit killer. I’m going to spend all of today figuring the laptop out.

 
My PC in my workshop I built many years ago still running on Windows XP

Only recently has the latest Vectric Aspire stopped being compatible on XP  [crying]

Got SketchUp Pro on XP but that's becoming a pain but it's so much better than today's SketchUp which costs me yearly on a super-fast pc I built with windows 11 winds me up this cloud junk today..

Miss the days paid one-off payment and owned the software.  That's why I love Vectric Aspire own it and I can choose to pay for update or not.

Now pay yearly such a scam.  They say its for updates but ive run software for years no need for updates.
 
jmbfestool said:
My PC in my workshop I built many years ago still running on Windows XP

Only recently has the latest Vectric Aspire stopped being compatible on XP  [crying]

Got SketchUp Pro on XP but that's becoming a pain but it's so much better than today's SketchUp which costs me yearly on a super-fast pc I built with windows 11 winds me up this cloud junk today..

Miss the days paid one-off payment and owned the software.  That's why I love Vectric Aspire own it and I can choose to pay for update or not.

Now pay yearly such a scam.  They say its for updates but ive run software for years no need for updates.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean. Everything on this laptop (I'm using it for this now - woohoo !!!) seems to be PAYG, even Microsoft 365 at £60 a year. The gradual stopping of all functionality on many, many programmes was another factor in persuading me to finally make the leap. My kids are all typical tech-savvy millenials who've always looked upon my total lack of tech interest as strange. But I think it's equally strange that they aren't interested in power tools  [big grin]

I've uncovered a few odd glitches - maybe hardware-related, I don't know. Some site logins (including this one) require you to reverse the " and @ keys to get the correct character, plus the same for # and /  I only discovered this by accident when my Google account password kept failing (it contains the # symbol). I clicked the 'show password' box and all was revealed.

The learning curve will continue......
 
My step up from Vista/XP was back in '15.  Way back in the day, I started with Windows Me on my first PC. I used 95 and 98 at work before that, but my first one at home was Me, which was a slightly modified version of 98. It wasn't near the upgrade that we see today, when a new version come out.
I stayed with that until Longhorn was announced. I never really got it to work for me and XP replaced it very quickly. I stuck with XP, because it worked well for what I needed. I really only changed because I needed to. My house was broken into and it was stolen along with most everything else. I bought a laptop after that and it had Window10. Touch screen was the big improvement there. That's what I still use today.
Being in this long has brought me through the whole "own vs subscribe" thing. I used to buy programs on CD, it was fine. Even anti-virus software was like that, but they would make a new version some time later. You needed to get the new one to keep up-to-date, but your old one still worked like it did. They were the first to go with the subscription model. Now it seems that everything is headed that way. CDs and pretty much all disc drives are gone in favor of downloading everything, where they force you to up-date or it ceases to function.
I'm just not a fan of this concept. What's wrong with owning something and using it?
The only thing actually owning is that it doesn't continue to profit the seller. They are really in favor of that happening.
 
My CNC PC's are all P4's circa 2000 running XP 32-bit, and are exclusively used for running the g-code, but they aren't connected to the net, have no programs installed (other than NCStudio or Mach3), and perform beautifully. I create the models and projects on another old but very grunty laptop, and use a USB to transfer the g-code to the PC's to run.

XP is a simple and super reliable OS, until at least very recently you could even download online updates for it!

My newer work laptop is running the current gen i7 but get's bogged down pretty easily with Windows 10. I'm desperately trying to avoid Win 11 as long as i can.
 
Vista and Windows 11, looks like you got the runt of the litter two times in a row. I just got a used laptop and first thing I did was to install Windows 10 on it.
 
Alex said:
Vista and Windows 11, looks like you got the runt of the litter two times in a row. I just got a used laptop and first thing I did was to install Windows 10 on it.
Click to expand...

From Vista to Win 11, I reckon 8.1 was the best release, it was the most like Win7 (and XP to some degree), and very stable without all the Metro garbage MS put in, failing dismally trying to make it an all singing all dancing OS suitable for laptops, touchscreens, mobile devices, kiosks, and PC's, like the last few releases.

In trying to make the later OS'es suit all possible forms, just means it all runs like crap!
 
woodbutcherbower said:
After purchasing my tried-and-trusted HP PC and running it on Vista since 2007, I bit the bullet today and bought a new laptop running Windows 11.

Have you ever wondered how a 1900’s time traveller would feel, jumping out of his Stanley Steamer straight into a 2022 Tesla?

That’s me right now. I’m posting this from my phone because six hours in - I still can’t work it.
Click to expand...
Eh. You cannot imagine how this resonates - doing IT all my professional life. I would use the opposite metaphor though.

Moving from Vista to 11 - to me - is like moving from that 2022 Tesla to that Stantey Steamer with only one caveat *).

Second Alex on the rest.

*) That Stanley Steamer was fully controlled by its owner/user. The same as Vista was. The Tesla nor the Win11 are not controlled by the owner/user anymore. Actually, they are not even owned, just "rented" once one reads the EULA.
 
Windows 2.0 anyone? That's when I got started with Windows.
I have probably had at least one PC or device with every version
that has come out since except Windows 7. I skipped that and
stuck with XP Pro then went to 8.1 and Win10 Pro. No Win11 yet
for me. I will skip it if I can and stick with 10 but I think they will
kill off support for 10 soon to force everyone to move on.

MS has learned from what happened with XP that extending support
is not in their best interest.

For those that miss the old interface of earlier version of Windows,
Classic Start Menu might be what you want. I've been using it for years,
don't know if it's still available or supported but it may be. I'm running
it on all my Win10 PCs and installed it on the Wife's Win11 PC. No issues ever.
 

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The really wild thing is the starting screen of the computers that run our big equipment in the shop. Both of the CNC machines, the Beam Saw, Edgebander, dowel inserter, and the Storage Crane, all run on Linux, but the welcome screen in the boot sequence says Windows7!?!
Every one of those devices has a touch screen and Windows didn't support that until Win10
 
woodbutcherbower said:
I've uncovered a few odd glitches - maybe hardware-related, I don't know. Some site logins (including this one) require you to reverse the " and @ keys to get the correct character, plus the same for # and /  I only discovered this by accident when my Google account password kept failing (it contains the # symbol). I clicked the 'show password' box and all was revealed.
Click to expand...

You're in the UK right?  Sounds like you're using an american keyboard layout.
Load a program and press shift-2, do you get a " mark?

I'll have to ask my kids to check how to change the keyboard layout, you could try accessing start menu and type "keyboard" (without the " marks).
Bob
 
Crazyraceguy said:
The really wild thing is the starting screen of the computers that run our big equipment in the shop. Both of the CNC machines, the Beam Saw, Edgebander, dowel inserter, and the Storage Crane, all run on Linux, but the welcome screen in the boot sequence says Windows7!?!
Every one of those devices has a touch screen and Windows didn't support that until Win10
Click to expand...

Windows has supported touch screens for many years, we built an SOE for aged community centres using standard Windows 7 and touch screens. The embedded versions of XP, NT4.0/NT4.1 have also been running touchscreens on ATM's, battleships, planes, etc for years. Although that's a more specific use case scenario than general end users.

Mind you the idea of touch screens for a PC user in real life is pretty much useless, as you'll need gorilla arms to use it.
 
Crazyraceguy said:
The really wild thing is the starting screen of the computers that run our big equipment in the shop. Both of the CNC machines, the Beam Saw, Edgebander, dowel inserter, and the Storage Crane, all run on Linux, but the welcome screen in the boot sequence says Windows7!?!
Click to expand...
The control tablets/terminals may be built on Windows /embedded version/ while the control computer can be Linux-based and the actual microcontroller managing the CNC can be another OS. This is quite common these days. The OS on the control tablet role would be just as a "display controller" to display the one full-screen application. So Windows would just handle the HW interface there.

Linux "graphics" support is a mess, so Windows (or Android) is used for the "client/control" part of the system which is offline and never expected to be updated. In turn, Windows is a mess/unreliable for the critical part, so Linux or some RTOS is used there.
 
woodbutcherbower said:
Guilty as charged. It had been getting slower and slower though, stuff kept crashing and there were hardware issues because the clock was losing time and the fan kept coming on. I’d already gotten nervous and backed all my data up on an external HD, and I realised that it’s time was up. I was always diligent when it came to protection, and I went through various incarnations of AVG, McAfee and Norton over the years, along with other stuff such as the Kaspersky rootkit killer. I’m going to spend all of today figuring the laptop out.
Click to expand...

Some thermal paste degrades / dries out and needs replacement. Losing time is usually empty mainboard battery, usually type CR2032. I stock those... I've replaced a whole bunch of them over the years in different PC's. They aren't even $1
 
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