J. P. Gilliver (John) formulated on Saturday :
Bob F explained : []
XP3 has been working fine for me 24/7 for years. If it doesn't compact
folders.dbx, so what?
And XP SP2 has been working fine for me 24/7 for years, so what? One of my
machines does have XP SP3 on it and I am not impressed. Not one single new
feature. Useless, don't waste my time!
Not one single new feature _that YOU use_. (It also contained bugfixes.)
Yes, but if I need a bugfix, I install it individually. Like KB909095
for example. I don't need to fix things like not displaying Chinese
characters correctly under IE. Heck I can't even read Chinese anyway,
so what good would it do me anyway? Plus SP3 also adds new bugs, so
what good is that? Microsoft has no plans for SP4 to fix those.
And how do you know SP3 and later doesn't contain secret backdoors that
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, NSA, etc could use? And what about a time
bomb that will make your XP unusable after a so and so date? They are
already trying to get XP users to upgrade to a newer version of Windows
by claiming XP is so unsecure. And that doesn't seem to scare enough of
us to help Microsoft sell more OS. So Microsoft might be able to make
updated XP less usable somehow in the future. They could do the same
for SP2 machines too, but SP3 machines would be a bigger target. There
just aren't enough XP SP2 users to worry about.
And speaking about bugs, ever looked for a XP bug list? I have and they
don't exist. I did find one comment that claims whoever creates one,
Microsoft shuts them down. I don't know how true that is, but it does
makes sense that none exists. I don't know what Microsoft could do
about such a list posted in newsgroups? Although they could put a
Microsoft office on the moon if they wanted to, so maybe they can.
But nobody is forcing you to use SP3 - if you're happy with SP2, stick with
it! SP3 has been fine for me since I moved to XP; since I don't use OE, I'm
not bothered about some obscure bug relating to it. But I'm certainly not
saying _you_ should move to SP3: sounds as if it'd give you no advantage
(assuming you don't use any of the other things that were fixed) and one
disadvantage.
But I do have one machine with SP3. And I am not impressed! An extra
1GB of new code for what? Just like that DOTNET junk. 500MB+ worth of
libraries just to run a few 10MB applications? Nonsense, they can keep
their DOTNET. This one has no DOTNET stuff at all. Some other of my XP
machines was not so lucky. As some branded OEM XP SP2 installs puts
DOTNET on automatically. Plus Windows 7 and 8 (all versions) does too.
I use the ancient Turnpike (-:.
Wow! I haven't used Turnpike in years. ;-)
They all lack what _you_ consider important features, or - more likely -
implement those functions in a way you're not used to. Conversely, they may
add _new_ features - which, since you've never had them, you don't miss.
Yes, but I use others all of the time to keep up with them all. Same
with office suites. And spending all of that time with them, I still
like OE6 and MS Office 2000 better than anything else. I am using
MesNews right now (I like to switch applications a lot). I never did
ever figure out how to toggle threaded view off. Threaded view is nice
from time to time, but I don't always like it.
I would certainly agree with that in some respects - code size for one.
I run some of the newer stuff from time to time, but I like the older
stuff much better. If I was just a kid, I would probably like the newer
stuff more.