View Poll Results: Which is your all time favorite version of Windows? (select 1)

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  • Windows 98-SE

    1 9.09%
  • Windows ME

    0 0%
  • Windows 2000

    0 0%
  • Windows XP SP-3

    1 9.09%
  • Windows 7

    6 54.55%
  • Windows 8.1

    0 0%
  • Windows 10

    3 27.27%
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Thread: Your all time favorite Windows version

  1. #1
    Administrator ad4mg's Avatar
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    Your all time favorite Windows version

    Besides Windows 10, I have numerous versions of Windows running in virtual environments. This had me pondering this morning which of these I thought was my favorite overall.

    The list represents which versions I have licensed copies of running in VirtualBox. In each case, the specific versions are 'professional' or equivilent, and 64 bit when available.

  2. #2
    Administrator N8YX's Avatar
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    You forgot Win3.x.

    I have a WfW 3.11 VM with sound card support and a full TCP/IP stack running in VB to support some scanner-control software.
    "Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."

  3. #3
    Administrator ad4mg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by N8YX View Post
    You forgot Win3.x.

    I have a WfW 3.11 VM with sound card support and a full TCP/IP stack running in VB to support some scanner-control software.
    Well, I have WfW 3.11 in a DosBox environment. The sound card support was tricky, but I did get it going. I also have DOS 6.22, and FreeDOS installed for DosBox. To be honest, fiddling with the autoexec.bat and config.sys files gives me a headache.

    All of that, plus Windows ME and Windows 8.0 are the primary reasons that I love my Linux! I do, however, still enjoy tinkering with some older versions of Windows, and I also have some older software that won't run right in newer versions of Windows.

  4. #4
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    W7 was the last OS that Photoshop ran properly on. CS2 on the HD. On 10 it runs like a memory suck.

  5. #5
    Administrator N8YX's Avatar
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    There is a LOT of software I still use that doesn't quite make the cut on 10.

    Win7 was the most stable of the lot by far, assuming your hardware wasn't on the way out to begin with. I have a work laptop set up with 10 Enterprise, and a VB VM with 10 Pro. Each has had to be reloaded from scratch at least once due to upgrades completely pooching the OS.

    I find that the vast majority of "personal computing" tasks (things which don't require a specialized application suite) are readily handled on Linux, so that platform gets the nod here as my main PC platform. I also have a couple of backup work laptops whose primary OS is Linux, and with the exception of interacting with Office documents that don't cleanly import into a Linux Office alternative, I can move seamlessly between OSes as I work. Infrastructure access is easier under Linux too - I'm accessing that type of system, rather than managing forests of AD-connected Windows servers.

    Many folk including myself are waiting with (not so) baited breath for the release of Win11...primarily to see what they screwed up this time around. Were there an option to keep 7 on life support forever I'd gladly choose it over anything else.
    "Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."

  6. #6
    Forum Addict n6hcm's Avatar
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    "which screwdriver is your favorite?"

    That's what this question feels like to me. I feel like they are all pretty unremarkable. I do most of my reading and writing on Android tablets (extensive writing is done on one of my macs or pcs)
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  7. #7
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    I have an old machine with W7. I dare not put it online.

  8. #8
    Conch Master KJ3N's Avatar
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    W10, with W7 a close second. The rest of them aren't even a consideration.

    Someone once brought me a virus-laden laptop with 8.0 on. What a fucking nightmare that was. Just trying to navigate the OS had me pulling my hair out. It was enough for me to completely skip any 8.x version and jump directly from W7 to W10.

    People seem to complain endlessly about W10 updates. I have to tell you, I've only had 1 or 2 instances where an update did something to my shack PC in the roughly 5 years I've been running it. It amounted to a reshuffling of USB ports, which caused WSJT-X to lose the audio settings for input and output. It took all of 60 seconds to fix. BFD.

    Of course, I build all my desktop machines, so maybe that's the reason I don't have issues. There's far too much bloatware and proprietary hardware running on most OEM machines you buy. It's more like venereal diseases that never completely go away, resurfacing now and again.

    Anyway, YMMV. Offer not good in all 50 states.
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  9. #9
    Administrator N8YX's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KJ3N View Post
    Of course, I build all my desktop machines, so maybe that's the reason I don't have issues.
    In the two cases (actually, three - two on the same system) I've seen this happen on, the OS started out as a fresh install. My personal copy of W10 is Pro, and my work copy is Enterprise. A minimum of additional software is installed on either, and it comes from reputable sources - not sketchy Internet "repositories".

    Work system is a model which we literally have tens of thousands of dispersed throughout the corporation. My experience with the failed feature level upgrade and subsequent OS bricking was by no means the only occurrence. I keep current copies of our installation ISO images on removable storage so about the only thing I lost was a day or so spent in staging the system.

    Home...this particular platform was built from scratch by me (you can see a thread in this forum section listing the particulars). Running Mint Tricia 19.3, the system is as stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. I had it set to dual-boot Win10 Pro and when the MS OS was "live", it typically wouldn't stay up longer than a week if I was doing any sort of I/O intensive operations (such as CAT control of radios, scanners, peripherals). An upgrade which made this condition worse (well known in the W10 user groups) prompted me to install, re-register and run W10 in a virtual machine via VirtualBox.

    There was another upgrade (around the fall of last year) which bricked that VM and even screwed up my snapshot of it. So...re-install. A number of scanner-control programs I use flatly will not run for extended periods of time with W10 - though they're flawless on W7 and according to their authors, should be on 10 as well. Similar to Charles's shack, there are two W7 systems here with a lot of ham radio specific software installed. These are blocked from 'Net access.

    I have another big VM host that's going together this fall and winter and will replace the system which I'm using to post this. If W10 doesn't play nicely there either...
    "Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."

  10. #10
    Orca Whisperer W3WN's Avatar
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    A lot of backward functionality (especially for 8 & 16 bit apps dating back to Win 3) was deliberately removed by Micro$oft in Win X. That's why a lot of older apps now break.

    They're trying to force us into a 64 bit world. Which means that older software will have to be replaced, and older hardware that can't support the OS will have to be replaced as well.
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