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Windows98 Running in the Browser

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Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#201

Post by derefr »

benbristow wrote: post #82
max_ wrote: post #64

Hypothetical question: If you where a program running in the VM how would you know if you are in one?

There's ways. Detecting whether tools like VMWare/Virtualbox are installed, whether certain drivers are installed, checking the hardware listings etc. etc. Malware is quite a good study subject about this question. There's a lot of malware that won't run if it's in a virtual machine to avoid researchers from testing it inside one.

And is there VM software used for malware research, that employs counter-countermeasures, e.g. generating drivers with randomized names/IDs; randomizing the hypercall op for the VM and then rewriting the deployed drivers to use that op; etc?

Or, are there modes for emulators like qemu/bochs, where they'll run entirely with "real" (LLE-emulated) hardware?

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#202

Post by thom »

For even more fractal nostalgia, please be aware that in those days you could still run 'progman.exe' if you so desired.

Sadly this install doesn't include QBasic which was also still available on these DOS based Windows versions.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#204

Post by WhitneyLand »

blauditore wrote: post #166
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

But people don’t use software agnostic of history so the net of it was still a huge UX design mistake.

Lots of people internally knew it was a mistake in real time before realease but it was strongly backed by exec Steven Sinofsky, iirc.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#206

Post by buran77 »

MisterTea wrote: post #189
blauditore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

> To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. Perhaps in a vacuum it might work. But this is the real world were hypothesis are just that. > A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI No. People were apparently overwhelmed by system instability and resource hogging (mainly hard drive grinding). I don't remember people co…

> and resource hogging

Memory usage used to be a major complaint (possibly the biggest) even if it was made clear repeatedly that the OS was simply keeping more stuff in RAM instead of dumping it to disk specifically to improve performance. A mechanism that stuck to these days. That memory isn't marked that obviously in the Task Manager now, and memory is is no longer such a luxury so people don't complain anymore. But on my 16GB machine I have 4.1GB in use clearly marked on the graph, and another 7.5GB cached that is not at all made to jump at people. People want the added goodies and expect absolutely no impact on anything else.

When XP was launched we heard the same grumbles. XP was bloated, had higher resource usage than 98/2000, less stable than 2000, not compatible with a lot of hardware, weird GUI. By SP3 people were loving it and by the time Win 7 arrived nobody wanted to let go of XP. Win 7 was bloated, had higher resource usage than XP, less stable than XP, not compatible with a lot of hardware, weird GUI. By SP2 people were loving it and by the time Win 10 came along nobody wanted to let go of Win 7. And no, it's not an issue of OS quality going down. Like you said, people just get used to stuff and can't take change and when you combine it with the lack of understanding you get all kinds complaints.

Reminds me of an anecdote about a certain car made for the low end market, targeting a segment of owners of 20+ year old clunkers. Everyone would buy it and complain that the fuel consumption was huge. Strangely enough this was a modern engine, certainly more efficient than the old ones it was replacing. The problem? The fancy computer was showing instantaneous fuel consumption. When accelerating? 25 liters/100Km. Outrageous! The company just hid the instantaneous counter and left only the very reasonable average. Problem solved. Then there were the "I can't feel the road with this power steering" complaints which worked themselves out, although to this day there are people who swear the old cars were better (they were most definitely not).

Between lack of knowledge, nostalgia goggles, unreasonable expectations ("all of it, for free"), and a few more things these popular opinions of tech of the past aren't all that useful. It says a lot about the commercial success of a product, not its actual qualities.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#207

Post by 0xffff2 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #167
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the current start menu is far from normal. Normal would a simple menuized view of a folder hierarchy, what we have is some abomination tied into the Windows Store in mysterious ways that cause it to break under a wide variety of circumstances in such a way that an in-place reinstall is the only sure-fire fix.

I have never been convinced with the folder hierarchy in start menus. Programs get installed in lot of places, what's the mapping between the menu items and the "real" location then ? Linux got this standard arbitrary menu categories thing but in the end people use menus to launch a program so I believe a simple A-Z list with a search box should be enough. Throwing app store stuff in there is not okay though (as in t…

Huh? The start menu folder hierarchy was always its own thing. The start menu folders didn't have any relationship to where anything is installed.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#208

Post by rightbyte »

muazzam wrote: post #126
jokoon wrote: post #108

Does anybody have a reasonable explanation why windows 10 requires a SSD and so much ram? I wish a kernel engineer could give a good answer to that question. One side of the answer could be that the software that is bigger, but honestly that doesn't explain everything. I wish somebody could confirm Wirth's law is real and that there are valid example of it.

The same reason Facebook loads multiple MBs of JavaScript code for something that could have been not more than 1 MB. One can't help but wonder about nefarious purposes: either collecting user data or abusing the computing resources. For companies that tend to hire the best and the brightest, the 'software bloat' theory is not compelling. Curiously, major Linux distributions have also gotten significantly slower comp…

I was very reluctant switching from win xp to win 7. Unless the 64bit era would have forced me I rather would have stayed put.

New software is really not adding much to the table after some point of completion since the software companies seems to mostly add pet feutures and user hostile fads be it star menu, complete gui changes, 'enterprise' admin lookout or ads and tracking.

E.g. Facebooks 1000s of developers seem to add a net of antifeutures to their site. On Netflix you can't even disable autoplay.

It is the same really for software moving to remote mainframes. The companies rather hide and burry the old desktop versions deep.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#209

Post by Klinky »

buran77 wrote: post #206
MisterTea wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. Perhaps in a vacuum it might work. But this is the real world were hypothesis are just that. > A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI No. People were apparently overwhelmed by system instability and resource hogging (mainly hard drive grinding). I don't remember people co…

> and resource hogging Memory usage used to be a major complaint (possibly the biggest) even if it was made clear repeatedly that the OS was simply keeping more stuff in RAM instead of dumping it to disk specifically to improve performance. A mechanism that stuck to these days. That memory isn't marked that obviously in the Task Manager now, and memory is is no longer such a luxury so people don't complain anymore. B…

I am pretty sure Windows 7 was pretty highly praised upon its release and considered vastly superior to Vista, and at least on par with XP as far as usability.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#210

Post by 0xffff2 »

izietto wrote: post #105
znpy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. in my opinion though, windows 2000 was the pinnacle. it had the user experience of windows 98 but was also a lot more stable.

Actually I've never used Windows 2000, I went straight to Windows XP, whose UI was already too bloated (many colors, gradient buttons, ...)

But at least XP would let you switch back to Windows 2000 look and feel. The eye candy was just that, and easily removed. When Windows 7 rolled around I spent years being mad that it was no longer possible to have a Windows 2000 style UI in unmodified Windows.

I recently set my desktop to the Windows 2000 default blue background color just for a bit of nostalgia. As far as I can tell, it's the only bit of Win 2000 UI that it's still possible to achieve.

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