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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#231

Post by octorian »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #99
erichurkman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows XP even before SP2 was a _delight_ compared to the true train wreck that shipped on consumer PCs before it: Windows "Mistake Edition" Me.

It was also preferred (by most people, at least) to Windows Vista, the product that usually shipped on PCs after it. It was an almost undeniable local maximum in Windows releases from the consumer side, which does make some of the fond memories make sense.

What's weird is that I had a laptop that Vista actually ran well on, and I didn't have any real problems. Of course it was a higher-end laptop (similar specs and price to what Apple sold at the time).

It often feels like the biggest difference between Vista and 7 was actually time. As such, the cheap computers 7 shipped on were much better than the cheap underpowered computers Vista shipped on (despite both OSes likely having similar realistic requirements).

Win7 kinda was the SP2 of Vista more than a major version.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#232

Post by whywhywhywhy »

iggldiggl wrote: post #230
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the resize area for a window is seemingly 1 pixel wide. You used to be able to specify a width and all windows would be bordered with it. I get that Win10 looks sleeker but did they really have to take that control away It's really a bit of a mistake, maybe a limitation(?) of the Windows UI system. I mean the border on OS X is 1px too but the resize area is about 8 pixels. Would love it if MS could do another spin o…

>> the resize area for a window is seemingly 1 pixel wide. >> You used to be able to specify a width and all windows >> would be bordered with it. I get that Win10 looks sleeker >> but did they really have to take that control away > It's really a bit of a mistake, maybe a limitation(?) > of the Windows UI system. > > I mean the border on OS X is 1px too > but the resize area is about 8 pixels. Is it? My impression i…

You're correct just double checked and realized the problem I've been noticing is specifically the top edge of the top right corner has some weird dead zone areas where it is 1px but most of the surrounding areas and all other edges are about 5.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#233

Post by martinp »

vezycash wrote: post #110
barking wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first things I do is to pin the control panel and a couple of its icons to start so I can avoid the settings way of getting there.

appwiz.cpl run this from RUN or command prompt

I haven't actively used Windows for almost a decade, but appwiz.cpl (Add/Remove programs), devmgmt.msc (Device manager), services.msc (Service manager), diskmgmt.msc (Hard drive manager) and compmgmt.msc (I forget what this is) are still burned into my brain.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#234

Post by UIZealot »

derefr wrote: post #47
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that they got rid of it in windows 8 and later. >the classic theme was a lot leaner on system resources maybe , but it probably also made things run slower because it forces everything to be done in software rather than hardware. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130327-00/?p=48... >Starting in Windows Vista, a lot of visual effects were offloaded to the graphics card. Consequently, the impact on…

There's no real way to translate the classic theme "as designed" to hi-DPI systems, AFAIK; let alone to allow it to freely morph between desktop and tablet interaction paradigms when you dock/undock a two-in-one. You could in theory design a modern UI that resembles the classic UI, but it wouldn't really be "the classic UI". A large part of what makes the classic UI have the particular look it does is that it has cus…

> There's no real way to translate the classic theme "as designed" to hi-DPI systems, AFAIK;

This claim is entirely baseless. The "classic theme" is just a gray background plus some light/dark borders. There's absolutely zero difficulty doing that in hi-DPI, or any other environment for that matter.

Stop making excuses for Microsoft. Windows XP was a panicked and half baked response to the shinny Mac OS X Aqua interface, because that's what Microsoft had always done: following Apple's lead. I can't really blame them either, as following Apple's lead had led to great success for Microsoft.

Actually I lied, I do blame Microsoft for blindly chasing Apple's new shinny. Having established themselves as a pioneer and authority in UI design/usability with the revolutionary Windows 95 GUI, they should've had the confidence to stick to their guns and iterate their GUI without too much influence from the competition.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#235

Post by UIZealot »

Koshkin wrote: post #151
thought_alarm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hated Win2K when it came out and tried to hold to NT 4.0 as long as I could, although I'm sure some of that was just youthful arrogance. If I recall correctly, Win2K was a lot slower than NT 4.0 on the same hardware, and it featured some really bad UI ideas, like menus that auto-hide advanced menu items. By the time XP was released I gave up the fight. The initial XP theme was just awful; clearly a knee-je…

Some would say even today that it was NT4 that was the pinnacle. There are many things that can be said, but indeed Win2k was a hog compared to NT4 while being a fairly modest improvement (despite all the new features like Active Directory).

I'm sympathetic to that point of view, I loved NT4 too. I really liked the warmer shade of gray in W2K, but to me the biggest improvement W2K had over NT4 was the ability to revert to the previous display setting if you didn't confirm the new setting. I remember one time setting the refresh rate higher than my CRT monitor could handle on NT4, leaving me with a blank display. I had to borrow the better CRT monitor from my boss's office so that I could go back to a lower refresh rate.

Nowadays I only run Windows 2000 in a VM, and CRT refresh rate is no longer a concern, it may be worth considering going backing to NT4, as I'm pretty sure I can set the background to the warmer W2K gray in NT4. Thanks for the idea!

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#236

Post by anthk »

duskwuff wrote: post #185
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I prefer only being able to drag from the corner, as OS X did it through Snow Leopard / 10.6 (not sure about Classic?). Too often on modern OS’s I find myself resizing windows by accident, or not resizing them when I mean to because the initiation area is too small.

The Platinum UI ended up in a weird middle ground -- windows had thick borders which were clickable, but dragging them would move the window, not resize it!

Just like Fvwm under Unix.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#237

Post by anthk »

jacobush wrote: post #168
Koshkin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual revolution came with Windows Game SDK (later known as DirectX) which allowed Windows to finally surpass MS-DOS as a gaming platform.

Yeah... imagine if they would have shipped that in a single task version, sort of like a DOS / XBOX1 hybrid. Games would have rocked, even on frugal hardware.

Well, DirectX ran games better than DOS.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#238

Post by anthk »

ajtjp wrote: post #176
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, the actual work we used to do locally and now do over webapps has to pay the performance price of browsing the web - resulting in severe UX degradation for anything but the most casual of uses.

It's partially modern web frameworks, too. I happened to load up the web version of Slack on a Core 2 Duo running at 2.2 GHz today, and it was unusable. By comparison, I remember using AIM via Meebo (remember that site?) on dial-up back in the late 2000's, on a Pentium 166 MHz laptop. It wasn't exactly snappy, but it was better than Slack was today on a 2 GHz laptop with 500 times the bandwidth and a fraction of the…

AMSN under TCL/TK was even faster than Slack under Electron.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#240

Post by anthk »

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #213

>"For a true blast from the past, let’s take a look at Windows 2000 Professional’s bare minimum system requirements at the time: 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU. 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum; more memory generally improves responsiveness. 2 GB hard disk with a minimum of 650 MB of free space." My guess is that with any reasonable speed SSD and a swap file -- you could have a responsive system…

No. The BUS would still hinder it. For realistic purposes, 2k needed 96-128MB.
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