What's this obsession with "classic" Windows?

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AlexMitu

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Aug 23, 2009
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I remember when Vista and 7 came out, many were complaining how they hated the look of it and wish they could opt for a W2k look.

I've also seen many businesses (such as schools, post offices, and grocery stores) with brand new computer decorated with a "Windows Vista/7" sticker, yet the OS itself looks at least a decade old.

Why would you want your brand new something to look like that old something you have marked for $5 or best offer at a garage sale? I don't get it. When 2000 hit, were people trying to make their technology look like 1990?
 

Bon_Clay

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Aug 5, 2010
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Windows XP was the right amount of plain straight lines that older OSes had and style for me. Vista and 7 look like they are trying to be a mac, everything is overly stylized and bubbly. I don't like everything rounded and unnecessarily transparent.

But it doesn't really matter that much to me, if I ever got around to getting one of them I'm sure I'd get used to the look soon and no longer care.
 

SnipErlite

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Aug 16, 2009
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*shrug* people are stupid. And nostalgic. The two don't always cross over though, don't get me wrong.

Personally, while I do love XP, 7 is just so swish. (Y)
 

Mr Montmorency

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Jun 29, 2010
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

They're not upgrading because there's not a good enough reason for them to upgrade to the new OS when all it has to offer is drivers they can get for XP anyway and pointless bells and whistles that tries to pass itself off as a Mac.
 

TehCookie

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Sep 16, 2008
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Simple I don't like the changes, or at least to me, these changes are not positive. Grouping windows may eliminate the mess I have on my taskbar, but it also puts me one more click between me and what I want to do. Besides when I have open a bunch of windows form the same program (let's say firefox) I can't tell the two icons apart. In the classic view it gives you the header of the site, so when I see two windows, ones youtube and ones some informative site, I know which one is my homework research. I was also annoyed when it places my windows next to similar windows, since most of the time I use the order I opened them to remember what they are. This notepad was opened a long time ago before this one, this must have random stuff while the newer one next to word has my outline for my paper.

Unfortunately it's going to suck when I get older if I can't adapt to little changes like that.
 

tahrey

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Sep 18, 2009
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I may change my mind when I finally get to properly use a W7 machine (given that it has a reasonable interface overhaul even vs Vista anyway), but for now... oh, grasshopper, such that you have to learn about usability and unobtrusiveness. I feel you may be in the stage I was, wayback customising 3.1 and 95 to have the largest, most garishly clashing colour, font, wallpaper and window outline schemes I could come up with just because I could (though having come from GEM, could you blame a little geek for it?).

Same as Yahtzee says about game mechanics - once you start noticing an operating system's functions, the makers have failed. It's what puts me right off MacOS. Showy and shiny is all well and good, but they've evolved it to a point where it actively gets in the way of getting stuff done, which is what your computer is for.

The (2006) XP SP3 laptop I'm writing this on? Classic theme. My workplace desk station (early 2010) with similar OS? Ditto. The default fisher-price one is both distracting, available in too few and too ugly colours (I prefer something like an understated, soothing Spruce, Slate or Aubergine, maybe with slight tweaks, whereas the only half decent-looking XP one is the default and rather garish blue), and oversized, taking up more than its fair share of real estate, particularly on a lower-resolution screen (which MS really need to be reminded are more common than ever with the rise of netbooks; none of my systems are less than 768 pixels tall, but Classic still gives a moderate advantage). The Vista-styled theme pack that we had for a while was reasonably good looking and not too intrusive (low-profile taskbars, smallish start button etc) but again - literally - came in "any colour so long as it's black"... and was buggy as hell, seeming to channel its inspiration's malevolent spirit. I uninstalled it after about a week, and as of our latest updates, it's gone from the whole site for the same reason.

Besides, it chows too much CPU/GPU time, particularly on the lower end systems that tend to get used for more serious work (if yours is a mainly gaming system, what are you doing bothering about the windows theme anyway? Alt+Enter FFS), especially if you have all that fading-menu BS turned on. I knock it back to plain jane mode (one concession: show contents whilst moving. It's not the 80s) and get a mild usability/response speed kick when heavy multitask processing is going on in the background (e.g. video coding, archiving, virus scanning and the like... especially all three + email + web + IM + noodling on something in photoshop/cooledit/office). Even on my dual core workstation. I'd hate to think how badly Aero Glass would respond under those conditions, or whatever the W7 equivalent is.
(Mind you it might actually be better - the i915 / i965 chipsets onboard those machines don't seem to be too bad at simpler 3D stuff, they just toss their cookies when faced with something like Rigs of Rods)

The windowing system and OS in general should fade largely into obscurity, particularly once you figure to get half your stuff done with keyboard shortcuts. It's a means to an end, not a main attraction in itself. A certain amount of prettification and customisability is welcome to stop it being quite so distractingly stark as yer oldskool Unix X-windows stuff (dear god, it's worse than GEM in its utilitarian bleakness... must be all that battleship grey... and the downright user-hostile (patent-skirting?) mouse/menu setup) but that's as far as it needs to go. The ideal is to show the working area as big as possible, show the essential metadata and control menus/buttons surrounding it in a clear, compact way, and keep the hell out of the way at all other times. Let the actual programs make with the flashy, if that is their wont.

This of course may have to change a bit with the coming of multitouch interfaces, mind. I'm not sure they'll catch on. This laptop is also a tablet... the (second) pen broke some time ago. I'm not too bothered about replacing it (or the failing 2nd battery), unless my work changes such that I need a fully portable, handwriting capable A4-size notation device once again. Keyboard + touchpad (or KB + five button wheel mouse, at work) are doing the job just fine over here.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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May 22, 2010
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AlexMitu said:
Why would you want your brand new something to look like that old something you have marked for $5 or best offer at a garage sale? I don't get it. When 2000 hit, were people trying to make their technology look like 1990?
I can confirm that this, at least, is true. Well, sort of -- if I remember correctly, Windows 2000 looked pretty much like Windows 98, so it wasn't too big of a deal. Windows XP, on the other hand, had a lot of people turning on classic mode. There's something to be said for the bare functionality of Windows 9X, which is lacking in modern operating systems. Sure Vista and 7 are pretty, but the GUI for both can be confusing, especially for people used to the old systems. Office 2007, for example, is a nightmare: it looks pretty, and if you know how to use it, it works fine, but knowledge of how to use earlier versions is actually a hindrance, not a help. Microsoft sacrificed function for form. Having the little Windows icon replace the Start button on Vista and 7 is another example of this kind of annoying change.
 

HotPocket

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Jan 5, 2010
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All my games work for XP (haven't tried for others) and I don't want to reinstall them to play.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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May 22, 2010
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usucdik said:
Also wtf, why the hell can't I get a "classic" view for the control panel? The only option is limited categories or alphabetical rows? Fuck Microsoft up the keister for trying to ruin my OS experience.
Just change the setting on that one from "Categories" to "Large Icons," which looks exactly like the control panel always has. If I remember correctly, you had to make the same sort of change to get it to look like that in XP, so that at least isn't really a new problem. Otherwise, yes, in a user interface, function is much more important than form. If a developer can make it look nice without impairing functionality, more power to them, but pretty menus, more often than not, make for a bad user experience. That said, I like 7 a lot, it's the best OS Microsoft has put out since Windows 95 -- which whatever else you may say about it, was perfectly suited to the sorts of job it had to do back in 1995.
 

thiosk

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Sep 18, 2008
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XP is awesome.

Period.

Also, people who know one system are typically loathe to change.
 

EvilMaggot

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Sep 18, 2008
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XP is awesome, but went over to Windows 7 Ultimate 64... mostly because so i could use over 4 GB ram.. because of the limit :p got 8GB ram ^^ also so i could use DX10/11
 

The Rascal King

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Aug 13, 2009
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Haha! I still have XP with an extra copy of office edition for a future computer.

You say I'm behind the times, I say you're probably right.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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I just wish the later OSes weren't such resource hogs. My notebook came with the bare minimum to run Vista. And at best, I could double it. A terrible way to push me on a new OS.

My PC runs fine on XP, so I see no reason to update right now, but I doubt I'll be too nostalgic when I do.
 

Tekkawarrior

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Aug 17, 2009
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Nothing to do with nostalgia, schools and businesses don't have time to deal with all the Vista/7 compatibility problems.
I've been on the standard windows layout since 95, 15 years later, I don't want to learn how to get into my display properties and set something all over again.

I like the idea of a more fancy looking OS, but don't change functionality all at once and expect people to just switch over.